Messenia

“ Messenia is continuous with the Eleian territory, inclining for the most part towards the south, and the Libyan Sea. Being part of Laconia, it was subject in the Trojan times to Menelaus. The name of the country was Messene. But the present city called Messene, the acropolis of which was Ithome, was not then founded. After the death of Menelaus, when the power of those who succeeded to the possession of Laconia was altogether weakened, the Neleidæ governed Messenia. ”

“ His subjects invaded Messenia to obtain redress. At first the struggle was of an indecisive character, but ultimately the Messenians were obliged to take refuge on the fortified mountain of Ithome, and all the rest of their country was overrun and conquered by their persistent enemies. After the war had lasted twenty years, the Messenian garrison was compelled to abandon Ithome, the fortifications of which were razed by the Spartans, and Messenia became part of the Lacedæmonian territory, —all its inhabitants who refused to submit being driven into exile. ”

“ The area of Messenia is one thousand one hundred and ninety-two square miles, not so large as one of our counties. The early inhabitants had been conquered by the Dorians, and it was against the descendants of these conquerors that the Spartans made war. The murder of a Spartan king, Teleclus, at a temple on the confines of Laconia and Messenia, where sacrifices were offered in common, gave occasion for the first war, which lasted nineteen years, B.C. 743. Other States were involved in the quarrel—Corinth on the side of Sparta, and Sicyon and Arcadia on the part of the Messenians. ”

“ There was no people so devoted body and soul to King Philip, as the Messenians. The death of Philopœmen is an example of the mischief which Messenia created in Greece, an ineffaceable brand on the name of Messenia. Things which every honest man must desire, are in the end often followed by the saddest consequences.”b
ATHENS IN LEAGUE WITH SPARTA
In the existing pressure upon Lacedæmon, and upon the states whose interest yet bound them to the Lacedæmonian cause, it was of great importance to hold, and, if possible, improve, their connection with Athens. ”

“ Every state took up arms as if in its own defence, or to prevent additional power and dominion from being lodged in the hands of its rivals. The descendants of the Messenians at last returned to Peloponnesus, B.C. 370, after a long banishment of 300 years. Pausanias, Messenia, &c.—Justin, bk. 3, ch. 4, &c.—Strabo, bk. 6, &c.—Thucydides, bk. 1, &c.—Diodorus, bk. 11, &c.—Plutarch, Cimon, &c.—Polyænus, bk. 3.—Polybius, bk. 4, &c.
Messēnia, a province of Peloponnesus, situate between Laconia, Elis, Arcadia, and the sea. Its chief city is Messena. See: Messena. ”

“ With the connivance of Temenus, Cresphontes marked as his own lot a pellet composed of baked clay, as the lot of his nephews, a pellet of unbaked clay; the unbaked pellet was of course dissolved in the water, while the brick pellet fell out alone. Messenia, therefore, was assigned to Cresphontes.
Messenia was at this time ruled by Melanthus, a descendant of Neleus. This ancestor, a prince of the great house of Æolus, had come from Thessaly and succeeded to the Messenian throne on the failure of the previous dynasty. Melanthus and his race were thus foreigners in Messenia and were unpopular. ”

“ On the borders of Messenia is a temple of Artemis Limnas, in which the Messenians and Lacedæmonians were the only Dorians that had a share. The Lacedæmonians say that some maidens of theirs who were present at the feast were violated by some Messenians, and that their king Teleclus, (the son of Archelaus, the son of Agesilaus, the son of Doryssus, the son of Labotas, the son of Echestratus, the son of Agis,) was slain in endeavouring to prevent this outrage. They also say that the maidens who were violated put themselves to death from shame. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII. And all the Messenians that were captured at Eira, or in any other part of Messenia, were incorporated by the Lacedæmonians among the Helots: and the people of Pylos and Mothone and all the maritime towns removed in ships, after the capture of Eira, to Cyllene the arsenal of Elis. And from there they sent to the Messenians in Arcadia, wishing them to join them in an expedition to seek some city to dwell in, and bade them make Aristomenes the founder of the colony. ”

