beat the Messenians back by sheer force of numbers. And whenever the Messenians were unsuccessful in an attack, and tried in some other place to break the Acarnanian line, the same result would follow. At whatever point they attacked they produced confusion and something like a rout, but the Acarnanians came swarming up, and so the Messenians had very unwillingly to retire. And the struggle being very evenly poised till night came on, and the attacking force of the Acarnanians being augmented the following evening from several towns, a regular blockade of the Messenians commenced. And they had no fear that the town would be taken by storm, either by the Acarnanians getting over the walls, or by their being compelled to desert their garrison duty. But by the 8th month all their supplies were consumed. To the Acarnanians they jeeringly cried out that their provisions would last even a ten years’ siege: but about the time of first sleep they quietly slipped out of Œniadæ, and being compelled to fight their way through directly the Acarnanians got to know of this flitting, lost about 300 but killed a still greater number of the enemy, and most of them succeeded in cutting their way through, and by the assistance of the Ætolians who were friendly to them got safe to Naupactus. CHAPTER XXVI. And from this time forward their hostility to the Lacedæmonians increased, as they notably shewed in the war between the Peloponnesians and Athenians. For they made Naupactus a base against the Peloponnese, and when the Spartans were cut off at Sphacteria some Messenian bowmen from Naupactus assisted the Athenians. But after the reverse of the Athenians at Ægos-potamoi, the Lacedæmonians being masters of the sea drove the Messenians from Naupactus, and some went into Sicily to their kinsmen at Zancle and Rhegium, but most to Libya to the Euesperitæ, who being hard pressed in war by some of the neighbouring barbarians invited in the Greeks as colonists. To them went most of the Messenians under Comon, who had been their General at Sphacteria. And a year before the Theban victory at Leuctra, the god foretold to the Messenians their return to the Peloponnese. For the priest of Hercules (they say) in Messene at the Sicilian Strait saw in a dream Hercules Manticlus invited in a friendly way by Zeus to Ithome. And among the Euesperitæ Comon dreamt that he had dealings with his dead mother, and that subsequently his mother came to life again. And he hoped as the Athenians were now powerful at sea that they would be restored to Naupactus: and the dream seemed to indicate that Messene would revive. And no long time after came to the Lacedæmonians at Leuctra the disaster that had long been fated: for the concluding words of the oracle given to Aristodemus the king of the Messenians were, “Do as fate bids: woe comes to all in turn.”