Messinia
Messenia ( ancient Greek Μεσσήνη Messḗnē ) is a landscape in Greece , for example in the area of the modern regional district of Messenia . In ancient times it was an important state in the southwest of the Peloponnese . Messenia is best known for Nestor , the mythical king of Pylos . The capital was from 369 BC. Chr. Messene .
geography
The core of the ancient landscape of Messenia on the Messenian Gulf is the Pamisos river valley and its tributaries, an area that used to be called Stenyklaros and which represents the most densely populated part of Messenia. It is an extremely fertile landscape, where oranges , lemons , almonds , figs and olives are grown in large quantities and of good quality to this day. This river level is limited in the north by the Nomian Mountains (today: Tetrási, 1570 m), in the west by the Kyparissia Mountains (around 950 m), while in the east the Taygetos Mountains form the border with the Evrotas Valley, in which Sparta lies. The Oinussai Islands are located off the southwest coast of the Peloponnese . Messenia, despite its long coastline, has few good ports and therefore did not play a major role in Greece's maritime history. Only Pylos in the southwest was of any importance. By Greek standards, Messenia is a water-rich and at the same time warm and fertile region.
history
Antiquity
Early days
According to some ancient sources, u. a. Leleger to early residents of Messenia and are said to have created in the city of Andania . Archaeologically, some traces of settlement from the Early Bronze Age ( Early Helladic I and II) can be assigned, e.g. B. Akovitika . In Mittelhelladikum (about 2000-1700 / 1600 v. Chr.) Was the first fortified settlements, of which Malthi is the most important and best researched.
Mycenaean period
During the Mycenaean culture that met in Messenia quite early , Messenia flourished. The number of settlements also increased by leaps and bounds. It already existed towards the end of the 16th century BC. Close contacts to Argolis , where, together with Laconia , the Mycenaean culture had its beginning. Culturally, at least in the early and central Mycenaean period, Triphylia seems to have been closely connected with Messenia, as the finds from the Tholos tombs near Kakovatos show, which have strong parallels to finds in Mycenaean locations (e.g. the so-called " Palace of Nestor “ Near Pylos ) and in the 15th century BC. To date.
At the latest in the late Mycenaean period (from approx. 1400 BC) the Mycenaean Pylos (= Palace of Nestor ) was the center of an empire that encompassed large parts of the Messinian landscape. In the palace, among other things, an archive was discovered with numerous Linear B documents scratched on clay tablets , which usually served administrative purposes and from which one can learn a lot about the economic and social structure of the Mycenaean states. The Homeric tradition connects the city of Pylos with Nestor, who with 90 ships provided one of the largest fleets for the Trojan War . Since topographical information such as “the sandy Pylos” does not really match the Mycenaean Pylos, the Homeric Pylos has also been searched for in other places. Wilhelm Dörpfeld identified Kakovatos in Triphylia with the Homeric Pylos, but this place is very far north and was destroyed by fire at the end of the 15th century and then apparently abandoned.
In the Homeric poems, which, according to the prevailing opinion, rather the conditions around 700 BC It is also claimed that eastern Messenia was under the rule of King Menelaus of Sparta, while western Messenia was under the Nelilians of Pylos; After the death of Menelaus, the border was pushed eastwards to the Taygetus (a tradition that gained importance in connection with later Spartan claims on Messenia). Also Methone place as Pedasos , in the heroic saga mention.
Dark centuries
Around 1200 BC Pylos is destroyed and then no longer continuously populated. Numerous other Messenian settlements were also abandoned during this time, so that from the 12th century, according to current research, Messenia appears largely depopulated. The cause of this drastic change is still unclear. What is certain is that it is related to the destruction of other Mycenaean centers and many settlements on mainland Greece. The Linear-B documents make it clear that shortly before the catastrophe, the stretches of coast were heavily guarded, from which the prevailing research opinion suggests a specific threat to the sea. The cause could possibly have been an attack by the so-called sea peoples , but an attack by other Mycenaean states, uprisings or natural disasters were also considered. On the other hand, the “ Doric migration ” is hardly represented as a cause anymore , which is now mostly only started from the late 11th century and is possibly reflected in the later tradition in the “return of the Heraclids ”. The Heraclids are said to have also taken Messenia. According to the legend, Arcadia was conquered by the Dorians under Kresphontes , from where they invaded Messinia and made the town of Stenyklaros in the north their capital, after which the aforementioned landscape on the Pamisus is named. From the mixing of the Doric immigrants, whose dialect was adopted, with the natives, according to the much later tradition, the Messenian people arose, who established themselves at the Pamisos spring , on the Ithome mountain and in Longa.
Finds from the settlement of Nichoria date back to the so-called Dark Ages , which already existed in the final phase of the Early Helladic and contains layers from the Middle and Late Helladic as well as buildings from the Protogeometric and Geometric periods (10th-8th centuries BC).
