The Messenians, having successfully resisted invasion from…

The Messenians, having successfully resisted invasion from the east for twenty years, finally fall victim around 724 to the Spartans under their legendary King Theopompus.

The Spartans had sent an envoy to Delphi and their following of her advice has caused Messenian reverses so great that Aristodemus commits suicide and Ithome falls.

The Messenians who had fortified themselves on the mountain either flee abroad or are captured and enslaved.

The Spartans demand, in addition to other indignities, half of all Messenian produce.

Messenia is depopulated by emigration of the Achaeans to other states.

Those who did not emigrate are reduced socially to helots, or serfs.

Their descendants will be held in hereditary subjection for centuries until the Spartan state finally needs them for defense.

Sparta had already, in the Dark Age, coerced into semisubject, or “perioikic,” status a number of its immediate neighbors, having gradually conquered Laconia, the southeastern quarter of the Peloponnesus.

Many of the conquered pre-Dorians had become helots, or serfs; the Spartans have granted members of various neighboring groups in Laconia the semiautonomous status of “perioikoi,” but require them to serve in the army.

Under the rule of a diarchy, Sparta suddenly gains wealth and culture with the socio-economic basis of classical Sparta emerging from this war and expansion.