Mantinea

“ Mantinea, both in wealth and power, was second to no city in Arcadia, as Phylarchus himself says, and it surrendered after a siege, so that it was not easy for anyone to escape or for anything to be stolen, but yet the value of the whole booty together with slaves amounted at this very period to but three hundred talents. ”

“ As soon as he heard of their being in force at Mantinea, he duly harangued his Lacedaemonians at Tegea, and the very next morning at daybreak advanced upon Mantinea. He led the right wing of the phalanx himself; his mercenaries marched in two parallel columns on each side of his front; and behind them were carts carrying quantities of field artillery and bolts for the catapults. Meanwhile Philopoemen too had arranged his army in three divisions, and was leading them out of Mantinea, the Illyrians and the men with body armour by the gate leading to the temple of Poseidon,The road to Tegea. ”

“ The Mantineans did not fight against the Lacedæmonians at Dipæa with the other Arcadians, but in the Peloponnesian war they joined the people of Elis against the Lacedæmonians, and fought against them, with some reinforcements from the Athenians, and also took part in the expedition to Sicily out of friendship to the Athenians. And some time afterwards a Lacedæmonian force under King Agesipolis, the son of Pausanias, invaded the territory of Mantinea. ”

“ PODARES OF MANTINEIA, HISTORY 8.10.5 Beyond the sanctuary of Poseidon is a trophy made of stone commemorating the victory over the Lacedemonians under Agis. The course of the battle was, it is said, after this wise. The right wing was held by the Mantineans themselves, who put into the field all of military age under the command of Podares, the grandson of the Podares who fought against the Thebans. They had with them also the Elean seer Thrasybulus, the son of Aeneas, one of the Iamids. This man foretold a victory for the Mantineans and took a personal part in the fighting. ”

“ So in every such case the final criterion of good and evil lies not in what is done, but in the different reasons and different purposes of the doer.
57 Now the Mantineans had, in the first instance, deserted the Achaean League, and of their own free will put themselves and their city into the hands first of the Aetolians and then of Cleomenes. They had deliberately ranged themselves on his side and been admitted to Spartan citizenship, when, four years before the invasion of Antigonus, their city was betrayed to Aratus and forcibly occupied by the Achaeans. ”

“ He took the town by diverting the river Ophis, so as to lay the low grounds at the foot of the walls under water. The basements, being made of unbaked bricks, were unable to resist the action of the water. The walls soon began to totter, and the Mantineans were forced to surrender. ”

“ Mantineia is mentioned in the Homeric catalogue of ships, but in early Greek times existed only as a cluster of villages inhabited by a purely agricultural community. In the 6th century it was still insignificant as compared with the neighbouring city of Tegea, and submitted more readily to Spartan overlordship. The political history of Mantineia begins soon after the Persian wars, when its five constituent villages, at the suggestion of Argos, were merged into one city, whose military strength forthwith secured it a leading position in the Peloponnesus. ”

“ Manto sat on the rampart, still and silent as its stones. Anon she rose, and roved about as if distraught, reciting verses from Virgil.
Night had fallen. Benedetto lay wakeful in his cell. A female figure stood before him bearing a lamp. It was Manto.
“Benedetto,” she said, “I am a wretch, faithless to my country and to my master. I did but even now open his sacred volume at hazard, and on what did my eye first fall?
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres. But I can no other. I am a woman. May Mantua never entrust her fortunes to the like of me again! ”

“ But the Mantis, the ecstatic insect with the arms always raised in an attitude of supreme invocation, the horrible Mantis religiosa or Praying Mantis, does better [112] still: she eats her husbands (for the insatiable creature sometimes consumes seven or eight in succession) while they strain her passionately to their heart. Her inconceivable kisses devour, not in a metaphorical, but in an appallingly real fashion, the ill-fated choice of her soul stomach. She begins with the head, goes down to the thorax, nor stops till she comes to the hind-legs, which she deems too tough. ”