Spartan rule
Probably in the 8th / 7th Century BC Rivalries with neighboring Sparta came to a head, leading to the First Messenian War . According to (partly mythical) tradition, this was triggered by the fact that the Spartan king Teleklos was murdered by Messenians in the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis . Although the Messenian king Euphaes and his successor Aristodemus offered energetic resistance, this war is said to have taken place around 720 BC after around 20 years. With the subjugation of Messenia by Sparta and its king Theopompus , who had succeeded in conquering the strategically important mountain fortress Ithome. However, the historicity of the war cannot be considered certain. Later, it is said, the Messenians rose again under Aristomenes , so that the Second Messenian War broke out. The Messenians were supposedly supported by Achaia , Elis and Argos , but were powerless against the hoplite phalanx of the Spartans. The war, which usually lasted for the years 648–631 BC. BC, ended after the Spartans captured the city of Eira after an eleven year siege . The surviving Messenians, insofar as they had not fled the country, were relegated to helots without rights , who from then on had to serve the Spartans in fact as slaves. It should be noted that so far there is no evidence that “the Messenians” understood themselves as a unit at that time; on the contrary, the Spartans' successes seem to have been possible only because the country had broken up into many small communities.
The position of the Messenian helots, on whom the Spartans are said to have ritually declared war every year, seems to have been significantly worse than that of their fellow fate in Laconia . Sparta therefore constantly feared revolt; And not without good reason: there was another uprising in 464 BC. When a severe earthquake devastated the city of Sparta and the Messenians seized the opportunity for a liberation struggle. This uprising also had pan-Greek significance, as Sparta refused an offer of help from Athens , the old ally from the Persian Wars, which deepened the antagonism between the two powerful city-states. The rebels holed up in Ithome again for several years, but had no chance against the Spartans in the long run. At least they managed, with the mediation of the Athenians, that they were granted free retreat. They then settled in Nafpaktos in Lokris Ozolis, on the other side of the Corinthian Gulf.
Renewed independence
The end of the supremacy of Sparta was heralded with the advance of Epaminondas from Thebes to the Peloponnese after his victory at Leuktra in 371 BC. In order to weaken Sparta's position, he invited exiled Messenians to settle back in their homeland and founded it in 369 BC. The city of Messene , while he founded Megalopolis in Arcadia , both bulwarks against possible Spartan expansion plans. According to modern research, there is much to suggest that a Messenian identity and a sense of togetherness have only now developed. But even when united, Messenia was not strong enough on its own to assert itself within the framework of the emerging great powers. Therefore it looked for strong allies, whereby the hostility with Sparta always remained formative. At first it adhered to Philip II of Macedonia , so that Messenia did not participate in the fight against him at Chaeronea in 338 BC. Took part. Messinia later became an important member of the Achaean League . The Spartan tyrant Nabis succeeded in taking the city, but had to withdraw again after Philopoemen and troops from Megalopolis approached. Now it came to war with the Achaean League, in the course of which Philopoimen were captured and in 183 BC. Was executed by the Messenians. However, the Achaean general Lykortas succeeded in taking Messenes the following year, and the Messenians were forced to rejoin the league, with the cities of Abia , Thuria and Pharai breaking away from Messenia and becoming autonomous members of the league .
In the Roman Empire
Meanwhile, the Romans became the dominant power in Greece; since 146 BC All areas of the Achaean League, including Messenia, actually fell under the jurisdiction of the governor of Macedonia and thus came under Roman rule. Since 27 BC Then Messinia was part of the Roman province of Achaea . With the hereditary enemy Sparta, which received certain liberties from the Romans, the Messenians subsequently fought over possession of the western slopes of the Taygetos Mountains (the so-called Ager Dentheliales ); It was not until 25 AD that Emperor Tiberius and the Roman Senate decided the matter in favor of the Messenians. Messinia belonged to the province of Achaea since Diocletian imperial reform to late antiquity Diocese of Macedonia . From Corinth, Christianity spread to Messenia very early. In 395 Visigoths plundered the Peloponnese, and after 600 AD the Slavs penetrated as far as this, which some Slavic place names testify to this day. At the latest with this the history of ancient Messenia ended.
Middle Ages and early modern times
From late antiquity to the beginning of the 13th century, Messenia was part of the Byzantine Empire . In the fourth crusade, the Franks and Venetians conquered Constantinople in 1204. They founded the Latin Empire and its vassal states in the Peloponnese. While the majority of the peninsula belonged to the Principality of Achaia , Venice secured a strategically important base in Methone (Modon). In the neighboring Eurotastal there was a remnant of Byzantine rule in Mistra . The fortresses of Methone / Modon, Kalamata, Koron and Pylos, some of which have survived to this day, bear witness to the conflicts of this epoch. In 1460 the Ottomans conquered almost the entire peninsula, which was then called Morea . The Venetian Methone initially resisted the Ottomans, but was finally conquered by them in 1503. For the next 300 years the region was a rather insignificant province in the Ottoman Empire . From 1821 the Greeks rose up with the support of England, France and Russia and fought for their independence. The decisive victory in the Greek uprising was the Battle of Navarino , just off the Messinian coast.
Modern times
After the founding of modern Greece, Messinia was almost continuously its own prefecture from 1833 to 2010 (gr. Nomos νομός). Since the Greek administrative reform of 2010 , it has formed a regional district with the center Kalamata .
Ancient sites
literature
- Yves Lafond: Messana, Messene 2. In: Der Neue Pauly (DNP). Volume 8, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01478-9 , Sp. 44-48.
- Nino Luraghi : The Ancient Messenians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-85587-7 (current standard work).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Birgitta Eder : On the historical geography of Triphylia in Mycenaean times , in: Fritz Blakolmer, Claus Reinholdt, Jörg Weilhartner, Georg Nightingale (eds.): Austrian research on the Aegean Bronze Age 2009. Files from the conference from March 6 to 7, 2009 in the department Classical Studies at the University of Salzburg (2009), pp. 109–110.
- ↑ Homer, Iliad 2, 591ff.