But there was one strange thing about these soldiers. Well as they had been trained, they could never learn how to attack or to take a town that was fortified. ‘Wall-fighting,’ as the Greeks called it, was beyond their power. Even an ordinary wall or fence would stop them in their victorious course. At sea too they were not nearly so successful as on land. Sparta itself was not, like other Greek cities, surrounded by a wall. For when the citizens once sent to ask Lycurgus if it were necessary to enclose their city with a wall, his answer was, ‘The city is well fortified which hath a wall of men instead of brick.’ When, after many years, Lycurgus had finished his code of laws, he called the people together and told them that he was going to Delphi to consult the oracle on an important matter which concerned the State. Before he set out he begged them, and also the two kings and the Senate, to take an oath to keep his laws unaltered until his return. This they gladly promised to do. Then Lycurgus journeyed to Delphi, and after offering sacrifices to Apollo, he asked the god if the laws he had made for his country were good laws. The oracle answered that the laws were good, and that as long as the people kept them their fame would endure. Lycurgus sent this answer in writing to Sparta. Then, that the Spartans might not be set free from their oath he determined never to go back to the city. Yet it seemed that he could not live away from her, and so, for the welfare of the State, as he believed, the lawgiver starved himself to death. The Spartans kept the oath that they had taken, and when they died their sons and their sons’ sons observed it. For five hundred years, during the reigns of fourteen kings, the laws of Lycurgus were unaltered and strictly followed. After his death Lycurgus was worshipped as a god, and a temple was built for him in Sparta, where sacrifices were offered to him every year. CHAPTER XXVI ARISTOMENES AND THE FOX The Spartans were eager to fight and to add to their dominions. So they determined to attack the Messenians, whose country lay west of Laconia, close to their own borders. One day, while the Messenians were feasting and offering sacrifices to their gods, the Spartans sent three youths disguised as maidens across the borderland. Beneath their robes the young soldiers carried arms. They stole quietly in among the Messenians and attacked them in the midst of their feast. But although the Messenians were unarmed they soon captured the three Spartan lads. They then advanced against the Spartans, and in the tumult that followed, one of the kings of Sparta was slain. The war, which was thus begun in 743 B.C., lasted for many years, and was known as the First Messenian War.