| September 3, 2010 |
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| Biography
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Aristomenes
A Messenian, the hero of the second war with Sparta, who belongs more to legend than to history. He was a native of Andania, and was sprung from the royal line of Aepytus. Tired of the yoke of Sparta, he began the war in B.C. 685. After the defeat of the Messenians, in the third year of the war, Aristomenes retreated to the mountain fortress of Ira, and there maintained the war for eleven years, constantly ravaging the land of Laconia. In one of his incursions the Spartans overpowered him with superior numbers, and, carrying him with fifty of his comrades to Sparta, cast them into the pit where condemned criminals were thrown. The rest perished; but not so Aristomenes, the favourite of the gods; for legends tell how an eagle bore him up on its wings as he fell, and a fox guided him on the third day from the cavern. But the city of Ira, which he had so long successfully defended, fell into the hands of the Spartans, who again became masters of Messenia, B.C. 668. Aristomenes settled at Ialysus, in Rhodes, where he married his daughter to Damagetus, king of Ialysus.
| This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Feb 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks |
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Damagetus
After declining the leadership of the men setting forth to found a colony, Aristomenes gave his sister Hagnagora in marriage to Tharyx at Phigalia, and his daughters, both the eldest and the next in age, to Damothoidas of Lepreum and Theopompus of Heraea. He himself went to Delphi to enquire of the god. The reply that was given to Aristomenes is not recorded, but when Damagetus the Rhodian, who reigned at Ialysos, came to Apollo and asked whence he should take a wife, the Pythia bade him take a daughter of the bravest of the Greeks. As Aristomenes had a third daughter, he married her, considering that Aristomenes was by far the bravest of the Greeks of that age. Aristomenes, coming to Rhodes with his daughter, purposed to go up from there to Sardis to Ardys the son of Gyges, and to Ecbatana of the Medes to king Phraortes. But ere that he was overtaken by illness and death, for no further misfortune was to befall the Lacedaemonians at the hands of Aristomenes. On his death Damagetus and the Rhodians built him a splendid tomb and paid honor to him thenceforward. I omit what is recorded of the Diagoridae in Rhodes, as they are called, a line sprung from Diagoras the son of Damagetus, son of Dorieus, who was the son of Damagetus and of the daughter of Aristomenes, lest it should seem to be irrelevant.
| This extract is from: Pausanias. Description of Greece (ed. W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., & H.A. Ormerod, 1918). Cited Feb 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks. |
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Damagetus, (Damagetos). King of Ialysus in Rhodes (contemporary with Ardys, king of Lydia, and Phraortes, king of Media), married, in obedience to the Delphic oracle, the daughter of Aristomenes of Messene, and from this marriage sprung the family of the Diagoridae, who were celebrated for their victories at Olympia.
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Timocreon
(Timokreon). A lyric poet of Rhodes, celebrated for the bitter and pugnacious spirit of his works, and especially for his attacks on Themistocles and Simonides.
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Eratidae
Eratidae, (Eratidai), an ancient illustrious family in the island of Rhodes. The Eratidae of Ialysus in Rhodes are described by Pindar (Ol. vii. 20, &c.; comp. Bockh, Explicat. p. 165) as descended from Tlepolemus and the Heracieidae, of whom a colony seems to have gone from Argos to Rhodes. Damagetus and his son Diagoras belonged to the family of the Eratidae.
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Eratidae. The family of the Eratidae, who formed a Dorian aristocracy in Ialysus, were banished between B.C. 428 and 412
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Diagorids, Diagoridae
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