Around 660 BCE, Messenians rose against Spartan rule and rallied to the mountain of Eira under the hero Aristomenes. Smoke curled over the Pamisos while Sparta tightened ranks in the Eurotas valley. The war turned memory—run to stone—into strategy.
What Happened
Two generations after the first conquest, resentment found a leader and a height. Tradition calls him Aristomenes, the Messenian champion whose exploits Pausanias records with the relish of a storyteller and the gravity of a pilgrim [1]. His first decision was simple and shrewd: do not try to hold the plain. Hold Eira. The mountain above the Pamisos could trade acres for years.
The rising began with strikes on Spartan positions near Stenyclerus and daring raids that cut supply lines feeding allotments. Villages along the Pamisos saw signals flicker at night between Eira and Andania. The sound of horns carried up ravines. Aristomenes’ bands hit and vanished into pine and rock. War drums, in effect, were the creak of sledges dragging stones for new walls above the olive belt [1][2].
Sparta met this with method. Citizen hoplites assembled at Amyclae, their bronze greaves catching morning light; commanders parceled forces toward foothills and the Stenyclerus plain. This was the era given a voice by Tyrtaeus, the Spartan poet who taught that steadiness in the phalanx is salvation: “For it is fine to die in the front line, a brave man fighting for his fatherland” [11]. His verses, sung by ranks as they climbed toward Eira, turned fear into cadence [11][15].
The early years saw alternating fortunes. Messenians, guided by Aristomenes’ ruses, sprung ambushes in ravines feeding the Pamisos and slipped away toward Dorion; Spartans stabilized the lowlands, protected threshing floors near Stenyclerus, and sealed passes across Taygetus to prevent aid from Elis or Arcadia. Siege craft improved on both sides. The green of spring barley below contrasted with the ash-gray dry stone walls on Eira.
Pausanias preserves legendary episodes, like the “Great Trench,” which later generations placed within these campaigns. Whether every exploit happened as told, the logic is consistent: mountain control prolonged resistance; Spartan fortitude, trained on the Eurotas and tempered in song, gradually tightened the ring [1][2][12]. The clash taught both peoples endurance and amplified a cultural memory that would be decisive a century later at Ithome.
By the revolt’s midpoint, the Messenian strategy had solidified. Keep the uplands; raid the plain; make Spartans pay in time, not territory. And yet the arithmetic beneath the war did not change. Spartan citizens could rotate companies season by season; Messenian households strained to feed a garrison while fields lay untended below. The blue of the Messenian Gulf glittered beyond the ridges, a reminder that endurance required supply from land now contested every dawn.
Why This Matters
The renewed rising transformed a social settlement into a military emergency. Spartan logistics, framed by allotments west of Taygetus, had to be protected; Messenian resistance, framed by Eira, had to be supplied from a plain whiteshielded by enemy patrols. Both sides learned that the mountains of Messenia could add years to a conflict and reshape alliances around the Peloponnese [1][2][12].
This event speaks to “Mountain Redoubts and Protracted Sieges.” Eira turned geography into policy. The Messenians’ choice to fortify rugged heights forced Sparta into sieges whose length invited narrative—hero tales of Aristomenes, martial elegy from Tyrtaeus—and innovation in control systems on the plain [1][11].
In the larger arc, the Second Messenian War completed the social engineering begun after the first conquest. Its failure—when it came—would allow Sparta to consolidate helotage across Messenia by c. 600 BCE. Its memory, however, provided a script for 464 BCE: when the ground shook in Laconia, the rebels knew to climb Ithome and wait [2][12].
For historians, the war is a test case in using late sources. Pausanias preserves detail colored by centuries of Messenian identity-making. Yet even stripped of legend, the core remains firm: a major mid-seventh century revolt centered on a mountain fortress that Sparta, with endurance and discipline, eventually crushed [1][12].
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People Involved
Key figures who played a role in Renewed Messenian Rising Begins (Second Messenian War)
Aristomenes
Aristomenes is the semi‑legendary champion of the Second Messenian War, celebrated for daring raids and an epic last stand on Mount Eira. Said to be of the Aepytid royal line, he led Messenians in a protracted guerrilla struggle against Sparta, outwitting foes at the “Great Trench” and inspiring a decade‑long defense of Eira before defeat forced exile. His exploits—escape from the Spartan pit at Ceadas, vows to the gods, and unflagging leadership—made him the face of Messenian defiance. In the story of the Messenian Wars, Aristomenes embodies the helots’ and Messenians’ will to resist a conquest meant to be permanent.
Tyrtaeus
Tyrtaeus was the voice of Sparta in the Second Messenian War, a composer of martial elegies that drilled courage, cohesion, and obedience into citizen ranks. Tradition splits on his origin—Spartan by birth or an Athenian schoolmaster sent as a lucky charm—but his verses are unmistakably Spartan: steady feet, locked shields, and honor in the phalanx. His poems, sung to the flute, helped stabilize morale across a grinding conflict from the early 7th century BCE, including the sieges and reversals around Mount Eira. In a society built on helot labor and fear of revolt, Tyrtaeus provided the psychological glue that made Sparta’s hoplite machine hold.
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