strength and valour.

Two battles were fought, wherein the loss was nearly equal on both
sides.(233) But after the second, the Messenians suffered extremely
through the want of provisions, which occasioned a great desertion in
their troops, and at last brought a pestilence among them.

Hereupon they consulted the oracle of Delphi, which directed them, in
order to appease the wrath of the gods, to offer up a virgin of the royal
blood in sacrifice. Aristomenes, who was of the race of the Epytides,
offered his own daughter. The Messenians then considering, that if they
left garrisons in all their towns they should extremely weaken their army,
resolved to abandon them all, except Ithome, a little place seated on the
top of a hill of the same name, about which they encamped and fortified
themselves. In this situation were seven years spent, during which nothing
passed but slight skirmishes on both sides; the Lacedaemonians not daring
in all that time to force the enemy to a battle.

Indeed, they almost despaired of being able to reduce them: nor was there
any thing but the obligation of the oath, by which they had bound
themselves, that made them continue so burthensome a war. What gave them
the greatest uneasiness was, their apprehension, lest their absence from
their wives for so many years, an absence which might still continue many
more, should destroy their families at home, and leave Sparta destitute of
citizens.(234) To prevent this misfortune, they sent home such of their
soldiers as were come to the army since the forementioned oath had been
taken, and made no scruple of prostituting their wives to their embraces.
The children that sprung from this unlawful intercourse were called
Partheniae, a name given them to denote the infamy of their birth. As soon
as they were grown up, not being able to endure such an opprobrious
distinction, they banished themselves from Sparta with one consent, and,
under the conduct of Phalantus, went and settled at Tarentum in Italy,
after driving out the ancient inhabitants.(235)

At last, in the eighth year of the war, which was the thirteenth of
Euphaes's reign, a fierce and bloody battle was fought near Ithome.(236)
Euphaes pierced through the battalions of Theopompus with too much heat
and precipitation for a king. He there received a multitude of wounds,
several of which were mortal. He fell, and seemed to give up the ghost.
Whereupon, wonderful efforts of courage were exerted o