Listed 100 (total found 189) sub titles with search on: History for destination: "CORINTHIAN GULF Gulf PELOPONNISOS".
ERMIONI (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
Historian Strabo, making mention of Ermioni, the town lying on the
northeastern end of Argolis
with a history that stretches far back into times points out that “δ’
εστίν ων ουκ ασήμων πόλεων” (it is not one of the lesser towns).
Built and later rebuilt on the same site, it has been inhabited since
3000BC. In his works, such as the Iliad, Homer makes mention of Ermioni’s
participation in the Trojan War. The town flourished in the 5th century BC. In
antiquity, it grew in importance due to agriculture, shipbuilding and fishery;
yet, it mainly gained a reputation for the wealth of its coasts attributed to
a rare species of a purple mollusk, the porphyra, wherefrom local inhabitants
obtained by means of a special process a purple dye used for dyeing the palliums
of kings, such as Alexander the Great. Certain finds, such as silver and bronze
coins depicting goddess of earth Demeter dating from 550BC come to manifest the
affluence experienced in the area. The latter is also confirmed by the existence
of many music instructors, such as the great dithyrambist Lasos who tutored the
lyric poet Pindar.
In roman times, Ermioni witnessed considerable prosperity, as well.
The aqueduct that carried water to a number of rock-hewn cisterns found across
the highly populated town was completed at that time. Traveler Pausanias who visited
the area in the 2nd century AD describes with admiration the lavish temples, the
festivals, the music contests and swimming races that suffused the area with glory.
Ermioni’s historical course was also marked by Byzantine rule and concomitant
development.
A paleo-Christian three-aisled basilica with impressive mosaic floors
found at the southeastern side of today’s Town Hall attests to the existence
and predominance of early Christian worship in the area. During the Frankish occupation,
Ermioni was encircled by walls that were erected on the remains of ancient structures,
thus, acquiring the name Kastri (castle).
After hard struggles, the town fell into the hands of Ottoman Turks.
It survived the Turkish occupation due to its powerful shipping, while many of
the area’s natives took part in several battles fought for the cause of
Greek Independence.
This text (extract) is cited March 2004 from the Municipality
of Ermioni tourist pamphlet.
ISTHMUS KORINTHOS (Isthmus) LOUTRAKI-PERACHORA
If a modern visitor today could imagine the Isthmus of Corinth in
its original, natural state before human purpose and modern technology sliced
a canal through it, he would feel overwhelmed pondering over the excessive hassles
an ancient seafarer had to put up with in order to transport his entire ship and
precious cargo intact across land from shore to shore. To say the least, it must
have been a spectacular feat to slide a ship on a masonry trail known by the name
of - for which ("Corinth of the twin seas") was famous and esteemed
highly in classical antiquity.
Anguish and anxiety were undoubtedly salient features of the Diolkos
experience. Nonetheless, at a time when technology was in a state of infancy,
man's creative mind invented this - all the same cumbersome - method to bypass
a caprice of nature. Of course, seen otherwise, the narrow strip of land which
connected Peloponnisos with the mainland to the north was an unmatched gift which
Nature has bestowed on men. It was quite like a Pandora's Box - if man could only
scale it to a measure which served his diverse needs. The Isthmus of Corinth was
therefore, at the same time, a bliss and a curse of the gods.
Since early times, a number of spirited souls entertained thoughts
of constructing a canal through the Isthmus - in spite of the insurmountable technical
problems such a feat posed. Nonetheless, the record of repeated attempts in this
direction goes to show that human ingenuity and courage were just not good enough.
602 B.C. - 44 B.C.
Ancient writers relate that, in 602 B.C., Periander, Tyrant of Corinth
and one of the Seven Sages of Antiquity, was the first man to seriously consider
the possibility of opening a canal through the Isthmus. Periander is said to have
given up on his plans fearing the wrath of the gods. Pythia, the priestess of
the Delphic Oracle, warned him not to proceed. It is possible that this negative
oracle was provoked by the multitudes of priests in temples around the region
who were concerned about not relinquishing their status of prominence or the influx
of gifts and dedications by god - tearing merchants and seafarers who thronged
lavish Corinth. was an apt ancient remark about the affluent city.
In 307 B.C., about three centuries after Periander, Demetrios Poliorketes
made up his mind to cut a naval passage through the Isthmus. He actually began
excavations before he was talked out of continuing with it by Egyptian engineers,
who predicted that the different sea levels between the Corinthian and the Saronic
Gulfs would inundate Aegina and nearby islands with the sea.
In Roman times - which is to say two and a half centuries after Poliorketes
- Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. and Caligula, in 37 B.C. again courted with the idea.
In 66 A.D., Nero reconsidered earlier plans and, a year later, he set teams of
war prisoners from the Aegean islands and six thousand slave Jews to work on the
canal. They dug out a ditch 3,300 meters in length and 40 meters wide, before
Nero had to rush back to Rome to quell the Galva mutiny. Once there, Nero was
arrested on charges of treason and was sentenced to death in 68 A.D. The unfinished
canal fell to oblivion and was overtaken by tales of superstition and supernatural
lore.
The next historic personality to be associated with the canal of Corinth
was Herod of Atticus. He tried, as also did the Byzantines - but to no avail.
The Venetians were next in line. They commenced digging from the shore
on the Corinthian Gulf but the enormity of the task made them give up overnight.
Thus one attempt after another failed to reverse the inscrutable will
of gods to retain the Isthmus sealed forever. There were many others, whose names
do not survive, who were bewitched by the spell to link their name with such a
superhuman feat.
1830 A.C. - 1893 A.C.
As centuries passed, humanity reached a point where it began to unravel
the secrets of our Universe. Through science and technology, man began to harness
physical powers of an unprecedented magnitude. At long last, the Corinth Canal
appeared within the grasp of man's potential.
Yet the actualization of the dream still had a number of obstacles
to overcome. In the eighteenth century, the Hellenic State having won independence
(in 1830) after nearly four hundred years of Ottoman rule, was missing in material
resources and financial strength to undertake such a costly task. Capodistrias,
contemporary Governor of State, commissioned a special study on the canal project.
The conclusions of that study made Capodistrias abandon further consideration.
Subsequent studies and proposals submitted to the government were likewise evaluated
as unrealistic and unrealizable and met with the same fate.
However, a final push of sufficient threshold energy came to rescue:
Another mammoth-scale canal project, the Suez Canal opened its gates to naval
traffic in 1869. In view of that event, in November 1869 the Zaimis Administration
enacted a law entitled "Opening of the Isthmos of Corinth". Following
that legislation, the government proceeded to assign the project to E. Piat and
M. Chollet, French contractors.
Nevertheless, the pace of events again hearkened to another tune.
The French contract remained only an agreement on paper. Twelve years later, in
1881, another contractor, a Hungarian general by the name of Stefan Tyrr and aide
de camp to Victor Emmanuel established "The International Company of the
Canal of Corinth" and took over the project. Construction of the canal -
a work which was destined to alter all existing sea routes in Greece, the Adriatic,
Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea - began on April 23, 1882. King George
I of Greece was present at the official ground breaking.
It is quite surprising (and a historic irony) that modern engineering
plans followed almost to the point the plans Nero himself has used long ago. In
other words, the 6,300 meters of canal length which Nero had mapped out still
proved to be the most feasible economic alternative.
The Corinth Canal was completed in 1893. By then, the initial contractor
had run dry of funds and was replaced by a Greek Company under Andreas Singros.
Naval traffic in the Corinth Canal was inaugurated in a brilliant
ceremony held on July 25th, 1893. It was indeed a vindication of a dream first
conceived some 2,495 years ago.
As the tab of the Isthmus and the Canal of Corinth comes to an end,
modern man ought to take heed not to fall prey to a common illusion, namely that
the only thing the future has in store for us is our technology and its power.
The future of man kind will also be shaped, for better or worse, by our time-resistant
fantasies and daydreams. The fascinating tale of the Corinth Canal shows that,
even though sentiment and desire of themselves were not sufficient to make a vision
come alive, they nonetheless sustained it long enough until it could be made to
take place.
1923 A.C. - Nowadays
The Canal cuts the Isthmus of Corinth in a straight line 6,346 m.
long. Canal width is 24.6 m. at sea level and 21.3 m. at bottom level. Depth range
is from 7.5 to 8 meters. Twelve million cubic meters of earth had to be removed
to cut out the entire passage.
The rock formations in the flanks of the Corinth Canal are not uniform
throughout. There are several geologic fissures which run in east-west direction
at a vertical angle to the canal axis. These geologic features were responsible
for a number of major landslides into the Canal at several instances. On account
of these landfalls, the Canal often had to be dosed for repairs. From its beginning
until 1940, the Canal had to be closed to traffic for a total of 4 years. The
most serious such incident took place in 1923, when the Canal remained closed
to traffic for 2 years on account of 41,000 cubic meters of earth which had fallen
in.
Another major interruption of operation occurred in 1944, when the
retreating German Army set explosives to the flanks of the Canal and caused 60,000
cubic meters of earth to cave in. To make repairs even more difficult, the Germans
also sunk railroad cars into it. It took 5 years to clear the Canal for traffic
then.
The flow of waters in the Canal alters direction about every 6 hours.
Usual current speed is 2.5 knots, rarely exceeding 3 knots.
The tide level shifts gradually without a set time pattern. High and
low ebb points are not more than 60 centimetres apart.
There are 2 sinking bridges in the Corinth Canal today at Poseidonia
and at Isthmia - to facilitate land traffic over it.
Safety and economy! These prime objectives of modern entrepreneurial
activity are also basic service features for all Corinth Canal clients. The Canal
is the most favourite itinerary for cargoes and transports among Mediterranean
and Black Sea ports because it is the safest and cheapest access route to and
from all destinations.
Finally, the Corinth Canal is also a region of considerable tourist
attractions. Multitudes of vacationers from every race, creed or color converge
here in a spirit of brotherhood to admire not only the gift from the hand of Nature
but also the miracle worked out by the hand of man. They thus promote both the
welfare of this region and the spirit of rapprochement among nations.
This text is cited November 2004 from the Corinth Canal Management Company Periandros S.A. URL below, which contains images
MESSINIA (Ancient area) MESSINIA
The earliest inhabitants of Messenia are said to have been Leleges.
Polycaon, the younger son of Lelex, the king of Laconia, married the Argive Messene,
and took possession of the country, which he named after his wife. He built several
towns, and among others Andania, where he took up his residence. (Paus. i. 1.)
At the end of five generations Aeolians came into the country under Perieres,
a son of Aeolus. He was succeeded by his son Aphareus, who founded Arene, and
received the Aeolian Neleus, a fugitive from Thessaly. Neleus founded Pylus, and
his descendants reigned here over the western coast. (Paus. i. 2.) On the extinction
of the family of Aphareus, the eastern half of Messenia was united with Laconia,
and came under the sovereignty of the Atridae; while the western half continued
to belong to the kings of Pylus. (Paus. iv. 3. § 1.) Hence Euripides, in referring
to the mythic times, makes the Pamisus the boundary of Laconia and Messenia ;
for which he is reproved by Strabo, because this was not the case in the time
of the geographer. (Strab. viii. p. 366.) Of the seven cities which Agamemnon
in the Iliad (ix. 149) offers to Achilles, some were undoubtedly in Messenia;
but as only two, Pherae and Cardamyle, retained their Homeric names in the historical
age, it is difficult to identify the other five. (Strab. viii. p. 359; Diod. xv.
66.)
With the conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorians a new epoch commences
in the history of Messenia. This country fell to the lot of Cresphontes, who is
represented as driving the Neleidae out of Pylus and making himself master of
the whole country. According to the statement of Ephorus (ap. Strab. viii. p.
361), Cresphontes divided Messenia into five parts, of which he made Stenyclerus
the royal residence.1 In the other four towns he appointed viceroys, and bestowed
upon the former inhabitants the same rights and privileges as the Dorian conquerors.
But this gave offence to the Dorians; and he was obliged to collect them all in
Stenyclerus, and to declare this the only city of Messenia. Notwithstanding these
concessions, the Dorians put Cresphontes and all his children to death, with the
exception of Aepytus, who was then very young, and was living with his grandfather
Cypselus in Arcadia. When this youth had grown up, he was restored to his kingdom
by the help of the Arcadians, Spartans, and Argives. From Aepytus the Messenian
kings were called Aepytidae, in preference to Heracleidae, and continued to reign
in Stenyclerus till the sixth generation, -their names being Aepytus, Glaucus,
Isthmius, Dotadas, Sybotas, Phintas, -when the first Messenian war with Sparta
began. (Paus. iv. 3.) According to the common legend, which represents the Dorian
invaders as conquering Peloponnesus at one stroke, Cresphontes immediately became
master of the whole of Messenia. But, as in the case of Laconia, there is good
reason for believing this to be the invention of a later age, and that the Dorians
in Messenia were at first confined to the plain of Stenyclerus. They appear to
have penetrated into this plain from Arcadia, and their whole legendary history
points to their close connection with the latter country. Cresphontes himself
married the daughter of the Arcadian king Cypselus; and the name of his son Aepytus,
from whom the line of the Messenian kings was called, was that of an ancient Arcadian
hero. (Hom. Il. ii. 604, Schol. ad loc.; comp. Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. ii.
p. 437, seq.)
The Messenian wars with Sparta are related in every history of Greece,
and need not be repeated here. According to the common chronology, the first war
lasted from B.C. 743 to 724, and the second from B.C. 685 to 668; but both of
these dates are probably too early. It is necessary, however, to glance at the
origin of the first war, because it is connected with a disputed topographical
question, which has only recently received a satisfactory solution. Mt. Taygetus
rises abruptly and almost precipitously above the valley of the Eurotas, but descends
more gradually, and in many terraces, on the other side. The Spartans had at a
very early period taken possession of the western slopes, but how far their territory
extended on this side has been a matter of dispute. The confines of the two countries
was marked by a temple of Artemis Limnatis, at a place called Limnae, where the
Messenians and Laconians offered sacrifices in common and it was the murder of
the Spartan king Teleclus at this place which gave occasion to the First Messenian
War. (Paus. iii. 2. § 6, iv. 4. §2, iv. 31. §3; comp. Strab. vi. p. 257, viii.
p. 362.) The exact site of Limnae is not indicated by Pausanias; and accordingly
Leake, led chiefly by the name, supposes it to have been situated in the plain
upon the left bank of the Pamisus, at the marshes near the confluence of the Aris
and Pamisus, and not far from the site of the modern town of Nisi (Nesi, island),
which derives that appellation from the similar circumstance of its position.
