Messenians

The earliest inhabitants of Messenia are thought by the Greeks of the Classical period to have been 'Pelasgians', as in other regions of Greece.

The Hellenic tribes had then supposedly arrived in Greece, and Messenia was settled by Aeolian Greeks.

The Homeric poems suggest that during the Mycenaean period, eastern Messenia was under the rule of Menelaus of Sparta, while the western coast is under the Neleids of Pylos; after Menelaus’s death, the Neleids pushed the frontier as far as Taygetus.

The Mycenaean city of Pylos almost certainly lay in Triphylia, and not at the site in Messenia, which in historic times bore that name.

Excavations at Pylos and Nichoria have revealed for Messenia's late Bronze Age (1300s BCE) a bureaucratic, agricultural kingdom ruled by the wanax at Pylos.

The Messenians spoke Mycenaean Greek, and worshiped the Greek gods at local shrines like that at Sphagianes.

Messenia was supposedly invaded by Dorians under Cresphontes, arriving from Arcadia, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese during the Greek Dark ages, taking as their capital Stenyclarus in the northern plain, and then extending over the whole district first their suzerainty, then their rule.

The relative wealth of Messenia in fertile soil and favorable climate attracts the neighboring Spartans during the Archaic period.

The first Messenian War breaks out as a result of the murder of the Spartan king Teleclus by the Messenians, it is claimed, which, in spite of the heroism of King Euphaes and his successor Aristodemus, ends around 720 BCE in the subjection of Messenia by Sparta.

The result is a Spartan victory, the loss of sovereignty by Messenia, and the transfer of land ownership to the Spartans.

The Second Messenian War between the Greek states of Messenia and Sparta starts around forty years after the end of the First Messenian War with the uprising of the enslaved.

The long war will end with a Spartan victory 668 BCE, with Messenia remaining under Spartan control.

Sparta has already, in the Dark Age, coerced into semisubject, or “perioikic,” status a number of its immediate neighbors, having gradually conquered Laconia, the southeastern quarter of the Peloponnesus.

Many of the conquered pre-Dorians became helots, or serfs; the Spartans grant members of various neighboring groups in Laconia the semiautonomous status of “perioikoi,” but require them to serve in the army.

It undertakes the wholesale conquest of Messenia in the second half of the eighth century, from about 735 BCE to 715 BCE.

One consequence is the export of an unwanted group, the Partheniai, to Taras in southeastern Italy.

These are sons of Spartan mothers and non-Spartan fathers, procreated during the absence in Messenia of the Spartan warrior elite.

A still more important consequence of the conquest of Messenia, “good to plow and good to hoe” as the seventh-century Spartan poet Tyrtaeus puts it, is the acquisition of a large tract of fertile land and the creation of a permanently servile labor force, the “helots,” as the conquered Messenians are now called.

The helots are state slaves, held down by force and fear, bound to the soil and assigned to individual Spartans to till their holdings; their masters can neither free them nor sell them, and the helots have a limited right to accumulate property, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the holding.

Owing to their own numerical inferiority, the Spartans are always preoccupied with the fear of a helot revolt.

Sparta begins to develop as a militant polis in the eighth century and early seventh century BCE, with a rigid social structure and a government that includes an assembly representing all citizens.

Archidamus, the twelfth king of Sparta of the Eurypontid line, and the son of Anaxidamus, rules shortly after the close of the second Messenian War in about 660 BCE and toward the outset of the long war between Sparta and Tegea (the Tegean War).

The geographer Pausanias describes his reign as quiet and peaceful.

The Dorians that occupied Messenia in the southwestern Peloponnesus after 1200 BCE have over the ensuing centuries intermingled with the inhabitants to form a single people.

The Spartans, coveting the fertile lands of the western Peloponnesus, have subdued the Laconians and, in 743, initiate war with the Messenians, another native Peloponnesian group.

Two early Messenian wars are thought by many modern historians to have occurred: the first, from about  743 BCE to 724 BCE according to the dates given by Pausanias, which historians consider solid) is the Spartan conquest of Messenia; the second, around 660, is precipitated by a Messenian revolt over which the Spartans will ultimately be successful.

The First Messenian War continues the rivalry between the Achaeans and the Dorians that had been initiated by the Return of the Heracleidae (”Dorian Invasion”).

Both sides utilize an explosive incident to settle the rivalry by full-scale war.

