ARISTODEMUS (8th

See also:

• CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

century s.c.)  , semi-legendary ruler of Messenia in the time of the first Messenian War . Tradition relates that, after some six years' fighting, the Messenians were forced to retire to the fortified summit of Ithome . The Delphic oracle bade them sacrifice a virgin of the house of Aepytus . Aristodemus offered his own daughter, and when her lover, hoping to save her life, declared that she was no longer a maiden, he slew her with his own hand to prove the assertion false . In the thirteenth year of the war, Euphaes, the Messenian king, died . As he left no children, popular election was resorted to, and Aristodemus was chosen as his successor, though the national soothsayers objected to him as the murderer of his daughter . As a ruler he was mild and conciliatory . He was victorious in the pitched battle fought at the foot of Ithome in the fifth year of his reign, a battle in which the Messenians, reinforced by the entire Arcadian levy and picked contingents from Argos and Sicyon, defeated the combined Spartan and Corinthian forces . Shortly afterwards, however, led by unfavourable omens to despair of final success, he killed himself on his daughter's tomb . Though little is known of his life and the chronology is uncertain, yet Aristodemus may fairly be regarded as a historical character . His reign is dated 731—724 B.C. by Pausanias, and this may be taken as approximately correct, though Duncker (History of Greece, Eng. trans., ii. p . 69) inclines to place it eight years later .

Pausanias iv . 9-13 is practically our only authority . He followed as his

chief source the prose history of Myron of Priene, an untrustworthy writer, probably of the 2nd century Inc.; hence a good deal of his story must be regarded as fanciful, though we cannot distinguish accurately between the true and the fictitious . (M . N .