(Leake, Morea, vol. i. p. 361.) But Ross has discovered the ruins of the temple
of Artemis Limnatis on the western slope of Mt. Taygetus, on a part of the mountains
called Volimnos (Bolimnos), and amidst the ruins of the church of Panaghia Volimniatissa
(Panagia Bolimniatissa). Volimnos is the name of of a hollow in the mountains
near a mountain torrent flowing into the Nedon, and situated between the villages
of Sitzova and Poliani, of which the latter is about 7 miles NE. of Kalamata,
the ancient Pherae. The fact of the similarity of the names, Bolimnos and Limnai,
and also of Panagia Bolimniatissa and Artemis Limnatis, as well as the ruins of
a temple in this secluded spot, would alone make it probable that these are the
remains of the celebrated temple of Artemis Limnatis; but this is rendered certain
by the inscriptions found by Ross upon the spot, in which this goddess is mentioned
by name. It is also confirmed by the discovery of two boundary stones to the eastward
of the ruins, upon the highest ridge of Taygetus, upon which are inscribed Horos
Lakedaimoni pros Messenen. These pillars, therefore, show that the boundaries
of Messenia and Laconia must at one period have been at no great distance from
this temple, which is always represented as standing near the confines of the
two countries. This district was a frequent subject of dispute between the Messenians
and Lacedaemonians even in the times of the Roman Empire, as we shall see presently.
Tacitus calls it the Dentheliates Ager (Hist. iv. 43); and that this name, or
something similar, was the proper appellation of the district, appears from other
authorities. Stephanus B. speaks of a town Denthalii (Denthalioi, s. v.: others
read Delthanioi), which was a subject of contention between the Messenians and
Lacedaemonians. Alcman also (ap. Athen. i. p. 31), in enumerating the different
kinds of Laconian wine, mentions also a Denthian wine (Denbis oinos), which came
from a fortress Denthiades (ek Denthiadon erumatos tinos), as particularly good.
Ross conjectures that this fortress may have stood upon the mountain of St. George,
a little S. of Sitzova, where a few ancient remains are said to exist. The wine
of this mountain is still celebrated. The position of the above-mentioned places
will be best shown by the accompanying map.
But to return to the history of Messenia. In each of the two wars
with Sparta, the Messenians, after being defeated in the open plain, took refuge
in a strong fortress, in Ithome in the first war, and in Eira or Ira in the second,
where they maintained themselves for several years. At the conclusion of the Second
Messenian War, many of the Messenians left their country, and settled in various
parts of Greece, where their descendants continued to dwell as exiles, hoping
for their restoration to their native land. A large number of them, under the
two sons of Aristomenes, sailed to Rhegium in Italy, and afterwards crossed over
to the opposite coast of Sicily, where they obtained possession of Zancle, to
which they gave their own name, which the city has retained down to the present
day. Those who remained were reduced to the condition of Helots, and the whole
of Messenia was incorporated with Sparta. From this time (B.C. 668) to the battle
of Leuctra (B.C. 371), a period of nearly 300 years, the name of Messenia was
blotted out of history, and their country bore the name of Laconia, a fact which
it is important to recollect in reading the history of that period. Once only
the Messenians attempted to recover their independence. The great earthquake of
B.C. 464, which reduced Sparta to a heap of ruins, encouraged the Messenians and
other Helots to rise against their oppressors. They took refuge in their ancient
stronghold of Ithome; and the Spartans, after besieging the place in vain for
ten years, at length obtained possession of it, by allowing the Messenians to
retire unmolested from Peloponnesus. The Athenians settled the exiles at Naupactus,
which they had lately taken from the Locri Ozolae; and in the Peloponnesian War
they were among the most active of the allies of Athens. (Thuc. i. 101-103; Paus.
iv. 24. § 5, seq.) The capture of Athens by the Lacedaemonians compelled the Messenians
to quit Naupactus. Many of them took refuge in Sicily and Rhegium, where some
of their countrymen were settled; but the greater part sailed to Africa, and obtained
settlements among the Euesperitae, a Libyan people. (Paus. iv. 26. § 2.) After
the power of Sparta had been broken by the battle of Leuctra (B.C. 371), Epaminondas,
in order to prevent her from regaining her former influence in the Peloponnesus,
resolved upon forming an Arcadian confederation, of which Megalopolis was to be
the capital, and at the same time of restoring the Messenian state. To accomplish
the latter object, he not only converted the Helots into free Messenians, but
he despatched messengers to Italy, Sicily, and Africa, where the exiled Messenians
had settled, inviting them to return to their native land. His summons was gladly
responded to, and in B.C. 369 the new town of Messene was built. Its citadel or
acropolis was placed upon the summit of Mt. Ithome, while the town itself was
situated lower down on the slope, though connected with its acropolis by a continuous
wall. (Diod. xv. 66; Paus. iv. 27.) During the 300 years of exile, the Messenians
retained their ancient customs and Doric dialect; and even in the time of Pausanias
they spoke the purest Doric in Peloponnesus. (Paus. iv. 27. § 11; comp. Muller,
Door. vol. ii. p. 421, transl.) Other towns were also rebuilt, but a great part
of the land still continued uncultivated and deserted. (Strab. viii. p. 362.)
Under the protection of Thebes, and in close alliance with the Arcadians (comp.
Polyb. iv. 32), Messene maintained its independence, and the Lacedaemonians lost
Messenia for ever. On the downfall of the Theban supremacy, the Messenians courted
the alliance of Philip of Macedon, and consequently took no part with the other
Greeks at the battle of Chaeroneia, B.C. 388. (Paus. iv. 28. § 2.) Philip rewarded
them by compelling the Lacedaemonians to cede to them Limnae and certain districts.
(Polyb. ix. 28; Tac. Anns. [p. 345] iv. 43.) That these districts were those of
Alagonia, Gerenia, Cardamyle, and Leuctra, situated northward of the smaller Pamisus,
which flows into the Messenian gulf just below Leuctra, we may conclude from the
statement of Strabo (viii. p. 361) that this river had been the subject of dispute
between the Messenians and Lacedaemonians before Philip. The Messenians appear
to have maintained that their territory extended even further south in the most
ancient times, since they alleged that the island of Pephnus had once belonged
to them. (Paus. iv. 26. § 3.) At a later time the Messenians joined the Achaean
League, and fought along with the Achaeans and Antigonus Doson at the battle of
Sellasia, B.C. 222. (Paus. iv. 29. § 9.) Long before this the Lacedaemonians appear
to have recovered the districts assigned to the Messenians by Philip; for after
the battle of Sellasia the boundaries of the two people were again settled by
Antigonus. (Tac. Ann. l. c.) Shortly afterwards Philip V. sent Demetrius of Pharus,
who was then living at his court, on an expedition to surprise Messene; but the
attempt was unsuccessful, and Demetrius himself was slain. (Polyb. iii. 19; Paus.
iv. 29. §§ 1-5, where this attempt is erroneously ascribed to Demetrius II., king
of Macedonia.) Demetrius of Pharus had observed to Philip that Mt. Ithome and
the Acrocorinthus were the two horns of Peloponnesus, and that whoever held these
horns was master of the bull. (Strab. viii. p. 361.) Afterwards Nabis, tyrant
of Lacedaemon, also made an attempt upon Messene, and had even entered within
the walls, when he was driven back by Philopoemen, who came with succours from
Megalopolis. (Paus. iv. 29. § 10.) In the treaty made between Nabis and the Romans
in B.C. 195, T. Quintius Flamininus compelled him to restore all the property
he had taken from the Messenians. (Liv. xxxiv. 35 ; Plut. Flamin 13.) A quarrel
afterwards arose between the Messenians and the Achaean League, which ended in
open war. At first the Achaeans were unsuccessful. Their general Philopoemen was
taken prisoner and put to death by the Messenians, B.C. 183; but Lycortas, who
succeeded to the command, not only defeated the Messenians in battle, but captured
their city, and executed all who had taken part in the death of Philopoemen. Messene
again joined the Achaean League, but Abia, Thuria, and Pharae now separated themselves
from Messene, and became each a distinct member of the league. (Paus. iv. 30.
§§ 11, 12; Liv. xxxix. 49; Polyb. xxiv. 9, seq., xxv. 1.) By the loss of these
states the territory of Messene did not extend further eastward than the Pamisus;
but on the settlement of the affairs of Greece by Mummius, they not only recovered
their cities, but also the Dentheliates Ager, which the Lacedaemonians had taken
possession of. (Tac. Ann. iv. 43.) This district continued to be a subject of
dispute between the two states. It was again assigned to the Messenians by the
Milesians, to whose arbitration the question had been submitted, and also by Atidius
Geminus, praetor of Achaia. (Tac. l. c.) But after the battle of Actium, Augustus,
in order to punish the Messenians for having espoused the side of Antony, assigned
Thuria and Pharae to the Lacedaemonians, and consequently the Dentheliates Ager,
which lay east of these states. (Paus. iv. 31. § 2, comp. iv. 30. § 2.) Tacitus
agrees with Pausanias, that the Dentheliates Ager belonged to the Lacedaemonians
in the reign of Tiberius; but he differs from the latter writer in assigning the
possession of the Lacedaemonians to a decision of C. Caesar add M. Antonius (
post C. Caesaris et Marci Antonii sententia redditum ). In such a matter, however,
the authority of Pausanias deserves the preference. We learn, however, from Tacitus
(l. c.), that Tiberius reversed the decision of Augustus, and restored the disputed
district to the Messenians, who continued to keep possession of it in the time
of Pausanias; for this writer mentions the woody hollow called Choerius, 20 stadia
south of Abia, as the boundary between the two states in his time (iv. 1. § 1,
iv. 30. § 1). It is a curious fact that the district, which had been such a frequent
subject of dispute in antiquity, was in the year 1835 taken from the government
of Misthra (Sparta), to which it had always belonged in modern times, and given
to that of Kalamata. (Ross, Reisen im Peloponnnes, p. 2.)
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited June 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ARGOS (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
It is said that the alliance between the two peoples was brought about thus. Sparta was once shaken by an earthquake, and the Helots seceded to Ithome. After the secession the Lacedaemonians sent for help to various places, including Athens, which dispatched picked troops under the command of Cimon, the son of Miltiades. These the Lacedaemonians dismissed, because they suspected them. The Athenians regarded the insult as intolerable, and on their way back made an alliance with the Argives, the immemorial enemies of the Lacedaemonians. (Paus.+=1.29.8-9)
(more Information see Achaia,
ancient country)
The Athenians, Argives, Mantineans, and Eleans, acting for themselves and the
allies in their respective empires, made a treaty for a hundred years, to be without
fraud or hurt by land and by sea.
1. It shall not be lawful to carry on war, either for the Argives, Eleans, Mantineans,
and their allies, against the Athenians, or the allies in the Athenian empire;
or for the Athenians and their allies against the Argives, Eleans, Mantineans,
or their allies, in any way or means whatsoever. The Athenians, Argives, Eleans,
and Mantineans shall be allies for a hundred years upon the terms following:
2. If an enemy invade the country of the Athenians, the Argives, Eleans, and Mantineans
shall go to the relief of Athens, according as the Athenians may require by message,
in such way as they most effectually can, to the best of their power. But if the
invader be gone after plundering the territory, the offending state shall be the
enemy of the Argives, Mantineans, Eleans, and Athenians, and war shall be made
against it by all these cities; and no one of the cities shall be able to make
peace with that state, except all the above cities agree to do so.
3. Likewise the Athenians shall go to the relief of Argos, Mantinea, and Elis,
if an enemy invade the country of Elis, Mantinea, or Argos, according as the above
cities may require by message, in such way as they most effectually can, to the
best of their power. But if the invader be gone after plundering the territory,
the state offending shall be the enemy of the Athenians, Argives, Mantineans,
and Eleans, and war shall be made against it by all these cities, and peace may
not be made with that state except all the above cities agree to it.
4. No armed force shall be allowed to pass for hostile purposes through the country
of the powers contracting, or of the allies in their respective empires, or to
go by sea, except all the cities--that is to say, Athens, Argos, Mantinea, and
Elis--vote for such passage. [6] 5. The relieving troops shall be maintained by
the city sending them for thirty days from their arrival in the city that has
required them, and upon their return in the same way; if their services be desired
for a longer period the city that sent for them shall maintain them, at the rate
of three Aeginetan obols per day for a heavy-armed soldier, archer, or light soldier,
and an Aeginetan drachma for a trooper.
6. The city sending for the troops shall have the command when the war is in its
own country; but in case of the cities resolving upon a joint expedition the command
shall be equally divided among all the cities.
7. The treaty shall be sworn to by the Athenians for themselves and their allies,
by the Argives, Mantineans, Eleans, and their allies, by each state individually.
Each shall swear the oath most binding in his country over full-grown victims;
the oath being as follows: 'I will stand by the alliance and its articles, justly,
innocently, and sincerely, and I will not transgress the same in any way or means
whatsoever.'
The oath shall be taken at Athens by the Senate and the magistrates,
the Prytanes administering it; at Argos by the Senate, the Eighty, and the Artynae,
the Eighty administering it; at Mantinea by the Demiurgi, the Senate, and the
other magistrates, the Theori and Polemarchs administering it; at Elis by the
Demiurgi, the magistrates, and the Six Hundred, the Demiurgi and the Thesmophylaces
administering it.
The oaths shall be renewed by the Athenians going to Elis, Mantinea,
and Argos thirty days before the Olympic games; by the Argives, Mantineans, and
Eleans going to Athens ten days before the great feast of the Panathenaea.
