9. Traditions of this kind were probably circulating in different forms among the victorious Lacedæmonians,(595) amongst the refugee Messenians in Italy and Naupactus, the subject Messenians who remained in the country, and the other Peloponnesians, when they were recalled into existence by the re-establishment of the Messenian state by Epaminondas. Even before the battle of Leuctra, the Bœotians, on the advice of an oracle, hung up as a trophy the shield of Aristomenes,(596) the device of which was a spread eagle:(597) and when Epaminondas recalled the Messenian fugitives from Italy, Sicily, and even from Libya, and had erected them, with numerous Helots and people collected from various quarters, into a new state,(598) Aristomenes was especially invoked before the foundation of the city.(599) In this manner the ancient traditions were enabled to gain a new footing, and to be developed in a connected form. Several writers now seized upon a subject which had begun to excite so great interest, of whom Rhianus the poet and Myron the prose-writer are known to us.(600) Myron gave an account of the first Messenian war down to the death of Aristodemus; but, in the opinion of Pausanias, utterly regardless whether or no he related falsehood and incredibilities; thus, in the teeth of all tradition, he introduced Aristomenes, the hero of the second war, into the first; and he wrote with an evident bias _against_ Sparta.(601) Rhianus, however, a native of Bena in Crete, celebrated the actions of Aristomenes, in the second war, from the battle near the Great Trench (Μεγάλη Τάφρος), until the end of the war, as Homer had done those of Achilles; and although Pausanias has disproved some of his statements of particular facts from Tyrtæus,(602) yet he has frequently followed him, and especially in the poetical embellishments of his narrative.(603) He never mentions any historians, such as Ephorus, Theopompus, Antiochus, or Callisthenes.(604) Rhianus, however, though he might not have exclusively adopted the Messenian account,(605) yet, as far as we can judge from Pausanias, gave the reins to his fancy, and mixed up many circumstances and usages of later times with the ancient tradition.(606) It is not therefore our intention either to divert the reader with a continued narration of these fictions, at the expense of truth, or fatigue him by a detailed criticism of them, but merely to lay before him the chief circumstances, as they are known with historical certainty.