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The Messenians together with the Helots at first advanced against the city of Sparta, assuming that they would take it because there would be no one to defend it; but when they heard that the survivors were drawn up in a body with Archidamus the king and were ready for the struggle on behalf of their native land, they gave up this plan, and seizing a stronghold in Messenia they made it their base of operations and from there continued to overrun Laconia. [2] And the Spartans, turning for help to the Athenians, received from them an army; and they gathered troops as well from the rest of their allies and thus became able to meet their enemy on equal terms. At the outset they were much superior to the enemy, but at a later time, when a suspicion arose that the Athenians were about to go over to the Messenians, they broke the alliance with them, stating as their reason that in the other allies they had sufficient men to meet the impending battle. [3] The Athenians, although they believed that they had suffered an affront, at the time did no more than withdraw; later, however, their relations to the Lacedaemonians being unfriendly, they were more and more inclined to fan the flames of hatred. Consequently the Athenians took this incident as the first cause of the estrangement of the two states, and later on they quarrelled and, embarking upon great wars, filled all Greece with vast calamities. But we shall give an account of these matters severally in connection with the appropriate periods of time. [4] At the time in question the Lacedaemonians together with their allies marched forth against Ithome and laid siege to it. And the Helots, revolting in a body from the Lacedaemonians, joined as allies with the Messenians, and at one time they were winning and at another losing. And since for ten years no decision could be reached in the war, for that length of time they never ceased injuring each other.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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