The articles of the treaty, the oaths, and the alliance shall be inscribed
on a stone pillar by the Athenians in the citadel, by the Argives in the market-place,
in the temple of Apollo; by the Mantineans in the temple of Zeus, in the market-place;
and a brazen pillar shall be erected jointly by them at the Olympic games now
at hand.
Should the above cities see good to make any addition to these articles,
whatever all the above cities shall agree upon, after consulting together, shall
be binding.
ARKADIA (Ancient area) PELOPONNISOS
The Arcadian League, established some time after the battle
of Leuctra (B.C. 371), when the victory of Epaminondas had destroyed the supremacy
of Sparta in the Peloponnesus and restored the independence of the Arcadian towns.
The Arcadian League succeeded in giving unity to the Arcadians for only a short
time, however, and its influence soon declined.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ETHEA (Ancient city) LACONIA
Meanwhile the Thasians being defeated in the field and suffering siege, appealed
to Lacedaemon, and desired her to assist them by an invasion of Attica. Without
informing Athens she promised and intended to do so, but was prevented by the
occurrence of the earthquake, accompanied by the secession of the Helots and the
Thuriats and Aethaeans of the Perioeci to Ithome. Most of the Helots were the
descendants of the old Messenians that were enslaved in the famous war; and so
all of them came to be called Messenians.
PELOPONNISOS (Region) GREECE
A name given to the great contest between Athens and her allies
on the one side, and the Peloponnesian confederacy, headed by Sparta, on the other,
which lasted from B.C. 431 to 404. The war, which is one of the most memorable
and epoch-making in the history of Europe, was a consequence of the jealousy with
which Sparta and Athens regarded each other, as States each of which was aiming
at supremacy in Greece, as the heads respectively of the Dorian and Ionian races,
and as patrons of the two opposite forms of civil government, oligarchy and democracy.
The war was eagerly desired by a strong party in each of those States, but it
was necessary to find an occasion for commencing hostilities, especially as a
truce for thirty years had been concluded between Athens and Sparta in the year
B.C. 445. Such an occasion was presented by the affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea.
In a quarrel, which soon became a war, between Corinth and Corcyra, respecting
Epidamnus, a colony of the latter State (B.C. 436), the Corcyreans applied to
Athens for assistance. Their request was granted, as far as the conclusion of
a defensive alliance between Athens and Corcyra, and an Athenian fleet was sent
to their aid, which, however, soon engaged in active hostilities against the Corinthians.
Potidaea, on the isthmus of Pallene, was a Corinthian colony, and, even after
its subjection to Athens, continued to receive every year from Corinth certain
functionaries or officers (epidemiourgoi). The Athenians, suspecting that the
Potidaeans were inclined to join in a revolt, to which Perdiccas, king of Macedon,
was instigating the towns of Chalcidice, required them to dismiss the Corinthian
functionaries, and to give other pledges of their fidelity. The Potidaeans refused,
and, with most of the other Chalcidian towns, revolted from Athens and received
aid from Corinth. The Athenians sent an expedition against them, and, after defeating
them in battle, laid siege to Potidaea (B.C. 432). The Corinthians now obtained
a meeting of the Peloponnesian confederacy at Sparta, in which they complained
of the conduct of Athens with regard to Corcyra and Potidaea. After others of
the allies had brought their charges against Athens, and after some of the Athenian
envoys, who happened to be in the city, had defended the conduct of their State,
the Spartans first, and afterwards all the allies, decided that Athens had broken
the truce, and they resolved upon immediate war; King Archidamus alone recommended
some delay.
In the interval necessary for preparation, an attempt was made
to throw the blame of commencing hostilities upon the Athenians by sending three
several embassies to Athens with demands of such a nature as could not be accepted.
In the assembly which was held at Athens to give a final answer to these demands,
Pericles, who was now at the height of his power, urged the people to engage in
the war, and laid down a plan for the conduct of it. He advised the people to
bring all their movable property from the country into the city, to abandon Attica
to the ravages of the enemy, and not to suffer themselves to be provoked to give
them battle with inferior numbers, but to expend all their strength upon their
navy, which might be employed in carrying the war into the enemy's territory,
and in collecting supplies from subject States; and further, not to attempt any
new conquest while the war lasted. His advice was adopted, and the Spartan envoys
were sent home with a refusal of their demands, but with an offer to refer the
matters in difference to an impartial tribunal, an offer which the Lacedaemonians
had no intention of accepting. After this the usual peaceful intercourse between
the rival States was discontinued. Thucydides dates the beginning of the war from
the early spring of the year B.C. 431, the fifteenth of the thirty years' truce,
when a party of Thebans made an attempt, which at first succeeded, but was ultimately
defeated, to surprise Plataea.
The truce being thus openly broken, both parties addressed
themselves to the war. The Peloponnesian confederacy included all the States of
Peloponnesus except Achaia (which joined them afterwards) and Argos, and without
the Peloponnesus, Megaris, Phocis, Locris, Boeotia, the island of Leucas, and
the cities of Ambracia and Anactorium. The allies of the Athenians were Chios
and Lesbos, besides Samos and the other islands of the Aegaean which had been
reduced to subjection (Thera and Melos, which were still independent, remained
neutral), Plataea, the Messenian colony in Naupactus, the majority of the Acarnanians,
Corcyra, Zacynthus, and the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, in Thrace and Macedonia,
and on the Hellespont. The resources of Sparta lay chiefly in her land forces,
which, however, consisted of contingents from the allies, whose period of service
was limited; the Spartans were also deficient in money. The Athenian strength
lay in the fleet, which was manned chiefly by foreign sailors, whom the wealth
collected from the allies enabled them to pay. Thucydides informs us that the
cause of the Lacedaemonians was the more popular, as they professed to be deliverers
of Greece, while the Athenians were fighting in defence of a dominion which had
become odious through their tyranny, and to which the States which yet retained
their independence feared to be brought into subjection.
In the summer of the year B.C. 431 the Peloponnesians invaded
Attica under the command of Archidamus, king of Sparta. Their progress was slow,
as Archidamus appears to have been still anxious to try what could be done by
intimidating the Athenians before proceeding to extremities. Yet their presence
was found to be a greater calamity than the people had anticipated; and when Archidamus
made his appearance at Acharnae, they began loudly to demand to be led out to
battle. Pericles firmly adhered to his plan of defence, and the Peloponnesians
returned home. Before their departure the Athenians had sent out a fleet of a
hundred sail, which was joined by fifty Corcyrean ships, to waste the coasts of
Peloponnesus; and towards the autumn Pericles led the whole disposable force of
the city into Megaris, which he laid waste. In the same summer the Athenians expelled
the inhabitants of Aegina from their island, which they colonized with Athenian
settlers. In the winter there was a public funeral at Athens for those who had
fallen in the war, and Pericles pronounced over them an oration, the substance
of which is preserved by Thucydides. In the following summer (B.C. 430) the Peloponnesians
again invaded Attica under Archidamus, who now entirely laid aside the forbearance
which he had shown the year before, and left scarcely a corner of the land unravaged.
This invasion lasted forty days. In the meantime, a grievous pestilence broke
out in Athens, and raged with the more virulence on account of the crowded state
of the city. Of this terrible visitation Thucydides, who was himself a sufferer,
has left a minute and apparently faithful description. The murmurs of the people
against Pericles were renewed, and he was compelled to call an assembly to defend
his policy. He succeeded so far as to prevent any overtures for peace being made
to the Lacedaemonians, but he himself was fined, though immediately afterwards
he was reelected general. While the Peloponnesians were in Attica, Pericles led
a fleet to ravage the coasts of Peloponnesus. In the winter of this year Potidaea
surrendered to the Athenians on favourable terms. The next year (B.C. 429), instead
of invading Attica, the Peloponnesians laid siege to Plataea. The brave resistance
of the inhabitants forced their enemies to convert the siege into a blockade.
In the same summer, an invasion of Acarnania by the Ambracians and a body of Peloponnesian
troops was repulsed; and a large Peloponnesian fleet, which was to have joined
in the attack on Acarnania, was twice defeated by Phormion in the mouth of the
Corinthian Gulf. An expedition sent by the Athenians against the revolted Chalcidian
towns was defeated with great loss.
In the preceding year (B.C. 430) the Athenians had concluded
an alliance with Sitalces, king of the Odrysae in Thrace, and Perdiccas, king
of Macedon, on which occasion Sitalces had promised to aid the Athenians to subdue
their revolted subjects in Chalcidice. He now collected an army of 150,000 men,
with which he first invaded Macedonia, to revenge the breach of certain promises
which Perdiccas had made to him the year before, and afterwards laid waste the
territory of the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans, but he did not attempt to reduce
any of the Greek cities. About the middle of this year Pericles died. The invasion
of Attica was repeated in the next summer (B.C. 428), and immediately afterwards
all Lesbos except Methymne revolted from the Athenians, who laid siege to Mitylene.
The Mitylenaeans begged aid from Sparta, which was promised, and they were admitted
into the Spartan alliance. In the same winter a body of Plataeans, amounting to
220, made their escape from the besieged city in the night, and took refuge in
Athens. In the summer of B.C. 427 the Peloponnesians again invaded Attica, while
they sent a fleet of forty-two galleys, under Alcidas, to the relief of Mitylene.
Before the fleet arrived Mitylene had surrendered, and Alcidas, after a little
delay, sailed home. In an assembly which was held at Athens to decide on the fate
of the Mitylenaeans, it was resolved, at the instigation of Cleon, that all the
adult citizens should be put to death, and the women and children made slaves;
but this barbarous decree was repealed the next day. The land of the Lesbians
(except Methymne) was seized and divided among Athenian citizens, to whom the
inhabitants paid a rent for the occupation of their former property. In the same
summer the Plataeans surrendered; they were massacred, and their city was given
up to the Thebans, who razed it to the ground. In the year B.C. 426 the Lacedaemonians
were deterred from invading Attica by earthquakes. An expedition against Aetolia,
under the Athenian general Demosthenes, completely failed; but afterwards Demosthenes
and the Acarnanians routed the Ambracians, who nearly all perished. In the winter
(B.C. 426-425) the Athenians purified the island of Delos, as an acknowledgment
to Apollo for the cessation of the plague. At the beginning of the summer of B.C.
425 the Peloponnesians invaded Attica for the fifth time. At the same time the
Athenians, who had long directed their thoughts towards Sicily, sent a fleet to
aid the Leontini in a war with Syracuse. Demosthenes accompanied this fleet, in
order to act, as occasion might offer, on the coast of Peloponnesus. He fortified
Pylus on the coast of Messenia, the northern headland of the modern Bay of Navarino.
In the course of the operations which were undertaken to dislodge him, a body
of Lacedaemonians, including several noble Spartans, got blockaded in the island
of Sphacteria, at the mouth of the bay, and were ultimately taken prisoners by
Cleon and Demosthenes. Pylus was garrisoned by a colony of Messenians, in order
to annoy the Spartans. After this event the Athenians engaged in vigorous offensive
operations, of which the most important was the capture of the island of Cythera
by Nicias early in B.C. 424. This summer, however, the Athenians suffered some
reverses in Boeotia, where they lost the battle of Delium, and on the coasts of
Macedonia and Thrace, where Brasidas, among other exploits, took Amphipolis. The
Athenian expedition to Sicily was abandoned, after some operations of no great
importance, in consequence of a general pacification of the island, which was
effected through the influence of Hermocrates, a citizen of Syracuse. In the year
B.C. 423 a year's truce was concluded between Sparta and Athens, with a view to
a lasting peace. Hostilities were renewed in B.C. 422, and Cleon was sent to cope
with Brasidas, who had continued his operations even during the truce. A battle
was fought between these generals at Amphipolis, in which the defeat of the Athenians
was amply compensated by the double deliverance which they experienced in the
death both of Cleon and Brasidas. In the following year (B.C. 421) Nicias succeeded
in negotiating a peace with Sparta for fifty years, the terms of which were a
mutual restitution of conquests made during the war and the release of the prisoners
taken at Sphacteria. This treaty was ratified by all the allies of Sparta except
the Boeotians, Corinthians, Eleans, and Megarians. This peace never rested on
any firm basis. It was no sooner concluded than it was discovered that Sparta
had not the power to fulfil her promises, and Athens insisted on their performance.
The jealousy of the other States was excited by a treaty of alliance which was
concluded between Sparta and Athens immediately after the peace, and intrigues
were commenced for the formation of a new confederacy, with Argos at the head.
An attempt was made to draw Sparta into alliance with Argos, but it failed. A
similar overture subsequently made to Athens met with better success, chiefly
through an artifice of Alcibiades, who was at the head of a large party hostile
to the peace, and the Athenians concluded a treaty offensive and defensive with
Argos, Elis, and Mantinea for one hundred years (B.C. 420). In the year B.C. 418
the Argive confederacy was broken up by their defeat at the battle of Mantinea,
and a peace, and soon after an alliance, was made between Sparta and Argos. In
the year B.C. 416 an expedition was undertaken by the Athenians against Melos,
which had hitherto remained neutral. The Melians surrendered at discretion; all
the males who had attained manhood were put to death; the women and children were
made slaves; and subsequently five hundred Athenian colonists were sent to occupy
the island.
