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Who are the Messinians?

In the Homeric poems eastern Messenia is represented as under the rule of Menelaus of Sparta, while the western coast is under the Neleids of Pylos, but after Menelaus’s death the Messenian frontier was pushed eastwards as far as Taygetus.

During the Bronze Age Messenia was a bureaucratic, agricultural kingdom ruled by the wanax[1] at Pylos. The Messenians spoke Mycenaean Greek, and worshipped the Greek gods at local shrines.

During the great Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, around 1200 B.C. to 1000 B.C., as of most of the southern Peloponnese, Messenia too was taken over by the Dorians. The invasion does not seemed to imply the blood letting we today would normally think of when an invasion takes place. The Dorians blended with the previous inhabitants produced an amalgamated Messenian tribe with a strong national pride. As the Arcadian language was a direct and conservative descendent of Mycenaean Greek, it is more likely that the Dorians leaned towards the native lanuage.

The relative wealth of Messenia in fertile soil and favourable climate attracted the expansionistic neighbouring Spartans. War broke out—in consequence, it was said, of the murder of the Spartan king Teleclus by the Messenians - which, in spite of the heroism of King Euphaes and his successor Aristodemus ended in the subjection of Messenia to Sparta c720 B.C. Two generations later the Messenians revolted and under the leadership of Aristomenes kept the Spartans at bay for some seventeen years (648 B.C.—631 B.C., according to Grote). However, the stronghold of Ira (Eira) fell after a siege of eleven years.

As the object of the Spartans was to increase the number of lots of land for their citizens, many of the conquered Messenians (those who did not manage to leave the area) were reduced to the condition of Helots. Servitude was hard, though their plight might have been harder, for they paid to their lords only one-half of the produce of the lands which they tilled. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus describes how the Messenians endured the insolence of the masters:

As asses worn by loads intolerable,
So Them did stress of cruel force compel,
Of all the fruits the well-tilled land affords,
The moiety to bear to their proud lords.

The next revolt broke out in 464 BC, when a severe earthquake destroyed Sparta and caused great loss of life. The insurgents defended themselves for some years on the rock-citadel of Ithome, as they had done in the first war; but eventually they had to leave the Peloponnese and were settled by the Athenians at Naupactus in the territory of the Locri Ozolae. After the Battle of Leuctra (371 BC), Epaminondas invited the exiled Messenians scattered in Italy, Sicily, Africa and elsewhere to return to their country. The city of Messene was founded in 369 B.C. to be the capital of the country and, like Megalopolis in Arcadia, became a powerful check on Sparta. Other towns, as well, were founded or rebuilt at this time, though a great part of the land still remained very sparsely populated. Although quite independent, Messenia never became really powerful or able to stand without external support.

After the fall of the Theban power, to which it had owed its foundation, it became an ally of Philip II of Macedon and took no part in the battle of Chaeronea 338 B.C. Subsequently it joined the Achaean League, and we find Messenian troops fighting along with the Achaeans and Antigonus Doson at Sellasia in 222 B.C. Philip V sent Demetrius of Pharos to seize Messene, but the attempt failed and cost the life of Demetrius. Soon afterwards the Spartan tyrant Nabis succeeded in taking the city, but was forced to retire by the timely arrival of Philopoemen and the Megalopolitans. A war afterwards broke out with the Achaean League, during which Philopoemen was captured and put to death by the Messenians in 183 B.C., but Lycortas took the city in the following year, and it again joined the Achaean League, though much weakened by the loss of Abia, Thuria and Pherae, which broke loose from it and entered the League as independent members.

In 146 B.C. the Messenians, together with the other states of Greece, were brought directly under Roman sway by L. Mummius. For centuries there had been a dispute between Messenia and Sparta about the possession of the Ager Dentheliales on the western slope of Taygetus: after various decisions by Philip of Macedon, Antigonus, Mummius, Caesar, Antony, Augustus and others, the question was settled in 25 by Tiberius and the Senate in favour of the Messenians (Tac. Ann. iv. 43).

 

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 Note#1: The Mycenaean term for "king"; pronounced "wanax". The funny initial letter, "F", is called digamma and shows up in Archaic Greek epigraphy (papyrus and tablet writings). The sound, if not the letter form, and its linguistic equivalent initially show up in the heiroglyphic writings (Linear B) of Bronze Age Greece both at Pylos, in the far west of Greece (Peloponnese), and at Knossos in north central Crete. In literature, digamma shows up in the Greek of Homer's Iliad although the digamma there is a "rough breathing" in the form "(h)anax", where the term is linked to an important individual at Pylos. In Classical and Hellenistic Greek, the F continues in this aspirant, or "h" sound, form at the beginning of many Greek words.