was fastest asleep. Then she cut the bonds of Aristomenes, and he took the sword and killed all 5. And Gorgus the son of Aristomenes took the maiden to wife. And thus Aristomenes requited to the damsel her saving of his life, and Gorgus was only 18 when he married her. CHAPTER XX. But in the 11th year of the siege it was fated that Eira should fall, and that the Messenians should be dispersed, and the god accomplished what had been oracularly foretold to Aristomenes and Theoclus. For when they went to Delphi after the disaster at _the Great Trench_, and enquired as to their safety, the Pythian Priestess replied as follows, “When he-goat drinks of Neda’s winding stream, I cease to guard Messene. Her end is near.” Now the Neda rises in Mount Lycæus: and the river flows through Arcadia and into Messenia again, and divides the maritime parts of Messenia and Elis. And now they were afraid of their he-goats drinking of the Neda: but the god had quite a different meaning which I will unfold. The wild fig tree, which some of the Greeks call Olynthe, is called by the Messenians Tragus (that is _He-Goat_). At this time there was a wild fig tree on the banks of the river Neda which did not grow upright, but bent into the stream and touched the water with its topmost boughs. And the seer Theoclus having noticed it conjectured that by the he-goat drinking of the Neda the Pythian Priestess meant this wild fig, and that therefore the fate of Messene was imminent. And he preserved silence on the matter to everyone else, but he took Aristomenes to this fig tree, and pointed out to him that their period of safety had passed. And Aristomenes was convinced by him that it was as he said, and that that there was no room for delay, and he adopted the following contrivance under the present conjuncture. The Messenians had some sacred records, which if lost would ruin Messene and keep her under for ever, but which if preserved would, according to the oracular utterances of Lycus the son of Pandion, give the Messenians a chance one day to recover their country, and Aristomenes knowing these oracular utterances conveyed away by night these _arcana_: and going to the most unfrequented part of Mount Ithome buried them there, and prayed to Zeus of Ithome and to the gods who had hitherto befriended the Messenians to be witnesses of this deposit, and not to allow the Lacedæmonians to rob them of their only hope of returning home again one day. And after this trouble came to the Messenians, as earlier still it did to the Trojans, from adultery. They occupied the mountainous district all round Eira as far as the Neda, and some lived outside the gates. And no other deserter came to them from Laconia, but a herdsman, a slave of Emperamus who was a man of some note at Sparta. This herdsman lived not far from the Neda. There he saw the wife of one of the Messenians who lived outside the walls coming to draw water: and