The fifty years' peace was not considered at an end, though
its terms had been broken on both sides, till the year B.C. 415, when the Athenians
undertook their daring and tragic expedition to Sicily. Sicily proved a rock against
which their resources and efforts were fruitlessly expended. And Sparta, which
furnished but a commander and a handful of men for the defence of Syracuse, soon
beheld her antagonist reduced, by a series of unparalleled misfortunes, to a state
of the utmost distress and weakness. The accustomed procrastination of the Spartans,
and the timid policy to which they ever adhered, alone preserved Athens in this
critical moment, or at least retarded her downfall. Time was allowed for her citizens
to recover from the panic and consternation occasioned by the news of the Sicilian
disaster; and instead of viewing hostile fleets, as they had anticipated, ravaging
their coasts and blockading the Piraeus, they were enabled still to dispute the
empire of the sea and to preserve the most valuable of their dependencies. Alcibiades,
whose exile had proved so injurious to his country, since it was to his counsels
alone that the successes of her enemies are to be attributed, now interposed in
her behalf, and by his intrigues prevented the Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, from
placing at the disposal of the Spartan admiral that superiority of force which
must at once have terminated the war by the complete overthrow of the Athenian
Republic. The temporary revolution which was effected at Athens by his contrivance
also, and which placed the State at variance with the fleet and army stationed
at Samos, afforded him another opportunity of rendering a real service to his
country by moderating the violence and animosity of the latter. The victory of
Cynossema and the subsequent successes of Alcibiades, now elected to the chief
command of the forces of his country, once more restored Athens to the command
of the sea, and, had she reposed that confidence in the talents of her generals
which they deserved and her necessities required, the efforts of Sparta and the
gold of Persia might have proved unavailing. But the second exile of Alcibiades,
and, still more, the iniquitous sentence which condemned to death the generals
who fought and conquered at Arginusae, sealed the fate of Athens; and the battle
of Aegos Potamos at length terminated a contest which had been carried on, with
scarcely any intermission, during a period of twenty-seven years, with a spirit
and animosity unparalleled in the annals of warfare. Lysander now sailed to Athens,
receiving as he went the submission of the allies, and blockaded the city, which
surrendered after a few months (B.C. 404) on terms dictated by Sparta, with a
view of making Athens a useful ally by giving the ascendency in the State to the
oligarchical party.
The history of the Peloponnesian War was written by Thucydides,
upon whose accuracy and impartiality, as far as his narrative goes, we may place
the fullest dependence. His history ended abruptly in the year B.C. 411. For the
rest of the war we have to follow Xenophon and Diodorus. The value of Xenophon's
history is impaired by his prejudice, and that of Diodorus by his carelessness.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ARGOS (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
Pyrrhus, (Purrhos), king of Epeirus, born about the year B. C. 318, was the son
of Aeacides and Phthia, the daughter of Menon of Pharsalus...
Pyrrhus was twenty-three years of age when he was firmly established on the throne
of Epeirus (B. C. 295). and he soon became one of the most popular princes of
his age...
In B. C. 281... the Tarentines, against whom the Romans had declared war, sent
an embassy to Pyrrhus in the summer of this year, begging him in the name of all
the Italian Greeks to cross over to Italy in order to conduct the war against
the Romans...
Pyrrhus arrived in Epeirus at the end of B. C. 274, after an absence of six years.
He brought back with him only 8000 foot and 500 horse, and had not money to maintain
even these without undertaking new wars. Accordingly, at the beginning of the
following year, B. C. 273, he invaded Macedonia, of which Antigonus Gonatas, the
son of Demetrius, was at that time king. His army had been reinforced by a body
of Gallic mercenaries, and his only object at first seems to have been plunder.
But his success far exceeded his expectations. He obtained possession of several
towns without resistance ; and when at length Antigonus advanced to meet him,
the Macedonian monarch was deserted by his own troops, who welcomed Pyrrhus as
their king.
Pyrrhus thus became king of Macedonia a second time, but had scarcely
obtained possession of the kingdom before his restless spirit drove him into new
enterprises. Cleonymus had many years before been excluded from the Spartan throne;
and he had recently received a new insult from the family which was reigning in
his place. Acrotatus, the son of the Spartan king Areus, had seduced Chelidonis,
the young wife of Cleonymus, and the latter, now burning for revenge, repaired
to the court of Pyrrhus, and persuaded him to make war upon Sparta. This invitation
was readily complied with: and Pyrrhus accordingly marched into Laconia in the
following year, B. C. 272, with an army of 25,000 foot, 2000 horse, and 24 elephants.
Such a force seemed irresistible; no preparations had been made for defence, and
king Areus himself was absent in Crete.
As soon as Pyrrhus arrived, Cleonymus urged him to attack the city
forthwith. But as the day was far spent, Pyrrhus resolved to defer the attack
the next day, fearing that his soldiers would pillage the city, if it were taken
in the night. But during the night the Spartans were not idle. All the inhabitants,
old and young, men and women, laboured incessantly in digging a deep ditch opposite
the enemy's camp, and at the end of each ditch formed a strong barricade of waggons.
The next day Pyrrhus advanced to the assault, but was repulsed by the Spartans,
who fought under their youthful leader Acrotatus in a manner worthy of their ancient
courage. The assault was again renewed on the next day, but with no better success;
and the arrival of Areus with 2000 Cretans, as well as of other auxiliary forces,
at length compelled Pyrrhus to abandon all hopes of taking the city. He did not,
however, relinquish his enterprise altogether, but resolved to winter in Peloponnesus,
that he might be ready to renew operations at the commencement of the spring.
But while making preparations for this object, he received an invitation
from Aristeas, one of the leading citizens at Argos, to assist him against his
rival Aristippus, whose cause was espoused by Antigonus. Pyrrhus forthwith commenced
his march from the neighbourhood of Sparta, but did not reach Argos without some
sharp fighting, as the Spartans under Areus both molested his march and occupied
some of the passes through which his road lay. In one of these encounters his
eldest son Ptolemy fell, greatly to the grief of his father, who avenged his death
by killing with his own hand the leader of the Lacedaemonian detachment which
had destroyed his son.
On arriving in the neighbourhood of Argos, he found Antigonus encamped
on one of the heights near the city, but he could not induce him to risk a battle.
There was a party at Argos, which did not belong to either of the contending factions,
and which was anxious to get rid both of Pyrrhus and Antigonus. They accordingly
sent an embassy to the two kings, begging them to withdraw from the city. Antigonus
promised compliance, and sent his son as a hostage; but though Pyrrhus did not
refuse, he would not give any hostage.
In the night-time Aristeas admitted Pyrrhus into the city, who marched
into the market-place with part of his troops, leaving his son Helenus with the
main body of his army on the outside. But the alarm having been given, the citadel
was seized by the Argives of the opposite faction. Areus with his Spartans, who
had followed close upon Pyrrhus, was admitted within the walls, and Antigonus
also sent a portion of his troops into the city, under the command of his son
Halcyoneus, while he himself remained without with the bulk of his forces. On
the dawn of day Pyrrhus saw that all the strong places were in the possession
of the enemy, and that it would be necessary for him to retreat. He accordingly
sent orders to his son Helenus to break down part of the walls, in order that
his troops might retire with more ease; but in consequence of some mistake in
the delivery of the message, Helenus attempted to enter the city by the same gateway
through which Pyrrhus was retreating. The two tides encountered one another, and
to add to the confusion one of the elephants fell down in the narrow gateway,
while another becoming wild and ungovernable, trod down every one before him.
Pyrrhus was in the rear, in a more open part of the city, attempting
to keep off the enemy. While thus engaged, he was slightly wounded through the
breast-plate with a javelin and, as he turned to take vengeance on the Argive
who had attacked him, the mother of the man, seeing the danger of her son, hurled
down from the houseroof where she was standing a ponderous tile, which struck
Pyrrhus on the back of his neck. He fell from his horse stunned with the blow,
and being recognised by some of the soldiers of Antigonus, was quickly despatched.
His head was cut off and given to Halcyoneus, who carried the bloody trophy with
exultation to his father Antigonus. But the latter turned away from the sight,
and ordered the body to be interred with becoming honours. His remains were deposited
by the Argives in the temple of Demeter. (Paus. i. 13.8)
As Cleomenes was seeking divination at Delphi, the oracle responded
that he would take Argos. When he came with Spartans to the river Erasinus,
which is said to flow from the Stymphalian lake (this lake issues into a cleft
out of sight and reappears at Argos, and from that place onwards the stream
is called by the Argives Erasinus)--when Cleomenes came to this river he offered
sacrifices to it. The omens were in no way favorable for his crossing, so he
said that he honored the Erasinus for not betraying its countrymen, but even
so the Argives would not go unscathed. Then he withdrew and led his army seaward
to Thyrea, where he sacrificed a bull to the sea and carried his men on shipboard
to the region of Tiryns and to Nauplia.
The Argives heard of this and came to the coast to do battle with
him. When they had come near Tiryns and were at the place called Hesipeia, they
encamped opposite the Lacedaemonians, leaving only a little space between the
armies. There the Argives had no fear of fair fighting, but rather of being
captured by a trick. This was the affair referred to by that oracle which the
Pythian priestess gave to the Argives and Milesians in common, which ran thus:
When the female defeats the male(1)
And drives him away, winning glory in Argos,
She will make many Argive women tear their cheeks.
As someday one of men to come will say:
The dread thrice-coiled serpent died tamed by the spear.
(1) Commentary: This would be fulfilled by a victory of the female Sparte over
the male Argos.
All these things coming together spread fear among the Argives. Therefore
they resolved to defend themselves by making use of the enemies' herald, and
they performed their resolve in this way: whenever the Spartan herald signalled
anything to the Lacedaemonians, the Argives did the same thing.
When Cleomenes saw that the Argives did whatever was signalled by
his herald, he commanded that when the herald cried the signal for breakfast,
they should then put on their armor and attack the Argives. The Lacedaemonians
performed this command, and when they assaulted the Argives they caught them
at breakfast in obedience to the herald's signal; they killed many of them,
and far more fled for refuge into the grove of Argus, which the Lacedaemonians
encamped around and guarded.
Then Cleomenes' plan was this: He had with him some deserters from
whom he learned the names, then he sent a herald calling by name the Argives
that were shut up in the sacred precinct and inviting them to come out, saying
that he had their ransom. (Among the Peloponnesians there is a fixed ransom
of two minae to be paid for every prisoner.) So Cleomenes invited about fifty
Argives to come out one after another and murdered them. Somehow the rest of
the men in the temple precinct did not know this was happening, for the grove
was thick and those inside could not see how those outside were faring, until
one of them climbed a tree and saw what was being done. Thereafter they would
not come out at the herald's call.
Then Cleomenes bade all the helots pile wood about the grove; they
obeyed, and he burnt the grove. When the fire was now burning, he asked of one
of the deserters to what god the grove belonged; the man said it was of Argos.
When he heard that, he groaned aloud, ?Apollo, god of oracles, you have gravely
deceived me by saying that I would take Argos; this, I guess, is the fulfillment
of that prophecy.?
Then Cleomenes sent most of his army back to Sparta, while he himself
took a thousand of the best warriors and went to the temple of Hera to sacrifice.
When he wished to sacrifice at the altar the priest forbade him, saying that
it was not holy for a stranger to sacrifice there. Cleomenes ordered the helots
to carry the priest away from the altar and whip him, and he performed the sacrifice.
After doing this, he returned to Sparta.
But after his return his enemies brought him before the ephors,
saying that he had been bribed not to take Argos when he might have easily taken
it. Cleomenes alleged (whether falsely or truly, I cannot rightly say; but this
he alleged in his speech) that he had supposed the god's oracle to be fulfilled
by his taking of the temple of Argus; therefore he had thought it best not to
make any attempt on the city before he had learned from the sacrifices whether
the god would deliver it to him or withstand him; when he was taking omens in
Hera's temple a flame of fire had shone forth from the breast of the image,
and so he learned the truth of the matter, that he would not take Argos. If
the flame had come out of the head of the image, he would have taken the city
from head to foot utterly; but its coming from the breast signified that he
had done as much as the god willed to happen. This plea of his seemed to the
Spartans to be credible and reasonable, and he far outdistanced the pursuit
of his accusers.
But Argos was so wholly deprived of men that their slaves took possession
of all affairs, ruling and governing until the sons of the slain men grew up.
Then they recovered Argos for themselves and cast out the slaves; when they
were driven out, the slaves took possession of Tiryns by force. For a while
they were at peace with each other; but then there came to the slaves a prophet,
Cleander, a man of Phigalea in Arcadia by birth; he persuaded the slaves to
attack their masters. From that time there was a long-lasting war between them,
until with difficulty the Argives got the upper hand. (Hdt. 6.76-83)
This extract is from: Herodotus. The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley, 1920), Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Cited April 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
... His (Cleomenes) madness and death, says Herodotus, were ascribed by the Spartans to the habit he acquired from some Scythian visitors at Sparta of excessive drinking. Others found a reason in his acts of sacrilege at Delphi or Eleusis, where he laid waste a piece of sacred land (the Orgas), or again at Argos, the case of which was as follows. Cleomenes invaded Argolis, conveying his forces by sea to the neighbourhood of Tiryns; defeated by a simple stratagem the whole Argive forces, and pursued a large number of fugitives into the wood of the hero Argus. Some of them he drew from their refuge on false pretences, the rest he burnt among the sacred trees. He however made no attempt on the city, but after sacrificing to the Argive Juno, and whipping her priestess for opposing his will, returned home and excused himself, and indeed was acquitted after investigation, on the ground that the oracle predicting that he should capture Argos had been fulfilled by the destruction of the grove of Argus. Such is the strange account given by Herodotus (vi. 76-84) of the great battle of the Seventh (en tei Hebdomei), the greatest exploit of Cleomenes, which deprived Argos of 6000 citizens (Herod. vii. 148), and left her in a state of debility from which, notwithstanding the enlargement of her franchise, she did not recover till the middle of the Peloponnesian war. To this however we may add in explanation the story given by later writers of the defence of Argos by its women, headed by the poet-heroine Telesilla (Paus. ii. 20.7; Plut. Mor. p. 245; Polyaen. viii. 33; Suidas. s.v. Telesilla). Herodotus appears ignorant of it, though he gives an oracle seeming to refer to it. It is perfectly probable that Cleomenes thus received some check, and we must remember the Spartan incapacity for sieges. The date again is doubtful. Pausanias, (iii. 4.1-5), who follows Herodotus in his account of Cleomenes, says, it was at the beginning of his reign; Clinton, however, whom Thirlwall follows, fixes it, on the ground of Herod. vii. 148-9, towards the end of his reign, about 510 B. C.