“ Meanwhile, the Messenians, if conquered, were not subdued. Years rolled away, and time had effaced the remembrance of the past sufferings, but not of the ancient 148 liberties.
It was among the youth of Messenia that the hope of the national deliverance was the most intensely cherished. At length, in Andania, the revolt broke forth. A young man, pre-eminent above the rest for birth, for valour, and for genius, was the head and the soul of the enterprise (probably B. C. 679) . His name was Aristomenes. ”

“ Melanthus abandoned his kingdom to Cresphontes, and retired to Athens.
Cresphontes married Merope, whose native country, Arcadia, was not affected by the Dorian invasion. This marriage, the issue of which was three sons, connected him with the native population of Peloponnesus. He built a new capital of Messenia, Stenyclaros, and transferred thither, from Pylos, the seat of government; he proposed, moreover, says Pausanias, to divide Messenia into five states, and to confer on the native Messenians equal privileges with their Dorian conquerors. ”

“ On their march through the territory of Patrae, Pharae, and Tritaea, they pretended indeed not to wish to inflict any hurt on the Achaeans, but as the men could not keep their hands off the country, owing to their passion for pillaging, they went through it, spoiling and damaging, until they reached Phigalea. Thence by a bold and sudden rush they invaded Messenia, utterly regardless both of their long-existing alliance and friendship with the Messenians and of the established law of nations. ”

“ One district more—that of E'lis, north of Messenia and west of Arcadia, and embracing the western slopes of the Achaian and Arcadian mountains—makes up the complement of the ancient Peloponnesian states. Though hilly and mountainous, like Messenia, it had many valleys and hill-sides of great fertility. ”

“ The Messenian woman is low of stature, and distinguished for her embonpoint,” (this may be owing to a mixture with the primitive race of the Morea, who, as Helots, long existed as a distinct caste in Messenia) ; “she has regular features, large blue eyes, and long black hair. The Arcadian, in her coarse woollen garments, scarcely suffers the symmetry of her form to appear; but her countenance is expressive of innocence and purity of mind.” In the time of Poqueville the Greek women were extremely ignorant and uneducated; but, he says, “music and dancing seem to have been taught them by nature.” ”

“ So the lot of the sons of Aristodemus was dissolved, and Cresphontes, winning in this way, chose Messenia.
4.3.6 The common people of the old Messenians were not dispossessed by the Dorians, but agreed to be ruled by Cresphontes and to divide the land with the Dorians. They were induced to give way to them in this by the suspicion which they felt for their rulers, as the Neleidae were originally of Iolcos. Cresphontes took to wife Merope the daughter of Cypselus, then king of the Arcadians, by whom with other children was born to him Aepytus his youngest. ”

“ This arrangement could not have been attended with any [pg 046] difficulty after the conquest of the fertile territory of Messenia, when the number of lots was doubled,172 and the area of each was perhaps increased in a still greater proportion. For when the Spartans had (as it appears) dislodged the Doric Messenians, and conquered their country, a few maritime and inland towns (Asine, Mothone, Thuria, and Æthæa) were indeed suffered to remain in the possession of Periœci ”

“ At last, about 370 B. C., the “Poland of Greece” found a friend in the man whose practical idealism was dominating the period. Epaminondas, in pursuance of his policy of weakening Sparta by reviving other Peloponnesian states, determined to found a new capital of Messenia, Messene by name, on the slopes of Ithome. Ruins of this city still exist, and the most imposing of them, the fortification known as the Arcadian Gateway, is famous as an example of skilful Greek engineering. ”

“ Isthmius had a son Dotadas, who constructed the harbor at Mothone, though Messenia contained others. Sybotas the son of Dotadas established the annual sacrifice by the king to the river Pamisus and also the offering to the hero Eurytus the son of Melaneus at Oechalia before the mysteries of the great Goddesses, which were still held at Andania.
Origins of the Messenian Wars 4.4.1 In the reign of Phintas the son of Sybotas the Messenians for the first time sent an offering and chorus of men to Apollo at Delos. ”

