Ancient Messene

Messene was an ambitious queen,daughter of the King of Argos and wife of Polycaon,king of Lakonia.When her father-in-law died,her husband’s brother inherited the throne in Lakonia.She had to take action if she didn’t want to be wed to an anonymous man:She gathered an armed force from both Argos and Lakonia and once they were ready,they invaded a nearby territory.This territory was then named Messene,after the aggressive princess of Argos and her cult as local heroine was established there.A queen gave birth and identity to the city and its citizens in the distant 10th century.

Zeus was the chief divinity of the Messenians. They would like Zeus to have been born and brought up on Mt. Ithome, where a temple was erected in his honor. Hence the epithet Ithomatas….True story begins: Pythia, priestess of the Oracle of Delfi, once said: The gods would give Messene to those who the first should place a hundred tripods before the altar of Zeus Ithomatas. A Spartan having obtained information of this answer, introduced himself secretly into Ithome, and at night offered to the god a hundred small tripods of clay, which he had concealed in a bag. Shortly after Ithome fell in the hands of the Spartans for 4 centuries.

They put a stop to the city’s growth, but a new era started with the Theban General Epameinondas in 369 B.C who built the city from scratch on the ruins of the older city. Epameinondas defeated the Spartans, he marched into the lands of Messene and freed the Messenian helots from Spartan rule. He then invited the scattered Messenians who had fled to Italy, Africa and other parts of Greece back to their homeland. The city evolved into an independent political entity and shaped its own national identity.

All buildings were abandoned between 360-370 AD due to the economic decline of the Roman Empire and the final disintegration which was aggravated by barbaric raids and earthquakes.