1 If by these words Lycurgus means five hundred years after it was destroyed, as he presumably does, he is being very inaccurate. Messene was founded in 369 by Epaminondas and its previous destruction is most naturally assigned to the Second Messenian War (mid-seventh century). Even the beginning of the First Messenian War, in which the Spartans conquered the country, cannot be placed much earlier than 720,i.e. only 350 years before. See Din. 1.73 and note.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.