This extract is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Now at this very time the Spartans themselves were feuding with the Argives over the country called Thyrea; for this was a part of the Argive territory which the Lacedaemonians had cut off and occupied. (All the land towards the west, as far as Malea, belonged then to the Argives, and not only the mainland, but the island of Cythera and the other islands.) The Argives came out to save their territory from being cut off, then after debate the two armies agreed that three hundred of each side should fight, and whichever party won would possess the land. The rest of each army was to go away to its own country and not be present at the battle, since, if the armies remained on the field, the men of either party might render assistance to their comrades if they saw them losing. Having agreed, the armies drew off, and picked men of each side remained and fought. Neither could gain advantage in the battle; at last, only three out of the six hundred were left, Alcenor and Chromios of the Argives, Othryades of the Lacedaemonians: these three were left alive at nightfall. Then the two Argives, believing themselves victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades the Lacedaemonian, after stripping the Argive dead and taking the arms to his camp, waited at his position. On the second day both armies came to learn the issue. For a while both claimed the victory, the Argives arguing that more of their men had survived, the Lacedaemonians showing that the Argives had fled, while their man had stood his ground and stripped the enemy dead. At last from arguing they fell to fighting; many of both sides fell, but the Lacedaemonians gained the victory. The Argives, who before had worn their hair long by fixed custom, shaved their heads ever after and made a law, with a curse added to it, that no Argive grow his hair, and no Argive woman wear gold, until they recovered Thyreae; and the Lacedaemonians made a contrary law, that they wear their hair long ever after; for until now they had not worn it so. Othryades, the lone survivor of the three hundred, was ashamed, it is said, to return to Sparta after all the men of his company had been killed, and killed himself on the spot at Thyreae.
This extract is from: Herodotus. The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley, 1920), Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Cited April 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
After this battle of Mantinea, the oligarchs of Argos, "The Thousand," set out at once to depose the popular party and make the city subject to themselves; and the Lacedaemonians came and deposed the democracy. But the populace took up arms again and got the upper hand. Then Alcibiades came and made the people's victory secure. He also persuaded them to run long walls down to the sea, and so to attach their city completely to the naval dominion of Athens.(417 BC) He actually brought carpenters and masons from Athens, and displayed all manner of zeal, thus winning favour and power for himself no less than for his city.
DIPEA (Ancient city) FALANTHOS
The Lacedaemonians, hearing of the oracle the Pythian priestess had given to Tisamenus, persuaded him to migrate from Elis and to be state-diviner at Sparta. And Tisamenus won them five contests in war. The first was at Plataea against the Persians; the second was at Tegea, when the Lacedaemonians had engaged the Tegeans and Argives; the third was at Dipaea, an Arcadian town in Maenalia, when all the Arcadians except the Mantineans were arrayed against them.
INOI (Ancient city) LYRKIA
These (status) are works of Hypatodorus and Aristogeiton, who made them, as the Argives themselves say, from the spoils of the victory which they and their Athenian allies won over the Lacedaemonians at Oenoe in Argive territory. From spoils of the same action, it seems to me, the Argives set up statues of those whom the Greeks call the Epigoni. (Paus. 10,10,4)
As you go to the portico which they call painted, because of its pictures, there is a bronze statue of Hermes of the Market-place, and near it a gate. On it is a trophy erected by the Athenians, who in a cavalry action overcame Pleistarchus, to whose command his brother Cassander had entrusted his cavalry and mercenaries. This portico contains, first, the Athenians arrayed against the Lacedaemonians at Oenoe in the Argive territory. What is depicted is not the crisis of the battle nor when the action had advanced as far as the display of deeds of valor, but the beginning of the fight when the combatants were about to close (Paus. 1.15.1)
KORINTHOS (Ancient city) PELOPONNISOS
Corinth was held by Antigonus, and there was a Macedonian garrison in the city, but Aratus threw them into a panic by the suddenness of his assault, winning a battle and killing among others Persaeus, the commander of the garrison.
Xenophon, Hellenica
KROMI (Ancient city) FALESSIA
The Arcadians made another expedition into Elis. While they were encamped between
Cyllene and the capital, the Eleans made an attack upon them, but the Arcadians
defeated them. By this time the Lacedaemonians were allies of the Eleans. And
now the Eleans sent ambassadors and asked the Lacedaemonians to take the field
against the Arcadians, believing that the Arcadians would be most likely to give
up the struggle. Archidamus took the field with the citizen troops and seized
Cromnus. But the Arcadians, gathered together as they were came to the rescue
and surrounded Cromnus with a double stockade, and besieged the people in Cromnus.
LECHEON (Ancient port) CORINTHIA
Elected again to be Boeotarch, and again invading the Peloponnesus with an army of Boeotians, Epaminondas overcame the Lacedaemonians in a battle at Lechaeum.
MANTINIA (Ancient city) ARCADIA
Stalemate after the Battle of Mantinea
The alliances of the various city-states shifted often in the repeated
conflicts that took place in Greece during these early decades of the fourth century
B.C. The threat from Thessaly faded with Jason's murder in 370 B.C., and the former
enemies Sparta and Athens momentarily allied against the Thebans in the battle
of Mantinea in the Peloponnese in 362 B.C. Thebes won the battle but lost the
war when its great leader Epaminondas fell at Mantinea and no credible replacement
for him could be found. The Theban quest for dominance in Greece was over. Xenophon
adroitly summed up the situation after 362 B.C. with these closing remarks from
the history that he wrote of the Greeks in his time (Hellenica ): "Everyone
had supposed that the winners of this battle would be Greece's rulers and its
losers their subjects; but there was only more confusion and disturbance in Greece
after it than before". The truth of his analysis was confirmed when the naval
alliance led by Athens dissolved in the mid-350s B.C. in a war among the leader
and the allies. All the efforts of the various major Greek states to extend their
hegemony over mainland Greece in this period therefore ended in failure. By the
mid 350s B.C., no Greek city-state had the power to rule more than itself on a
consistent basis. The struggle for supremacy in Greece that had begun eighty years
earlier with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War had finally ended in a stalemate
of exhaustion that opened the way for a new power-- the kingdom of Macedonia.
This text is from: Thomas Martin's An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander, Yale University Press. Cited Sep 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
MEGALOPOLIS (Ancient city) ARCADIA
Pausanias mentions three battles between Lacedaemonians and Megalopolitans. The last one was the most important, because Cleomenes of Sparta seized Megalopolis and caused severe damages. The Megalopolitans had managed to win only the first of those three battles (Paus. 8,27,11-15).
MESSINI (Ancient city) ITHOMI
(Paus. 4,29,1-12).
At this time, it may be explained, the Lacedaemonians had finally overcome both the Helots and Messenians, with whom they had been at war over a long period, and the Messenians they had allowed to depart from Ithome under a truce, as we have said, but of the Helots they had punished those who were responsible for the revolt and had enslaved the rest.
SELLASIA (Ancient city) INOUDAS
The people of Sellasia, as I have stated already, were sold into slavery by the Achaeans after they had conquered in battle the Lacedaemonians under their king Cleomenes, the son of Leonidas.
The battle of Sellasia, of which Polybius gives a detailed account, requires a few words of explanation. In B.C. 221, Cleomenes, the Spartan king, expecting that Antigonus, the Macedonian king, and the Achaeans, would invade Laconia, fortified the other passes which led into the country, and took up his own position with the main body of his forces in the plain of Sellasia, since the roads to Sparta from Argos and Tegea united at this point. His army amounted to 20,000 men, and consisted of Lacedaemonians, Perioeci, allies, and mercenaries. His left wing, containing the Perioeci and allies, was stationed on Mt. Evas under the command of his brother Eucleidas; his right wing, consisting of the Lacedaemonians and mercenaries, encamped upon Mt. Olympus under his own command; while his cavalry and a part of the mercenaries occupied the small plain between the hills. The whole line was protected by a ditch and a palisade. Antigonus marched into Laconia from Argos with an army of 30,000 men, but found Cleomenes so strongly intrenched in this position. that he did not venture to attack him, but encamped behind the small stream Gorgylus. At length, after several days' hesitation, both sides determined to join battle. Antigonus placed 5000 Macedonian peltasts, with the greater part of his auxiliary troops, on his right wing to oppose Eucleidas; his cavalry with 1000 Achaeans and the same number of Megalopolitans in the small plain; while he himself with the Macedonian phalanx and 3000 mercenaries occupied the left wing, in order to attack Cleomenes and the Lacedaemonians on Mt. Olympus. The battle began on the side of Mt. Evas. Eucleidas committed the error of awaiting the attack of the enemy upon the brow of the hill, instead of availing himself of his superior position to charge down upon them; but while they were climbing the hill they were attacked upon the rear by some light troops of Cleomenes, who were stationed in the centre with the Lacedaemonian cavalry. At this critical moment, Philopoemen, who was in the centre with the Megalopolitan horse, diverted the attack of the light infantry by charging without orders the Lacedaemonian centre. The right wing of the Macedonians then renewed their attack, defeated the left wing of the Lacedaemonians, and drove them over the steep precipices on the opposite side of Mt. Evas. Cleomenes, perceiving that the only hope of retrieving the day was by the defeat [p. 960] of the Macedonians opposed to him, led his men out of the intrenchments and charged the Macedonian phalanx. The Lacedaemonians fought with great bravery; but after many vain attempts to break through the impenetrable mass of the phalanx, they were entirely defeated, and of 6000 men only 200 are said to have escaped from the field of battle. Cleomenes, perceiving all was lost, escaped with a few horsemen to Sparta, and from thence proceeded to Gythium, where he embarked for Aegypt. Antigonus, thus master of the passes, marched directly to Sellasia, which he plundered and destroyed, and then to Sparta, which submitted to him after a slight resistance.
This extract is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited June 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
SKOPI (Village) TRIPOLI
The Mantineans did not fight on the side of the other Arcadians against the Lacedaemonians at Dipaea, but in the Peloponnesian war they rose with the Eleans against the Lacedaemonians, and joined in battle with them after the arrival of reinforcements from Athens...Such was the battle, as nearly as possible as I have described it; the greatest that had occurred for a very long while among the Hellenes, and joined by the most considerable states.
Pausanias claims that a cavalry battle took place at the Pelagus, but it is more possible that it actually took place at Skopi (Ekd. Athinon, Pausaniou Periegissis, vol. 4, p.215, note 1). The battle is narrated in detail by Xenophon (Xenophon, Hell. 7,5,15-27 )
THYREA (Ancient city) ASTROS
Now at this very time the Spartans themselves were feuding with the Argives over
the country called Thyrea; for this was a part of the Argive territory which the
Lacedaemonians had cut off and occupied. (All the land towards the west, as far
as Malea, belonged then to the Argives, and not only the mainland, but the island
of Cythera and the other islands.) The Argives came out to save their territory
from being cut off, then after debate the two armies agreed that three hundred
of each side should fight, and whichever party won would possess the land. The
rest of each army was to go away to its own country and not be present at the
battle, since, if the armies remained on the field, the men of either party might
render assistance to their comrades if they saw them losing. Having agreed, the
armies drew off, and picked men of each side remained and fought. Neither could
gain advantage in the battle; at last, only three out of the six hundred were
left, Alcenor and Chromios of the Argives, Othryades of the Lacedaemonians: these
three were left alive at nightfall. Then the two Argives, believing themselves
victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades the Lacedaemonian, after stripping the Argive
dead and taking the arms to his camp, waited at his position. On the second day
both armies came to learn the issue. For a while both claimed the victory, the
Argives arguing that more of their men had survived, the Lacedaemonians showing
that the Argives had fled, while their man had stood his ground and stripped the
enemy dead. At last from arguing they fell to fighting; many of both sides fell,
but the Lacedaemonians gained the victory. The Argives, who before had worn their
hair long by fixed custom, shaved their heads ever after and made a law, with
a curse added to it, that no Argive grow his hair, and no Argive woman wear gold,
until they recovered Thyreae; and the Lacedaemonians made a contrary law, that
they wear their hair long ever after; for until now they had not worn it so. Othryades,
the lone survivor of the three hundred, was ashamed, it is said, to return to
Sparta after all the men of his company had been killed, and killed himself on
the spot at Thyreae.
This extract is from: Herodotus. The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley, 1920), Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Cited June 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
Thyrea was disputed by both the Argives and the Lacedaemonians, with battles and arbitrations (Paus. 2.38.5, 3.7.5, 10.9.12). The Lacedaemonians once gave it to the Aeginetans who had been sent away by the Athenians (Paus. 2.29.5, 2.38.5).
YSSIES (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
(Paus. 2,24,7)
ASKLEPIEION OF EPIDAURUS (Ancient sanctuary) ARGOLIS
Roman senator, erects buildings in sanctuary of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, builds cistern on Mt. Cynortium.(Paus. 2.26.6-7)
KORONI (Ancient city) PETALIDI
A Boeotian, repeoples Corone, his tomb.
MEGALOPOLIS (Ancient city) ARCADIA
Son of Cleommis, or of Polymnis, his life, his gentle temper, at battle of Leuctra, founds Megalopolis, and Messene, puts down Lacedaemonian decemvirates, deceived by oracle, slain at battle of Mantinea, his tomb, his glory, picture of E., statues.
PALLANTION (Ancient city) TRIPOLI
Roman emperor, grants freedom to Pallantium, conquers Moors and Brigantians, his liberality, called Pius by the Romans, his gifts and building recorded by other writers.
ALIIS, ALIA (Ancient city) KRANIDI
Putting out (Athenians) from Epidaurus, they laid waste the territory of Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione, all towns on the coast of Peloponnese
At the conclusion of this year Philocles was archon in Athens, and in Rome Aulus Postumius Regulus and Spurius Furius Mediolanus succeeded to the consulship. During this year a war arose between the Corinthians and Epidaurians on the one hand and the Athenians on the other, and the Athenians took the field against them and after a sharp battle were victorious.With a large fleet they put in at a place called Halieis, landed on the Peloponnesus, and slew not a few of the enemy.
AMFIA (Ancient city) MESSINIA
During the 1st Messenian War the Spartans seized the town and destroyed it killing all the Messenians. Amphea was probably located to the N of Ithome, at the fords from ancient Messenia to Laconia, to the E of the village Katsarou or near the village Tryfa (Papyrus Larousse Britannica Encyclopedia).