Pausanias says that the opening campaign was a surprise attack on Ampheia, a city of unknown location now, but probably on the western flank of Taygetus, by a Spartan force commanded by Alcmenes, Agiad king of Sparta, in the second year of the Ninth Olympiad.

The end of the war was the abandonment of Mount Ithome in the first year of the Fourteenth Olympiad.

The time of the war is so clearly fixed at 743/742 BCE through 724/722 BCE that other events in Greek history are often dated by it.

Pausanias evidently had access to a chronology of events by Olympiad.

The details of the war are not so certain but Pausanias gives an evaluation of his two main sources, the epic poem by Rianos of Bene for the first half and the prose history of Myron of Priene for the second half.

Nothing survives now of the sources except fragments.

The Messenians, not wanting to experience another battle such as the one fought in the vicinity of Ampheia, had fallen back to the heavily fortified Mount Ithome, guarding the entrance to the rich Stenyclarus plain, their center of resistance.

This is when the Messenians first send for help from the Oracle at Delphi.

They are told that a sacrifice of a royal virgin is the key to their success and the daughter of Aristodemus, a Messenian hero, is chosen for the sacrifice.

Upon hearing of this, the Spartans hold off from attacking Ithome for several years, before finally making a long march under their kings and killing the Messenian leader.

Aristodemus is made the new Messenian king and leads an offensive, meeting the enemy and driving them back into their own territory.

The Messenians, having successfully resisted invasion from the east for twenty years, finally fall victim around 724 to the Spartans under their legendary King Theopompus.

The Spartans had sent an envoy to Delphi and their following of her advice has caused Messenian reverses so great that Aristodemus commits suicide and Ithome falls.

The Messenians who had fortified themselves on the mountain either flee abroad or are captured and enslaved.

The Spartans demand, in addition to other indignities, half of all Messenian produce.

Messenia is depopulated by emigration of the Achaeans to other states.

Those who did not emigrate are reduced socially to helots, or serfs.

Their descendants will be held in hereditary subjection for centuries until the Spartan state finally needs them for defense.

Sparta had already, in the Dark Age, coerced into semisubject, or “perioikic,” status a number of its immediate neighbors, having gradually conquered Laconia, the southeastern quarter of the Peloponnesus.

Many of the conquered pre-Dorians had become helots, or serfs; the Spartans have granted members of various neighboring groups in Laconia the semiautonomous status of “perioikoi,” but require them to serve in the army.

Under the rule of a diarchy, Sparta suddenly gains wealth and culture with the socio-economic basis of classical Sparta emerging from this war and expansion.

The export of an unwanted group, the Partheniai ("sons of virgins"), is one consequence of Sparta’s wholesale conquest of Messenia.

These are the sons of unmarried Spartan women and Perioeci (free men, but not citizens of Sparta), procreated during the absence in Messenia of the Spartan warrior elite.

These out-of-wedlock unions were permitted extraordinarily by the Spartans to increase the prospective number of soldiers (only the citizens of Sparta could become soldiers) during the bloody Messenian wars, but later they were retroactively nullified, and the sons were then obliged to leave Greece forever.

Phalanthus, the Parthenian leader, goes to Delphi to consult the oracle: the puzzling answer designates the harbor of Taranto in southern Italy as the new home of the exiles.

A still more important consequence of the conquest of Messenia, “good to plow and good to hoe” as the poet Tyrtaeus put it, is the acquisition of a large tract of fertile land and the creation of a permanently servile labor force.

Greek settlers from Sparta and Laconia conquer the Messapian village of Taras on the river of the same name (modern Tara) in the Apulia region of southeastern Italy in the eighth century BCE (the traditional date is 706, but it may have been earlier).

They establish a new Taras (present Taranto) on the peninsula between the Mare Piccolo and the Mare Grande.

Apparently, the Spartans have sent out these colonizers as a way of getting rid of an unwanted half-caste group.

The Messenians, chafing under Spartan repression, revolt in about 685, initiating a conflict that will occupy the Spartans for years.

Aristomenes, the traditional hero of the unsuccessful revolt against the Spartans by the Messenians, who had been enslaved by Sparta in the eighth century BCE, is probably a historical figure, but his career has been heavily overlaid with legend.

The standard version makes him a leader of a rebellion about 685 BCE: the so-called Second Messenian War.

After several victories, he is betrayed by King Aristocrates of Arcadia at the battle of “the Great Trench.” He is besieged in Eira, Messenia, for about eleven years.

When the Spartans finally conquer this stronghold, Aristomenes escapes to live in exile on the island of Rhodes.