"The Story of Aristomenes"

Annotations on Persons and Places Mentioned in the Poem

0.1 Aristomenes is the legendary warrior who led the Messenians in their second war (685-668 BC) against the Spartans of Laconia. Refusing to surrender, he continued to invade Laconia for eleven years from his mountain fortresses of Ira and Ithome. Messenia was a coastal country in the southern Peloponnesus, south of Arcadia and west of Laconia.

0.8 Laconia--a country in the southern Peloponnesus that dominated the fertile land of Messenia. Its capital was Sparta, situated on the Eurotas River.

37 King Aristodemus, Euphaes--Aristodemus led the first Messenian war (743-723 BC) with Sparta. Elected king in 730 BC, he killed himself in despair of his resistance to the Spartans. Euphaes was the Messenian king during the war until his death in 730 BC.

101 AEtolia was the rugged country north of the Peloponnesus, across the Corinthian strait.

112 Alpheus is a partially subterranean river flowing through Arcadia to the Ionian Sea.

132 Hercules is the Latin form for Heracles, whose heroic feats are a composite from the myths of heroes from various Greek tribes.

143 Pallas Athene was the armoured daughter of Zeus, and the inventor of the flute.

225 The footnotes to lines 225-380 include the variants in the fragment (e4) that Morris published in The Athenaeum, 13 May 1876: 663-64. Entitled “The First Foray of Aristomenes,” the fragment includes this introduction:
The following is a fragment of a poem, called ‘The Story of Aristomenes.’ Aristomenes, the son of one of the Messenian exiles, settled in Arcadia, when about nineteen years of age, happens to be wandering by the sources of the Alpheus with a few other Messenian exiles, and is told by some Arcadian shepherds that on the other side of the mountain lay the rich valley of the Eurotas. Aristomenes urges his companions to make a raid into Laconia, avenge the wrongs of their fathers, and raises a revolt in Messenia. Roused by his words, they set out: – e4

309 Cleombrotus was the Spartan king who was defeated and killed by the Thebes in 371 BC. The Theban victory temporarily freed the Messenians from Spartan dominance.

507 AEpitus was the son of the Messenian king Cresphontes and the Arcadian princess Merope. Surviving an insurrection in his youth, he returned to Messenia and avenged his father’s death. Messenian royalty thereafter were known as AEpitidae.

820 the great Dioscuri--The Dioscuri are the twin sons of Zeus, Castor the horse-tamer and Polydeuces the boxing master, and served as the tutelary gods of young warriors.

962-64 Taygetus – The Tavgetus is the rugged mountain-range separating Messenia and Laconia.

1250 Lasus was the sixth-century BC lyric poet who developed the dithyramb and taught Pindar. Bion was the third-century BC pastoral poet in the tradition of Theocritus.

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