AMYKLES (Ancient sanctuary) SPARTI
The Lacedaemonians were in a state of the utmost terror at this unexpected invasion and quite at a loss how to meet it. Philip on the first day pitched his camp at Amyclae. The district of Amcyclae, one of the most richly timbered and fertile in Laconia, lies about twenty stades from Sparta and includes a temple of Apollo, which is the most famous of all the Laconian shrines. It lies between Sparta and the sea (Polybius 5,18-19).
ASSINI (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
The Argives laid waste to most of the cities because of their disobedience; those from Asine (this is a village in Argeia near Nauplia) were transferred by the Lacedaemonians to Messenia, where is a town that bears the same name as the Argolic Asine; for the Lacedaemonians, says Theopompos, took possession of much territory that belonged to other peoples and settled there all who fled to them and were taken in.(Strab. 8.6.11)
EGYS (Ancient city) PELANA
Of Lycurgus I shall make further mention later. Agesilaus had a son Archelaus. In his reign the Lacedaemonians took by force of arms Aegys, a city of the Perioeci, and sold the inhabitants into slavery, suspecting them of Arcadian sympathies. Charilaus, the king of the other house, helped Archelaus to destroy Aegys.
ELOS (Ancient city) LACONIA
After the capitulation, the Athenians occupied the town of Scandea near the harbour, and appointing a garrison for Cythera, sailed to Asine, Helus, and most of the places on the sea, and making descents and passing the night on shore at such spots as were convenient, continued ravaging the country for about seven days.
It now seemed somewhat more certain that they would make no further attempt upon the city; and in fact their army departed thence and took the road toward Helos and Gytheium. And they burned such of the towns as were unwalled and made a three days' attack upon Gytheium, where the Lacedaemonians had their dockyards.
The Lacedaemonians laid waste Helos, an Achaean town on the coast, and won a battle against the Argives who came to give aid to the Helots.
Changing the direction of his march he (Philip) next made for the arsenal of the Lacedaemonians, which is called Gythium and has a secure harbour, being about two hundred and thirty stades distant from Sparta. Leaving this place on his right he encamped in the district of Helos, which taken as a whole is the most extensive and finest in Laconia. (Polybius 5,19)
EPIDAVROS LIMIRA (Ancient city) MONEMVASSIA
From thence they sailed round to the Limeran Epidaurus, ravaged part of the country, and so came to Thyrea./ Now, however, under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodius, and Demaratus, they landed at Epidaurus, Limera, Prasiae, and other places, and plundered the country.
ERMIONI (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
Putting out from Epidaurus, they (the Athenians) laid waste the territory of Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione, all towns on the coast of Peloponnese, and thence sailing to Prasiai, a maritime town in Laconia, ravaged part of its territory, and took and sacked the place itself; after which they returned home, but found the Peloponnesians gone and no longer in Attica.
This extract is from: Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Richard Crawley. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910.
Cited Sept 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
GYTHION (Ancient city) LACONIA
During this year (456 B.C.) Tolmides, who was commander of the naval forces and vied with both the valour and fame of Myronides, was eager to accomplish a memorable deed. Consequently, since in those times no one had very yet laid waste Laconia, he urged the Athenian people to ravage the territory of the Spartans, and he promised that by taking one thousand hoplites aboard the triremes he would with them lay waste Laconia and dim the fame of the Spartans. When the Athenians acceded to his request, he then, wishing to take with him secretly a larger number of hoplites, had recourse to the following cunning subterfuge. The citizens thought that he would enrol for the force the young men in the prime of youth and most vigorous in body; but Tolmides, determined to take with him in the campaign not merely the stipulated one thousand, approached every young man of exceptional hardihood and told him that he was going to enrol him; it would be better, however, he added, for him to go as a volunteer than be thought to have been compelled to serve under compulsion by enrolment. When by this scheme he had persuaded more than three thousand to enrol voluntarily and saw that the rest of the youth showed no further interest, he then enrolled the thousand he had been promised from all who were left. When all the other preparations for his expedition had been made, Tolmides set out to sea with fifty triremes and four thousand hoplites, and putting in at Methone in Laconia, he took the place; and when the Lacedaemonians came to defend it, he withdrew, and cruising along the cost to Gytheium, which was a seaport of the Lacedaemonians, he seized it, burned the city and also the dockyards of the Lacedaemonians, and ravaged its territory.
This extract is from: Diodorus Siculus, Library (ed. C. H. Oldfather, 1989). Cited Apr 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
And wherever the Thebans encamped they at once threw down in front of their lines the greatest possible quantity of the trees which they cut down, and in this way guarded themselves; the Arcadians, however, did nothing of this sort, but left their camp behind them and turned their attention to plundering the houses. After this, on the third or fourth day of the invasion, the horsemen advanced to the race-course in the sanctuary of Poseidon Gaeaochus by divisions, the Thebans in full force, the Eleans, and all the horsemen who were there of the Phocians, Thessalians, or Locrians. And the horsemen of the Lacedaemonians, seemingly very few in number, were formed in line against them. Meanwhile the Lacedaemonians had set an ambush of the younger hoplites, about three hundred in number, in the house of the Tyndaridae, and at the same moment these men rushed forth and their horsemen charged. The enemy, however, did not await their attack, but gave way. And on seeing this, many of the foot-soldiers also took to flight. But when the pursuers stopped and the army of the Thebans stood firm, the enemy encamped again. It now seemed somewhat more certain that they would make no further attempt upon the city; and in fact their army departed thence and took the road toward Helos and Gytheium. And they burned such of the towns as were unwalled and made a three days' attack upon Gytheium, where the Lacedaemonians had their dockyards. There were some of the Perioeci also who not only joined in this attack, but did regular service with the troops that followed the Thebans.
This extract is from: Xenophon, Hellenica. Cited Apr 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlink
A few days after the sea-fight, Philopoemen and his band, waiting for a moonless night, burnt down the camp of the Lacedaemonians at Gythium. Thereupon Nabis caught Philopoemen himself and the Arcadians with him in a disadvantageous position. The Arcadians, though few in number, were good soldiers, and Philopoemen, by changing the order of his line of retreat, caused the strongest positions to be to his advantage and not to that of his enemy. He overcame Nabis in the battle and massacred during the night many of the Lacedaemonians, so raising yet higher his reputation among the Greeks. After this Nabis secured from the Romans a truce for a fixed period, but died before this period came to an end, being assassinated by a man of Calydon, who pretended that he had come about an alliance, but was in reality an enemy who had been sent for this very purpose of assassination by the Aetolians.
This extract is from: Pausanias. Description of Greece (ed. W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., & H.A. Ormerod, 1918). Cited Apr 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
KARYES (Ancient city) LAKEDEMONA
. . Accordingly, after these troops from Dionysius had sailed round to Lacedaemon, Archidamus took them, along with his citizen soldiers, and set out on an expedition. He captured Caryae by storm and put to the sword all whom he took prisoners.
There had come to them a few deserters, men of Arcadia, lacking a livelihood and desirous to find some service. Bringing these men into the king's presence, the Persians inquired of them what the Greeks were doing, there being one who put this question in the name of all. When the Arcadians told them that the Greeks were holding the Olympic festival and viewing sports and horseraces, the Persian asked what was the prize offered, for which they contended. They told him of the crown of olive that was given to the victor. Then Tigranes son of Artabanus uttered a most noble saying (but the king deemed him a coward for it); [3] when he heard that the prize was not money but a crown, he could not hold his peace, but cried, "Good heavens, Mardonius, what kind of men are these that you have pitted us against? It is not for money they contend but for glory of achievement!" Such was Tigranes' saying. (Herod. 8.26.1)
Commentary: These Arcadians have been identified with the inhabitants of Caryae on the borders of Laconia, who are said to have been all killed or enslaved for Medism (Vitruvius, i. 1. 5, explaining ‘Caryatides’ in architecture). They would seem, however, to be a band of adventurers seeking service as mercenaries; the Arcadians, like the Swiss at the end of the Middle Ages, often earned a livelihood thus (Thuc. iii. 34; vii. 57, 58).
This text is cited Apr 2003 from Perseus Project URL bellow, which contains interesting hyperlinks
KORINTHOS (Ancient city) PELOPONNISOS
Consul, commands Roman army against Achaeans, defeats Achaeans and captures Corinth, completes subjugation of Greece, dedicates shields at Olympia, dedicates images of Zeus at Olympia from Achaean spoils.
KYPARISSIA (Small town) MESSINIA
MESSINI (Ancient city) ITHOMI
...and Messene was destroyed by the Lacedaemonians but restored by the Thebans and afterward by Philip the son of Amyntas. The citadels, however, remained uninhabited.
METHONI (Ancient city) MESSINIA
Now the Illyrians, having tasted empire and being always desirous of more, built ships, and plundering others whom they fell in with, put in to the coast of Mothone and anchored as in a friendly port. Sending a messenger to the city they asked for wine to be brought to their ships. A few men came with it and they bought the wine at the price which the inhabitants asked, and themselves sold a part of their cargo. When on the following day a larger number arrived from the town, they allowed them also to make their profit. Finally women and men came down to the ships to sell wine and trade with the barbarians. Thereupon by a bold stroke the Illyrians carried off a number of men and still more of the women. Carrying them on board ship, they set sail for the Ionian sea, having desolated the city of the Mothonaeans.
This extract is from: Pausanias, Description of Greece. Harvard University Press
Cited Aug 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
NAFPLIA (Ancient city) NAFPLIO
The Argives laid waste to most of the cities because of their disobedience; ..and the inhabitants of Nauplia also withdrew to Messenia. (Strab. 8.6.11)
PRASSIES (Ancient city) LEONIDION
Putting out from Epidaurus, they (the Athenians) laid waste the territory of Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione, all towns on the coast of Peloponnese, and thence sailing to Prasiai, a maritime town in Laconia, ravaged part of its territory, and took and sacked the place itself; after which they returned home, but found the Peloponnesians gone and no longer in Attica.
PYRRICHOS (Ancient city) ANATOLIKI MANI
Next day Philip, continuing to pillage the country on his way, marched down to what is called Pyrrhus' camp. (Polyvius 5,19)
SIKYON (Ancient city) CORINTHIA
When they (the Sicyonians) had lost their power there came upon them an earthquake, which almost depopulated their city and took from them many of their famous sights.
TIRYNS (Mycenean palace) ARGOLIS
Argos was so wholly deprived of men that their slaves took possession of all affairs,
ruling and governing until the sons of the slain men grew up. Then they recovered
Argos for themselves and cast out the slaves; when they were driven out, the slaves
took possession of Tiryns by force. For a while they were at peace with each other;
but then there came to the slaves a prophet, Cleander, a man of Phigalea in Arcadia
by birth; he persuaded the slaves to attack their masters. From that time there
was a long-lasting war between them, until with difficulty the Argives got the
upper hand (about 468 BC).
Commentary:
The war ended in the destruction of Tiryns and Mycenae (Paus. v. 23.
3; vii. 25. 6; ii. 16. 5; 25. 8). An aggressive war on the part of Tiryns is only
conceivable if Argos was engaged elsewhere. Now about 472 Argos was allied to
Tegea against the Spartans (cf. ix. 35 n.), by whom the allies were defeated near
Tegea, but in the next great battle, fought by the Arcadians against the Spartans
at Dipaea (circ. 470), the Argives took no part. The suggestion seems probable
that Tiryns was encouraged to attack Argos by the battle of Tegea, and that the
Argives were absent from the field of Dipaea because they were fully occupied
in the siege of Tiryns, which was obstinately defended (Busolt, iii. 121 f.).
Possibly Mycenae too fell at this time (468 B. C.). More probably, however, it
was while Sparta was occupied with the Helot revolt after 464 B. C. (Diod. xi.
65); cf. Busolt, iii. 244; Meyer, iii, § 325. Neither city was left so completely
desolate as Strabo (372) implies, as is proved by remains at Mycenae (Frazer,
iii. 97 f.). Tirynthians found refuge at Halieis (viii. 137. 2 n.).
This extract is from: Herodotus. The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley, 1920), Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
YSSIES (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
The winter following the Lacedaemonians, hearing of the walls that were building, marched against Argos with their allies, the Corinthians excepted, being also not without intelligence in the city itself; Agis, son of Archidamus, their king, was in command. The intelligence which they counted upon within the town came to nothing; they however took and razed the walls which were being built, and after capturing the Argive town Hysiae and killing all the freemen that fell into their hands, went back and dispersed every man to his city. (Thuc. 5.83.1)
EPIDAVROS (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
The inhabitants of the island Samos received the Ionians as settlers more of necessity than through good.will. The leader of the Ionians was Procles, the son of Pityreus, Epidaurian himself like the greater part of his followers, who had been expelled from Epidauria by Deiphontes and the Argives. This Procles was descended from Ion, son of Xuthus.
MYCENAE (Mycenean palace) ARGOLIS
After Helice you will turn from the sea to the right and you will come to the town of Ceryneia. It is built on a mountain above the high road, and its name was given to it either by a native potentate or by the river Cerynites, which, flowing from Arcadia and Mount Ceryneia, passes through this part of Achaia. To this part came as settlers Mycenaeans from Argolis because of a catastrophe. Though the Argives could not take the wall of Mycenae by storm, built as it was like the wall of Tiryns by the Cyclopes, as they are called, yet the Mycenaeans were forced to leave their city through lack of provisions. Some of them departed for Cleonae, but more than half of the population took refuge with Alexander in Macedonia, to whom Mardonius, the son of Gobryas, entrusted the message to be given to the Athenians. The rest of the population came to Ceryneia, and the addition of the Mycenaeans made Ceryneia more powerful, through the increase of the population, and more renowned for the future. (Paus. 7.25.5-6)
TRAPEZOUS (Ancient city) GORTYS
SFAKTIRIA (Small island) PYLOS
In like manner the Lacedaemonian reverse made Sphacteria known to all mankind. The Athenians dedicated a bronze statue of Victory also on the acropolis as a memorial of the events at Sphacteria (Paus. 4.26.6).
