Pausanias, a Roman-era writer who wrote a
Description of Greece in the second century CE, included many details and anecdotes in his ample work. Among them was the story of Aristomenes, the great Messenian hero (and one of my favorite characters from antiquity).
Here's the story:
The setting is late 7th—early 6th century BCE Greece. Sparta/Lakonia is fighting a war against its neighbor to the west, Messene. The Spartans are the finest army around, but they can’t get the best of the great hero Aristomenes. Aristomenes has all sorts of adventures, is repeatedly captured yet manages to escape, and terrorizes the Spartan army. Eventually, the Messenians are defeated and enslaved to become Sparta’s helot/serf population.
Near the end of the war against Sparta, when it became clear that the Messenian cause was lost, Aristomenes acted to ensure that his descendants would someday inherit his homeland (his 'promised land').
Quote:
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Paus. 4.20.4: There was something the Messenians kept hidden; if it was lost it would make Messene disappear forever, but if it was kept the oracles . . . declared that one day in the course of time the Messenians would recover their country. Aristomenes knew the oracles and went and got this thing during the night. When he was in the loneliest part of Mount Ithome, he dug a hole in the mountainside, and asked Zeus of Ithome and the gods who had saved the Messenians to guard what he left there, and not to put the one Messenian hope of a return home into Lakonian hands.
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A few paragraphs later, Pausanias tells his readers what Aristomenes hid.
For over 300 years, the people of Messene remained in bondage until the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE. Led by the city of Thebes and its brilliant general Epaminondas, a coalition of Greek forces defeated the Spartans decisively and ended the Spartan aura of military invincibility. As a consequence of Sparta’s defeat, Messene was re-founded.
Around this time (so the story in Pausanias goes), a man named Epiteles was visited by a messenger in a dream that instructed him to dig something up on Mt. Ithome and give it to Epaminondas (who also had a dream). Epiteles did so.
Quote:
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Paus. 4.26.8: Epaminondas offered sacrifice and prayed to the vision he had dreamed and then he opened the jar. Inside he found a leaf of tin beaten to extreme fineness and rolled up like a scroll, and inscribed with the mystery of the Great goddesses: this was the thing Aristomenes had hidden.
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So, we have a heroic general/leader who, realizing his cause was lost, buried the most sacred writings (written on a thin metal plate) of his people in a mountain and prayed to Zeus to preserve it so that his people might someday re-inherit their lands. Hundreds of years later, a vision told another man where to find the record, and the city was restored.
Now, some apologists (such as the author of this site
http://www.jefflindsay.com/bme10.shtml) might claim that this proves BoM authenticity because it confirms ancient traditions that parallel certain BoM events.
Others would conclude that the author of the BoM knew this story from Pausanias (readily available in the 19th century) and modeled certain characters on the esteemed Aristomenes.
I'll allow each to draw his/her own conclusions.
I share this with the board not to build or destroy faith - faith is for the other category IMO - but to show that apologists have a long way to go before they'll convince me of BoM historicity with anachronistic arguments that cite Greco-Roman heritage as evidence of BoM practices. Testimonies of the book based on faith, spiritual witness, etc. are outside of this discussion; Archaeology and ancient comparanda . . . not so much.
[translations are from Levi's Penguin edition of Pausanias (2 vols.)]