“ Then the Manito said: “When I walk about, the leaves die on the trees and fall to the ground; the birds desert their nests and fly away beyond the lakes; the animals bury themselves in holes in the earth or in caves in the mountain side, and the winds wail the death-chant over all the land.”
“Ah, great is the Manito,” said the maiden, “and his mighty name is feared by all living things in the land. ‘Great is the Manito,’ says all the world, and his fame has spread among the children of the Great Spirit till they crouch with fear and say: ‘Mighty and cruel is the Manito! ”

“ He never comes to the Manhatans without visiting them and eating with them, as he now did, as among his old friends. We asked him why he had done so much kindness to these people. "I have always been inclined," he answered, "from my youth up to do good, especially to good people known to me. I took the fish to them because Maneto [160] said to me, you must take fish to these people, whispering ever in my ear 'You must take fish to them.' I had to do it, or Maneto would have killed me." ”

“ The modern French form manteau is used in English chiefly as a dressmaker’s term for a woman’s mantle. “Mantua,” much used in the 18th century for a similar garment, is probably a corruption of manteau, due to silk or other materials coming from the Italian town of that name, and known by the trade name of “mantuas.” The Spanish mantilla is a covering for the head and shoulders of white or black lace or other material, the characteristic head-dress of women in southern and central Spain. ”

“ Hiding the light canoe under some bushes, so cunningly that when I looked for it a moment later I could discover no trace of it, he made off through the trees, I following, a musketoon upon my shoulder. We trod on in silence, Manteo looking ever for the trail. Evening was beginning to fall, as though some black mantle dropped by the hands [Pg 232] of the gods upon the quiet earth. There came to my ears the cawing of a crow, and it seemed to me that the bird was very near us.
Manteo in an instant had fallen, without a sound, flat upon his face. "Down," he whispered. "Quick!" ”

“ He is glad that the beautiful one will be with the Eagle in his tepee, to cheer him when Manteo is gone."
"Surely thou too wilt not leave us, Manteo?" I cried. "Winona has gone back into the forest. Wilt thou desert us too? I had planned many pleasant things for the future, when thou too shouldst walk with us the smooth sod of my own green country."
"Manteo thanks the Eagle," he replied. "Manteo loves him, and would wish him well, but the fish cannot live out of the water, nor the bird when it beats its wings against the cage; neither can Manteo in that crowded land to which thou goest. ”

“ But that night Mantua, as though jealous that a stranger from beyond the snowy mountains on the Lombard frontier should have come there to seize its secrets from out of its dark old palaces, that have seen so many crimes and kept so many mysteries untold, Mantua, as though angered against him, poured into his throat the poison of her subtle vapours, of her fever mists, that lurk for ever amidst her long fields of reeds and her pale-gleaming water-meadows. ”

“ I knew he was at work, silently, quietly following the conspirators, for once as I turned the cabin upon the [Pg 211] deck, I had seen a sudden shadow upon the floor but as I looked around I had discovered nothing. I knew it must have been Manteo, for no one else could have vanished in an instant like that. Out of mere curiosity, I searched everywhere for him, for I knew the savage Indians prided themselves upon their skill and cunning. I peered into every nook and cranny, looked behind every box and barrel, but as well look for last year's flowers or the frost of a winter ago—he had vanished. ”

“ Many large and conspicuous mantes inhabit the East Indies and other parts of Asia; numerous species also occur in America, and not a few are found at the Cape of Good Hope. Among the latter is one of the smallest of the family, M. Pusilla, which scarcely exceeds the dimensions of Raphidia Ophiopsis; [57] some of the largest kinds, upwards of four inches in length, occur in South America.
The eggs of the Mantidæ, which are very numerous, are enveloped when first laid in a soft substance, which, by exposure to the air, soon acquires the consistency of parchment. ”