EIRA (Ancient fortress) MESSINIA
Aristomenes and the soothsayer Theoclus had received a divination which said that the end of the Messenians was not far. This came true when, one stormy night, the Lacedaemonians managed to enter the acropolis of Ira and started fighting the Messenians, who were not prepared for this. The battle lasted several days, and even the Messenian women fought in any way they could. Theoclus and Aristomenes, though, knew that this was the end. Theoclus decided to die in battle but advised Aristomenes to take the Messenian people and lead them out of the acropolis to their saviour.
This extract is from: Pausanias, Description of Greece. Harvard University Press
Cited Aug 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
HERAION (Ancient sanctuary) LOUTRAKI-PERACHORA
MYCENAE (Mycenean palace) ARGOLIS
It was jealousy which caused the Argives to destroy Mycenae. For at the time of the Persian invasion the Argives made no move, but the Mycenaeans sent eighty men to Thermopylae who shared in the achievement of the Lacedaemonians. This eagerness for distinction brought ruin upon them by exasperating the Argives (Paus. 2,16,5).
These ancients, a poor remnant of the "Perseid" and "Pelopid" ages, might have "medized" with a better grace than the Dorian Argives. Their hostility to Argos would seal them to the side of Sparta and of Hellas, of which they might fairly consider themselves the oldest representatives. "Tiryns" here appears for the first time in the war; "Mykenai" had sent 80 men to Thermopylai, (Hdt 7. 202), unless, indeed, those and these alike are "‘exiles"? It is hard to see how with Argos neutral, or malevolent, Tiryns and Mykenai could have afforded to send their fighting men to Plataia; The ruin of Mykenai was still to come or was unknown to Hdt. when he first drafted this passage;
. . . my attention, treats these Mykenaians and Tirynthians as "of course exiles" in view of Mahaffy's theory that the destruction (final?) of Mykenai and Tiryns by Argos "happened in the eighth or early seventh century B.C." But the names occur upon the Plataian (and Olympian) monuments, and it is not likely that those lists included "cityless men." This observation cuts out my own suggestion up above, that these men were exiles from the still existing Mykenai and Tiryns. Mahaffy's prochronism for the destruction of the two cities appears to be partly mixed up with the view that Perseids and Pelopids "possessed neither the art of writing nor the art of coining," plus the complementary view that Mykenaians and Tirynthians of the sixth and fifth centuries would have possessed both. Perhaps they did, even though no specimens have come down to us.
As to the Perseids and Pelopids, we now know that they could write, and it is hardly safe to assume that they had no coinage or currency. On the whole I should adhere to the dates given in note ad l.c. for the destruction of Tiryns and Mykenai. Meyer, G. d. Alt. iii. (1901) p. 516, well remarks that a "Tirynthian" is victor at Olympia Ol. 78 = 468 B.C. (Olymp. List in Oxyrhynchos Papyri, ii. p. 89): kurz nachher muss die Zerstorung fallen.
(Perseus Project: Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus: The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary)
The following year Theageneides was archon in Athens, and in Rome the consuls elected were Lucius Aemilius Mamercus and Lucius Julius Iulus, and the Seventy-eighth Olympiad was celebrated, that in which Parmenides of Posidonia won the "stadion." In this year a war broke out between the Argives and Mycenaeans for the following reasons.The Mycenaeans, because of the ancient prestige of their country, would not be subservient to the Argives as the other cities of Argolis were, but they maintained an independent position and would take no orders from the Argives; and they kept disputing with them also over the shrine of Hera and claiming that they had the right to administer the Nemean Games by themselves. Furthermore, when the Argives voted not to join with the Lacedaemonians in the battle at Thermopylae unless they were given a share in the supreme command, the Mycenaeans were the only people of Argolis who fought at the side of the Lacedaemonians. In a word, the Argives were suspicious of the Mycenaeans, fearing lest, if they got any stronger, they might, on the strength of the ancient prestige of Mycenae, dispute the right of Argos to the leadership. Such, then, were the reasons for the bad blood between them; and from of old the Argives had ever been eager to exalt their city, and now they thought they had a favourable opportunity, seeing that the Lacedaemonians had been weakened and were unable to come to the aid of the Mycenaeans. Therefore the Argives, gathering a strong army from both Argos and the cities of their allies, marched against the Mycenaeans, and after defeating them in battle and shutting them within their walls, they laid siege to the city. The Mycenaeans for a time resisted the besiegers with vigour, but afterwards, since they were being worsted in the fighting and the Lacedaemonians could bring them no aid because of their own wars and the disaster that had overtaken them in the earthquakes, and since there were no other allies, they were taken by storm through lack of support from outside. The Argives sold the Mycenaeans into slavery, dedicated a tenth part of them to the god, and razed Mycenae. So this city, which in ancient times had enjoyed such felicity, possessing great men and having to its credit memorable achievements, met with such an end, and has remained uninhabited down to our own times.
This extract is from: Diodorus Siculus, Library (ed. C. H. Oldfather, 1989). Cited Sept. 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
MEGALOPOLIS (Ancient city) ARCADIA
Megalopolis was united into one city in the same year, but a few months later, as occurred the defeat of the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, when Phrasicleides was archon at Athens, in the second year of the hundred and second Olympiad, when Damon of Thurii was victor in the foot-race (Paus. 8,27,8). Pausanias refers to the year 371 BC, but it has been widely accepted that the Arcadian towns united to form Megalopolis in the year 368 BC, the same year that Archidamus of Sparta had won a battle against the Arcadians, the Messenians and the Argives without any Spartan losses (Ekd. Athinon, Pausaniou Periegissis, vol. 4, p. 293, note 2).
METHONI (Small town) MESSINIA
In the northest part of the west coast of the Peloponnese, lies the
great fortress of Methoni. In the small peninsula, that was already fortified
from ancient times, there has always been a city, renown for its harbour. It has
been identified to the city Pedasus that Homer mentions under the name "ampeloessa"
(of vine leaves), as the last of the seven"evnaiomena ptoliethra", that Agamemnon
offers Achilles in order to subdue his rage. Thucydides (2,25) notes that the
fortification of the city during the Peloponnesian war (431 π.Χ.) wasn't strong.
Pausanias names the city Mothoni -and Mothonians its inhabitants- and mentions
that it was named after either the daughter of Oineas or after the small islet
-that was later fortified- the name of which was "Mothon Lithos ". The rock protected
the port of Methoni and at the same time stopped the large sea turbulation. The
people of Nafplion settled
in Methoni after the end of the 2nd Messinian was because they were chased away
by the Argeians as allies of the Lacaedemonians. Even after the independence of
Messinia from the Spartans
(369 π.Χ.) the Nafpleians continued to live in the area because they had maintained
a friendly attitude towards the Messinians who returned to their homeland. During
the 4rth century B.C. Methoni was fortified with more elaborately and continued
to remain autonomous to the imperial roman years, when it enjoyed the favour of
some emperors. During the Byzantine years it continued to remain a remarkable
harbour and one of the most important cities of the Peloponnese, home of the bishop.
The Venetians started having their eye on the harbour of Methoni since
the 12th century, since "it was in the middle of the route from Venice to
the East". Moreover, in 1125, they had lanched an attack against the pirates
who used it as a shelter, because they had captured Venetian traders on their
way home from the East. When the Franks had Constantinople
under a siege in 1204, Geoffrey de Villehardouin strayed with his ship to Methoni
on his way to Constantinople and had to spend winter in the area. He then accepted
the invitation of the local lord Ioannis Kantakouzinos to help him occupy the
Western Peloponnese and "success crowned the arms of this unnatural alliance".
When Kantakouzinos died, his son tried to break the alliance, with no success,
since Villehardouin had understood that the conquering of the Peloponnese by the
Latins would be easy work.
Methoni initially, together with Koroni, were given to Geoffrey de
Villehardouin. The Chronicle of Moreas mentions the reception of the Franks by
the inhabitants. "They came out with the crosses, as well as with icons and came
and kneeled before Kampanesis and they all sworn themselves his slaves to the
death".
In 1206, however, the Venetians occupied the two cities and their
domination was established in the spring of 1209 with a treaty signed with Villehardouin,
who made all the necessary consents that would guarantee him the help of Venice
for the final subordination of the Peloponnese. Life was organised in Methoni,
as well as Koroni, according
to the interests of Venice and the two cities became guardians of its interests,
the "most important eyes of the State" to the trade and sea routes to and from
the east. The Venetians fortified Methoni, which developed, as well as Koroni,
into an important trade center with great prosperity. There are detailed descriptions
in the venetian archives of the organisation and authority of the two messinian
colonies of Venice as are on the image that they projected during the second half
of the 14th century and mainly after the famish, when it was necesarry for them
to be populated with "a new body of colonisers from the metropolis". It
was only natural to attract the attentions of the Turks, who, despite the treaties
with Venice, were harbouring the notion of conquering the area. Vaghiazit B',
in late 1500, gathered his forces against Methoni, "Port-Side of Frank Greece,
the important middle station between Venice and the Holy Lands, where every traveller
stopped on their way to the East. A pilgrim who went by in 1484 admired its strong
walls, the deep moats and the fortified towers" ten years later it was more fortified.
Vaghazit, despite the hard siege, would not have been able to invade it if the
inhabitants, thrilled by the arrival of reinforcements, hadn't deserted the walls,
a fact that the yenitsars took advantage of and invaded the tower from the governor's
palace. The city was given to the flames, the Catholic bishop was killed while
talking to the people, the men were decapitated, the women and children were sold
to slavery. On the 9th of August 1500 "Methoni fell after having been in the hands
of the Venetians for about three hundred years. Happy for his trophy, Vagiazit
made the yenitsar who first climbed the walls a santakbei, meaning a provincial
commander and on the first Friday after the invasion, when the fire went out,
he went to the desecrated cathedral to offer his thanks to the god of battle,
to whom, as he confessed, when he was looking into the deep moat, owed the conquering
of this fortified city". The desolation was so complete that he ordered families
to be sent "from every village of Morias" so that Methoni regains its population
again. The walls were repaired and the period of the first turkish occupation
began. In 1531 the Knights of St John landed on the port of Methoni, planning
to occupy the previously Venetina colony. Initially, they managed with a conspiracy
to disembark and take out the guards. But the occupation of the fortress was not
completed because turkish reinforcements arrived that forced them to leave, after
having ransacked the town and arrested 1600 prisoners. In 1572 the shores of Methoni
were threatened by Don Juan of Austria, who did not manage to occupy it in the
end.
During the whole of the 16th and 17th century, even though the look
of Methoni hasn't changed, the decline in all sectors is obvious. In June 1686
the forces of Morozini had Methoni under siege, which was deserted by the Turks
on the 10th of July. The walls, that suffered substantial damages during the siege
were repaired and new inhabitants were sent to reinforce the population of the
town. However, this second period of Venetian occupation did not last for long.
In 1715 the Turks launched a siege to the castle and the Venetian defenders, deserted
it terrified leaving via the sea gate. During this second period of Turkish occupation
the decline was complete. As is apparent from the travellers' descriptions, the
population was reduced, the battlements were in bad condition and the harbour
became shallow. The most important trade conducted was that of slaves! The disappoinment
that the travellers of the era felt, is also obvious in F. Chateaubriand's Tour,
where its story is considered "with no glory".
In 1825 Imrahem occupied Methoni and settled in the command building,
over the entrance of the castle. In the same building, the French general Maison
who freed the town together with others in the Peloponnese, settled in 1829.
Nowadays the walls of the fortres, even though in ruins, continue
to be impressive. The castle of Methoni occupies the whole are of the cape and
the southwestern coast to the small islet that has also been fortified with an
octagonal tower and is protected by the sea on its three sides. It's north part,
the one that looks to land, is covered by a heavily fortified acropolis. A deep
moat seperates the castle from the land and communication was achieved by a wooden
bridge. The Venetians builded on the ancient battlements and added on and repaired
it during both periods that they occupied the castle.
Its entrance is roughly in the middle of the north side and is accessed
by a stone bridge of 14 arches, that was built over the moat by the techniciats
of Expedition scientifique de Moree, that accompanied general Maison. At the same
time the gate was renovated, which with its monumental form constitutes one of
the most impressive features of the castle. The other is the area it occupies.
The entrance gate ends in a curviform arch framed on the right and left by pilasters
with corinthian capitals. It is considered to be the work of Venetians after 1700.
On the right and left of the entrance two large battlements can be seen. On the
east part is the one built by general Antonio Loredan, during the second period
of Venetian occupation.
That is when the moat that surrounded the battlmemets was expanded
towards teh land and work was done on the bank of soil, that bears a plaque with
a relief of the Lion of St. Mark. On the west edge is the Bembo battlement, which
was built during the 15th century, The north side of the walls had reached its
final form in the beginning of the 18th century and it retains it to this day.
The north part of the walls reach 11 metres in height and the two battlements
communicated through a passage. The wall is fortified with square towers on the
NE side and a large round one on the NW. In order to build that they used well
worked stoned that were lined with mortar. In some parts they used ancient construction
material, easily seen nowadays in one of the north side towers as well as on the
south part of the walls.
Right after the central gate, a domed road opens up that leads through
a second gate and then a third in the interior of the castle, where the habitable
part was and which was seperated from the north part with a vertical low wall
(approximately 6 meters), fortified with five towers (four square and one octagonal)
is dated to the period after 1500, when the Turks tried to reinforce the population
and the fortification of the caste. In the interior there are ruins of the houses
where the venetian lords lived during the period of rise, the paved street that
led to the sea gate, the ruins of a turkish bath, the Byzantine church of St.
Sophia, close to which a slate with latin lettering was found (dating back to
1714), parts of doric pillars, a monolithic granite pillar (1493/4), unlined,
with a capital on the top of byzantyne style, which is supposed to have supported
either the winged lion of Venice or the bust of Morozini. That is why it is called
"Morozini's stele". There was an inscription on the capital that has not survived
to this day. On the left of the entrance are the ruins of the building which originally
Imbrahem used as a residence in 1826 and later general Maison. The French of the
liberating corps remained in the area till 1833 and the construction of the church
of Santa Sotira, which is still in the castle is attributed to them. In the interior
of the castle there are also a few cisterns and the remains of the british prisoner's
cemetary during the 2nd World War.
