We do not know all the adventures of this famous champion, but are told
that he was taken prisoner three times by his enemies. Twice he made
marvellous escapes while they were conveying him to Sparta. On the third
occasion he was less fortunate. His foes bore him in triumph to their
capital city, and here he was condemned to be cast from Mount Taygetus
into the Keadas, a deep rock cavity into which they flung their
criminals.

Fifty Messenian prisoners suffered the same fate and were all killed;
but the gods, so we are told, came to their leader's aid. The legend
says that an eagle took Aristomenes on its outspread wings, and landed
him safely in the bottom of the pit. More likely the bodies of the
former victims broke his fall. Seeing no possible way out from the deep
cavity, he wrapped himself in his cloak, and resigned himself to die.
But, while thus lying, he saw a fox prowling among the dead bodies, and
questioned himself how it had found its way into the pit. When it came
near him he grasped its tail, defending himself from its bites by means
of his cloak. Holding fast, he followed the fox to the aperture by which
it had entered, enlarged it so that he could creep out, and soon
appeared alive again in the field, to the surprise of his friends and
the consternation of his foes.

Being seized again by some Cretan bowmen, he was rescued by a maiden,
who dreamed that wolves had brought into the city a chained lion, bereft
of its claws, and that she had given it claws and set it free. When she
saw Aristomenes among his captors, she believed that her dream had come
true, and that the gods desired her to set him free. This she did by
making his captors drunk, and giving him a dagger with which he cut his
bonds. The indiscreet bowmen were killed by the warrior, while the
escaped hero rewarded the maiden by making her the wife of his son.

But Messenia was doomed by the gods, and no man could avert its fate.
The oracle of Delphi declared that if the he-goat (Tragos) should drink
the waters of the Neda, the god could no longer defend that fated
country. And now a fig-tree sprang up on the banks of the Neda, and,
instead of spreading its branches aloft, let them droop till they
touched the waters of the stream. This a seer announced as the
fulfillment of the oracle, for in the Messenian language the fig-tree
was called _Tragos_.

Aristomenes now, discouraged by the decree of the gods, and finding
himself surrounded,