“ MANTI, CITY OF. The chief city of the land of Manti. It was situated near the headwaters of the Sidon, and was the most southerly city of importance in that region. Being an outlying settlement of the Nephites, though strongly fortified, it suffered greatly by the invasions of the Lamanites. In the great war, inaugurated by Amalickiah, it was captured by the Lamanites (some time before B. C. 66) , and by them converted into an important base for their operations against the Nephites, both east and west.* In B. C. 63, Gid and Teomner, two Nephite generals, recaptured it by stratagem ”

“ Wahceta passed away and her form was wrapped in its winding-sheet of deerskins and bark and placed high in the forks of a tree-top, awaiting the pleasure of the Great Spirit.
Manteno also died. And the people did not choose another chief—they looked to White Doe for counsel and guidance. She was their "medicine-man," in case of sickness or accident, and in health their counselor and Queen. Indians from other towns and distant came to her. She cured the sick and healed the lame.
She lived alone in a stone hut, guarded by a wolf and a bear that she had brought [Pg 30] up from their babyhood. ”

“ On the day named he flew upon a tall tree, overlooking the lodge, and took his stand there to observe the movement of the Manito. This wicked spirit soon appeared, and as he passed the scaffolds of meat, cast suspicious glances toward them. He had no sooner entered the lodge, stopping first to look, before he went in, than he said—"Why, woman, who is it that is furnishing you meat so plentifully?" "No one," she answered, "but my son—he is just beginning to kill deer." "No, no," said he, "some one is living with you." ”

“ The offerings are made to Manittos. The Manittos are precisely the Fetisses of the African nations, and of the Northern Asiatics. They are tutelary beings, often in visible forms. Every Indian has a guardian Manitto; one has the sun for his Manitto; one the moon; one has a dream, that he must make his Manitto an owl; one a buffalo. The Delawares had five festivals in the year, one in honour of fire, supposed to have been the parent of all the Indian nations. Like other nations, these people believed in the necessity of purification from guilt, by fasting and bodily mortification. ”

“ For the sake of the security of what has been styled a “protective resemblance,” the mantis takes up its quarters amidst its boughs. Just as the leaf-frog secretes itself on the young and light green foliage, or the white ptarmigan resorts to the snowy downs of the frozen north, so does the mantis here take up its abode on the tree as purple as itself, and there endeavour to find a world in which it may conceal its singular shape. This part of Africa seemed to produce many species of this remarkable genus. ”

“ Toward the lower end of the valley stands the important town of Manti, its suburbs encroaching on the sagebrush. “As a settlement,” says Phil Robinson, the most recent traveller thither, “Manti is pretty, well ordered and prosperous.... The abundance of trees, the width of the streets, the perpetual presence of running water, the frequency and size of the orchards, and the general appearance of simple, rustic comfort, impart to Manti all the characteristic charm of the Mormon settlements.” Robinson says that the people in that region are chiefly Danes and Scandinavians. ”

“ The hollow-hearted Eustachio and the rapacious Leonardo, their virtual rulers, might indeed be little sensible to this enthusiasm, but they could not disregard the general drift of public opinion, which said clearly: “Mantua is trying a great experiment. Woe to you if you bring it to nought by your selfish quarrels!”
The best proof that there was something in Manto’s idea was that after a while the Emperor Frederick took alarm, and signified to the Mantuans that they must cease their mumming and fooling and acknowledge him as their sovereign, failing which he would besiege their city. ”

“ Terrible is the Manito, and more cruel and cunning in his tortures than the red men. His strength is greater than the strength of the giant trees of the forest, for does he not rend them with his mighty hands?' But when I, the gentle maiden, walk forth, the trees cover with many leaves the nakedness which thou, the great Manito, hath caused; the birds sing in the branches and build again the nests from which thou drivest them; the animals seek their mates and rear their young ”

“ In the southern provinces of France, where the Mantis is very abundant, both the characters of praying and pointing out the lost way, as above mentioned by Mouffet, are still ascribed to it by the peasantry, as is evidenced by the above mentioned names they know them by. And here, as wherever else this superstition obtains, it is considered a great crime to injure the Mantis, and as, at least, a very culpable neglect not to place it out of the way of any danger to which it seems exposed. ”