On the south part of the walls rises the spectacular sea gate which
has recently been restored. It is comprised of two tall square towers (16 meters)
that are linked with a platform (about 18 meters long and 6 wide) that is crowned
with bastions. The gate opens in the center, and it ends uo in an arch on the
top. The towers are build with large poros stones and had rooms in their interior.
A stone-paved stretch leads over a small bridge to the small fortified islet of
Bourtzi. This is the
place where many soldiers and inhabitants of Methoni were slaughtered, when the
Turks occupied the fort in 1500.
Bourtzi is dated back to the period after 1500 and has been used in
various instances as a prison. It has a two-floor octagonal tower. On each floor
there is a parapet with bastions. The tower finishes in a round dome. On the lower
floor there was a cistern and the whole works, with small defensive value, is
dated during the first period that the Turks occupied the fortress.
The west part of the walls is not as well costructed as the others.
The wall was fortified with 5 square towers and chonologically it dates to the
first period, when the Venetians occupied the fortress. This part with the rocks
and the rough sea makes it hard to attack the castle and this is probably why
there was not much attention paid to its construction. Moreover, this part of
the castle seems to have suffered less damages as well as less repairs. It was
here that during the 2nd World War, after an exlposion, parts of well constructed
stones from the ancient walls of Methoni were found. Ancient constructing material
has also been used in the foundations of one of the square towers. In the interior
of the walls, ruins of turkish military establishments are preserved.
The east side of the walls also reached initially to the sea. Nowadays,
a long strand of beach lies in front of a large part of it. Parallel to the east
wall, up to the Bourtzi, there was a pier and this is where the small fortified
harbour was formed (mandrachio), while the big one was to the northeast where
ships could be pulled. The wall was fortified with towers on this side as well.
The long east side has suffered many repairs, performed on the initial venetian
battlements of the 13th century, mainly during the second venetian occupation
and the turkish occupation. In one of the towers parts of the byzantine fortification
are preserved. On the east side there was a small gate protected by a tower. On
the southeastern part the ruins of a turkish tower are preserved.
On various parts of the fortification there are venetian emblems with
the winged lion of St. Mark and inscriptions. This is the case on the north part
of the Loredan battlement, where there is an inscribed plaque from the time when
general Loredan was in command in the Peloponnese. On the north wall, on the right
of the main entrance, there is also a plaque with the coat of arms of the families
of the Foscarini, Foscolo and Bembo, to which the inscription denotes the construction
of the Bembo battlement, just before 1500.
The castle of Methoni rises deserted and isolated today. When the
winter winds hit its walls the locals say that you can hear the screams of the
prisoners and the unjustly killed in the Bourtzi.
The best time to enjoy Methoni is the late afternoon, from the hill
opposite. Then the light of the sun that is ready to sink on the side of the Ionian,
glides over the large walls crowning them with dull tones. A sweet tranquility
dominates everything.
The above text comes from the book "Castles of the Peloponnese"
Athens 1993, by ADAM Publications
This text is cited Febr 2004 from the Municipality of Methoni URL below, which contains images.
ACHLADOKAMBOS (Village) ARGOLIS
18/9/1944
ARGOS (Ancient city) ARGOLIS
Clipaus also Clipeum (aspis, sakos), the large shield used by the Greeks and the
Romans, which was originally of circular shape, and is said to have been first
used by Proetus and Acrisius of Argos (Paus. ii. 25,6), and therefore is called
clipeus Argolicus (Verg. Aen. iii. 637; cf. Pollux, i. 149). According to other
accounts, however, it was derived from the Egyptians (Herod. iv. 180; Plat. Tim.
24 B).
One of the earliest extant representations of Greek shields is to
be found in the engraving on a sword-blade found at Mycenae, representing a combat
between men and lions. It will be seen that some of the men carry shields resembling
a scutum, others shields which recall the shape of the Boeotian shield, and that
each form covers about three quarters of the person, and is partly supported by
a strap passing round the shoulders. But the Homeric poems, which are probably
of later date, are by no means in complete agreement with this representation.
The heroes of the Iliad carry a shield which is round (iii. 347; v.
453), and large enough to cover the whole man (amphibrote, ii. 389; podenekes,
xv. 646; permioessa, xvi. 803: the shield of Ajax is like a tower, vii. 219; cf.
Tyrtaeus, xi. 23). It is composed by sewing together circular pieces of untanned
oxhide (Il. iv. 447; v. 452; vii. 238; xii. 105), varying in number (four in xv.
479; seven in vii. 245). These are strengthened on both sides by plates of bronze,
the outer hides and plates being of smaller diameter, so that on the edge of the
shield both hide and metal are thinnest (xx. 275).
Sarpedon's shield is forged of plates of bronze, to which ox-hides
are attached on the inside by golden rods or bolts (rhabdoi) running all round
the circle (xii. 294-8). Ten circles of bronze run round Agamemnon's shield (xi.
32). Achilles' shield is composed entirely of metal in five plates--two of bronze,
two of tin, and a central one of gold (xx. 270). The structure is bound together
by a metal rim (antux), which in Achilles' shield is triple (xviii. 479). At the
centre of the shield is a metal boss (omphalos). Agamemnon's shield is studded
with twenty bosses of tin and a central one of cyanus (xi. 34). Concerning the
appliances for wielding the shield, we have no clear indication: the two kanones
mentioned in xiii. 407 and viii. 193 may be rods running across the hollow part
of the shield, and serving as handles. When not in use, the shield is suspended
by the telamon (balteus),
which passes round the breast, the shield hanging at the back (xiv. 404; cf. Herod.
i. 171). The practice of decorating the shield has commenced: for to pass over
the wonders of Achilles' shield, in which we probably have the effect of the poet's
imagination working on some production of Assyrian or Egyptian art which he had
seen, Agamemnon's shield bears a Gorgon's head with figures of Terror and Fear,
designed perhaps less as an ornament than to alarm the foe (Il. xi. 36).
The laiseia pteroenta, which in v. 453 and xii. 426 are contrasted
with the aspides eukukloi, are explained by the Scholiasts as light and diminutive
aspides. The epithet pteroeis may refer to some apron, such as is figured below.
Turning from the Iliad to the representations and texts of later times,
we observe no shields which, like those of heroic times, protect the whole of
the warrior's body: they usually cover him from the neck to the knees. Besides
the circular or Argive shield, we frequently find represented an oval shield with
a strong rim and apertures in the middle of each side (kenchromata, Eur. Phoen.
1386), through which to watch the enemy. This is known as the Boeotian shield,
being commonly found on the coins of the Boeotian cities.
The shield was now formed entirely of brass (panchalkos). An apron,
apparently of leather or thick stuff, was sometimes attached to it to protect
in some measure the warrior's legs, especially when he did not wear greaves. It
was ornamented with patterns or figures. A shield furnished with this appliance
is given on the next column, and another under Tuba.
The simplest arrangement for holding the shield consisted of two metal
handles, one to pass the arm through, the other to grasp with the hand; but we
very frequently observe the arrangement shown below (from one of the terra-cotta
vases published by Tischbein, iv. tab. 20), which may be explained thus:
A band of metal, wood, or leather, was placed across the inside from rim to rim,
like the diameter of a circle, to which were affixed a number of small iron bars,
crossing each other somewhat in the form of the letter X, which met the arm below
the inner bend of the elbow joint, and served to steady the orb. This apparatus,
which is said to have been invented by the Carians (Herod. i. 171), was termed
ochanon or ochane. Around the inner edge ran a leather thong (porpax), fixed by
nails at certain distances, so that it formed a succession of loops all round,
which the soldier grasped with his hand (embalon porpaki gennaian chera, Eur.
Hel. 1396; polurraphoi porpaki, Soph. Aj. 576 ). But it is somewhat difficult
to distinguish these terms, for Plutarch tells us that when Cleomenes III. introduced
among the Spartans the sarisa,, which employed both hands, in place of the spear,
he also made them carry the shield by the ochane, instead of the porpax (Cleom.
11), while others (e.g. the Scholiast on Aristoph. Eq. 849) treat them as convertible
terms.
At the close of a war it was customary for the Greeks to suspend their
shields in the temples, when the porpakes were taken off, in order to render them
unserviceable in case of any sudden or popular outbreak ; which custom accounts
for the alarm of Demos (Aristoph. l. c.), when he saw them hanging up with their
handles on. Sometimes shields were kept in a case (sagma, Aristoph. Ach. 574;
Eur. Andr. 617). In Gerhard (op. cit. pl. cclxix.) we see a sagma, made of some
stuff, being removed from a shield.
The aspis was the characteristic defensive weapon (hoplon) of the
heavy-armed infantry (hoplitai) during the historical times of Greece, and is
opposed to the lighter pelte and gerron: hence we find the word aspis used to
signify a body of hoplitai (Xen. Anab. i. 7, 10). It was only exceptionally used
by cavalry (Xen. Hell. ii. 4, 24, iv. 4, 10; Aelian. Tact. ii. 12; Arrian. Tact.
iv. 15). It was distinctively a Greek shield. Thus none of the Eastern peoples
who served under Xerxes (Herod. vii. 61 ff.) were armed with it.
The Roman clipeus is seen in the accompanying illustration from Trajan's
Column. According to Livy (i. 43), when the census was instituted by Servius Tullius,
the first class only used the clipeus, and the second were armed with the scutum;
but after the Roman soldier received pay, the clipeus was discontinued altogether
for the Sabine scutum. (Liv. viii. 8; cf. ix. 19; Plut. Rom. 21; Diod. Eclog.
xxiii. 3, who asserts that the original form of the Roman shield was square, and
that it was subsequently changed for that of the Tyrrhenians, which was round.)
The emblazoning of shields with devices (semata, semeia) was said
to be derived from the Carians (Herod. i. 171). The bearings on the shields of
the heroes before Thebes, as described by Aeschylus in the Seven against Thebes
and Euripides in the Phoenissae, exhibit the development of devices in post-Homeric
times. Some shields, like Agamemnon's, bear subjects designed to strike terror
(Theb. 488, 534: to that of Tydeus bronze bells are attached with this object,
ib. 381); others show also the warrior's pride or boastful spirit (ib. 427, 461).
Other subjects are purely mythological (ib. 382), or indicate the owner's ancestry
(ib. 507), while Amphiaraus is too proud of his real worth to bear any device
at all (ib. 587; Eur. Phoen. 1111). The semata already serve to distinguish the
warriors to those at a distance (ib. 141). This custom of emblazoning shields
is illustrated by the following beautiful gem from the antique, in which the figure
of Victory is represented inscribing upon a clipeus the name or merits of some
deceased hero.
From the historians we find that while an individual sometimes attracted
attention by an unusual device (Alcibiades' was an eros keraunophoros, Plut. Alcib.
16), cities made use of some common symbol for their shields, which might be easily
recognisable by their friends: thus the Lacedaemonians used A, the Sicyonians
S, the Thebans Hercules' club, a practice of which the enemy sometimes took a
treacherous advantage (Xen. Hell. iv. 4, 10, vii. 50; Paus. iv. 28, 5).
Each Roman soldier also had his own name and a mark indicating his
cohort inscribed upon his shield, in order that he might readily find his own
when the order was given to unpile arms; and sometimes the name of the commander
under whom he fought.
The practice of emblazoning shields is attested by the extant shields
and representations of shields, and is well exhibited in the works illustrative
of painted vases. (See cuts under arma
and lorica)
The decorations vary from the simplest arrangements of lines and curves to the
richest engraving of the inside as well as the outside of the shield. The shields
accompanying famous statues of divinities were often masterpieces of engraving.
Thus Pheidias engraved on the outside of the shield of his colossal Athene at
Athens, the combat of the Athenians and the Amazons, and on the inside the war
of the gods and the giants (Plut. Pericl. 31; Paus. i. 17, 2; Plin. H. N. xxxvi.18).
A victorious army sometimes dedicated their own shields (Paus. x.
19, 4; cf. i. 26, 2; ii. 17,3), or an engraved shield of gold (ib. v. 10,4; Herod.
i. 92; Aeschin. Cies. 116), as an offering in a temple. In the latter case we
have a shield which is expressly made as a work of art, and not for warfare, as
Pausanias remarks concerning those set up in the gymnasium at Olympia (vi. 23,7).
These practices, transferred to Rome (Liv. xxv. 39), gave rise to the clipei or
clipeatae imagines, the history of which is sketched by Pliny (H. N. xxxv. 2-14),
who tells us that Appius Claudius (Consul 495 B.C.) originated the custom, by
dedicating in the temple of Bellona clipei bearing portraits of his ancestors,
and that his example was followed by M. Aemilius, who thus adorned his own house
as well as the basilica Aemilia, as is represented on the coin of the gens Aemilia
(See cut under basilica).
Under the empire this became a customary act of adulation to the emperor (Tac.
Ann. ii. 83; Capitolin. Antonin. 5; Treb. Poll. Claud. 3); and the clipeus aureus
of Caligula was annually carried to the Capitol, in a procession composed of the
colleges of priests, the senate, and noble youths and maidens singing his praises.
Finally, shields of various shapes in metal or marble were suspended
from the roofs of porticus, or in the atrium of private houses, round the impluvium,
for purely decorative purposes. Many such shields were found at Pompeii and Herculaneum,
and are preserved in the Museum of Naples. They are usually engraved on both sides,
and most commonly with mythological, especially Bacchanalian, subjects.
Clipeus is also the name of a contrivance for regulating the temperature of the
vapour bath (balneae).
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ITHOMI (Mountain) MESSINIA
Mountain of southwestern Peloponnese,
north of Messene.
This mountain served as a refuge to Helots in rebellion against Sparta
in 464. When, about a century later, Epaminondas, the Theban general, after his
victory over Sparta at Leuctra
(371) freed the Messenian Helots of Sparta's dominion, it is at the foot of Mount
Ithome that they built their capital city, Messene.
Bernard Suzanne (page last updated 1998), ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Plato and his dialogues URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
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