Thus the Messenians returned to the Peloponnese, and were restored to their country, 287 years after the capture of Eira, when Dyscinetus was Archon at Athens, and in the third year of the 102nd Olympiad, in which Damon of Thurii won the second prize. It was indeed no short time that the Platæans were exiles from their country, or the Delians when (expelled from Delos by the Athenians) they dwelt at Adramyttium. The Minyæ from Orchomenus also, having been driven out by the Thebans from Orchomenus after the battle of Leuctra, were restored to Bœotia by Philip the son of Amyntas, as the Platæans also. And although Alexander stript Thebes of Thebans, yet not many years afterwards Cassander the son of Antipater rebuilt it. The exile from Platæa seems to have been the longest of those which I have recorded, however it was not longer than two generations. But the Messenians were wanderers from the Peloponnese for nearly 300 years, during which time it is evident that they abandoned none of their national customs, nor did they change their Doric dialect, but even to our day they preserve it purer than any other of the Peloponnesians. CHAPTER XXVIII. On their return no apprehension was felt by them at first about the Lacedæmonians: for they, being afraid of the Thebans, did not interfere with the rebuilding of Messene, nor the gathering of the Arcadians into one town. But when the Phocian War, otherwise called the Holy War, withdrew the Thebans from the Peloponnese, then the Lacedæmonians pricked up their courage, and could no longer keep their hands off the Messenians. And the Messenians bore the brunt of the war alone, except the assistance they got from the Argives and Arcadians; they also begged for help from the Athenians,--but they replied that they could not join them in an incursion into Laconia, but if the Lacedæmonians were the aggressors and carried the war into Messenia, then they promised that they would not fail them. And eventually the Messenians got the help of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and the Macedonians, and this they say prevented them from participation in the struggle of the Greeks at Chæronea. Not that they would ever have been inclined to take up arms against the Greeks. But after the death of Alexander, when the Greeks commenced a second war against the Macedonians, the Messenians took their part in this, as I have before shewn in my account of Attica. But they did not join the Greeks in fighting against the Galati, as Cleonymus and the Lacedæmonians would not make a treaty with them.