“ As the conquest of Messenia is a rare if not a unique example in Greece after the purely legendary age of a permanent conquest effected in spite of the obstacles interposed by a mountain range, it is worth while to take notice of the geography. ”

“ But when the Phocian or, as it is called, the Sacred War caused the Thebans to withdraw from Peloponnese, the Lacedemonians regained courage and could no longer refrain from attacking the Messenians.
4.28.2 The Messenians maintained the war with the help of the Argives and Arcadians, and asked the Athenians for help. They refused to join in an attack on Laconia, but promised to render assistance in person if the Lacedemonians began war and invaded Messenia. Finally the Messenians formed an alliance with Philip the son of Amyntas and the Macedonians ”

“ Pausanius and other ancient writers give long details of the events of this twenty years' struggle, the great hero of which was the Messenian king Aristomenes; but these details are as legendary as the exploits of the Homeric heroes, and all that is certainly known about the war is that it ended in the subjugation of Messenia. The severity and oppression with which the conquered people were ruled led them, about forty years later, to rise up in revolt, and another struggle of seventeen years' duration followed. ”

“ They were said to live in open villages, widely removed from each other, and without effective means of combination for mutual protection. Their piracies, which were chiefly directed to the coasts of Messenia, caused the Messenians to seize the opportunity of Demosthenes being in their neighbourhood in B.C. 426, with a considerable Athenian army, to persuade him to invade the Aetolians, who were always on the look-out to attack Naupactus, a town which the Athenians had held since B.C. 455,105 and which was naturally an object of envy to them as commanding the entrance to the Corinthian gulf. ”

“ The decree of fate stands fast that Messene should fall; long since the Pythia declared to us the disaster now before our eyes, and lately the fig-tree revealed it. On me the gods have laid one doom with my country, but do thou save the Messenians with what power thou hast and save thyself.” When he had spoken to Aristomenes he rushed upon the enemy, and these were the words that he was constrained to fling at the Lacedemonians. ”

“ Yet there are examples, plainly visible to minds which are even moderately well-balanced [n] —examples which it fell to my lot to bring before Messenian and Argive audiences, but which had better, perhaps, be laid before yourselves as well.
{20} 'Can you not imagine,' I said, 'men of Messenia, the impatience with which the Olynthians used to listen to any speeches directed against Philip in those times, when he was giving up Anthemus to them—a city claimed as their own by all former Macedonian kings ”

“ XLIV. Messene.—From Kalamata, the probable site of the ancient Pharae, the road to Messene runs north-west across the fertile Messenian plain between hedges of huge fantastically-shaped cactuses and groves of fig-trees, olives, and vines. In front of us loom nearer and nearer the twin peaks of Ithome and Eva rising boldly and abruptly from a single base on the western side of the plain, and forming the natural citadel, as it were, of the whole country. As we near their base we quit the dusty highway and strike westward up the mountain-side by devious and rocky paths. ”

“ The drama begins at the moment when Æpytus, grown to manhood, returns secretly to Messenia to take vengeance on his father's murderers. At this period Temenus was no longer reigning at Argos; he had been murdered by his sons, jealous of their brother-in-law, Deiphontes. The sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, at variance with their uncle and ex-guardian, Theras, were reigning at Sparta.
PERSONS OF THE DRAMA
Laias, uncle of Æpytus, brother of Merope.
Æpytus, son of Merope and Cresphontes.
Polyphontes, king of Messenia.
Merope, widow of Cresphontes, the murdered king of Messenia. ”

“ The plain, is bounded on the north by the Nomian Mountains (mod. Tetrási, 5210 ft.) and their westerly extension, on the west by the mountains of Cyparissia (4000 ft.) , a southern continuation of which forms the south-west peninsula of the Morea, attaining its greatest height in Mt Mathia (mod. Lykódimo 3160 ft.) . Off the south coast of this peninsula lie the three, Oenussae islands and the islet of Theganussa (Venetikó) . In spite of its long coast-line, Messenia has no good harbours except the Bay of Pylos (Navarino) , and has never played an important part in Greek naval history. ”