This counsel may perhaps find some support from circumstances that took place many years previously.
For besides many other things I might mention, the Messenians set up in the time of Aristomenes, as Callisthenes tells us, a pillar beside the altar of Zeus Lycaeus bearing the inscription:
It was, as a fact, after they had lost their own country that they dedicated this inscription praying the gods to save Arcadia as if it were a second fatherland to them.
And in this they were quite justified; for the Arcadians not only received them on their expulsion from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Messenia&groupId=760&placeId=1380">Messenia</a> in the Aristomenean War, taking them to their homes and making them citizens, but passed a resolution to give their daughters in marriage to those Messenians who were of proper age.
In addition to this, after holding an inquiry into the treachery of the king Aristocrates in the battle of the Trench, they put him and his whole family to death.
But, apart from these remote events, my assertion derives sufficient support from the circumstances that followed the recent foundation of the cities of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Megalopolis&groupId=745&placeId=1360">Megalopolis</a> and Messene.
For at the time when, after the battle of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Mantinea&groupId=731&placeId=1339">Mantinea</a>, the result of which was doubtful owing to the death of Epaminondas, the Spartans refused to allow the Messenians to participate in the truce, as they still hoped to re-annex <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Messenia&groupId=760&placeId=1380">Messenia</a>,
the Megalopolitans and all the Arcadians in alliance with them were so active in their efforts, that the Messenians were received by the allies and included in the general treaty of peace, while the Lacedaemonians alone among the Greeks were excluded from it.
Anyone in the future who takes this into consideration will agree that the opinion I advanced a little above is correct.
I have spoken at such length on the subject for the sake of the Arcadians and Messenians, in order that, bearing in mind the misfortunes that have befallen their countries at the hands of the Lacedaemonians, they may adhere in the spirit as well as in the letter to their alliance
and neither from fear of consequences or from a desire for peace desert each other in critical times.
Walbank Commentary