Who are the Tegans?

Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a municipality in modern Arcadia, Greece, with its seat in the village Stadio.

Ancient Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece. The temple burned in 391 BCE and was magnificently rebuilt, to designs by Scopas of Paros, with reliefs of the Calydonian boarhunt in the main pediment.

In the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism to form one city. Tegea was listed in Homer's Catalogue of Ships as one of the cities that contributed ships and men for the Achaean assault on Troy.

For several centuries Tegea served as a bulwark of Arcadia against the expanding power of Sparta; though ultimately subdued about 550 B.C. it was allowed to retain its independence and its Arcadian nationality. During the Persian invasion the Tegeans displayed a readiness unusual among Peloponnesian cities; in the Battle of Plataea they were the first to enter the enemy's camp. A few years later they headed an Arcadian and Argive league against Sparta, but by the loss of two pitched battles (Tegea and Dipaea) were induced to resume their former loyalty (about 468-467).

In 423 they broke out into open war with the Mantineians, and when the latter rebelled against Sparta and allied themselves with Argos and Athens, the Tegeans stood firmly by Sparta's side: in the decisive Battle of Mantineia (418) their troops had a large share in the overthrow of the coalition. After the Battle of Leuctra the philo-Laconian party was expelled with Mantineian help. Tegea henceforth took an active part in the revival of the Arcadian League and the prosecution of the war in alliance with Thebes against Sparta (371-362), and the ultimate defection of Mantineia confirmed it in its federalist tendencies. The foundation of the new federal capital Megalopolis threw Tegea somewhat into the shade. It showed itself hostile to the Macedonians, and in 266 joined the Chremonidean League against Antigonus Gonatas.

To the incorporation of Mantineia into the Achaean League (233) Tegea replied by allying itself with the Aetolians, who in turn made it over to Cleomenes III. of Sparta (228). From the latter it was transferred by Antigonus Doson to the Achaean League (222); in 218 it was again occupied by the Spartans but reconquered in 207 by the Achaean general Philopoemen. In Augustus' time Tegea was the only important town of Arcadia, but its history throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods is obscure; it ceased to exist as a Greek city after the Gothic invasion of 395.

Pausanias visited the city in the second century CE. The "tombs" he saw there were shrines to the chthonic founding daemones: '"There are also tombs of Tegeates, the son of Lykaon, and of Maira, the wife of Tegeates. They say Maira was a daughter of Atlas, and Homer makes mention of her in the passage where Odysseus tells to Alkinous his journey to Hades, and of those whose ghosts he beheld there."

Tegea is now located within the modern town of Alea, also it was referred to as Piali (not to be confused with Palaia Episkopi). Alea is located about 10 kilometers southeast of Tripoli. It is also a municipality whose seat is Stadio.

The province of Megalopoli is bordered to the west and the province of Kynouria is bordered to the east.

 

References:

Authorities

- Strabo pp. 337, 388; Pausanias viii. 44-49, 53-54; Herodotus i. 65 ff., ix. 35, 70; Thucydides v. 32-73; Xenophon, Hellenica, vi., vii.; Polybius ii. 46, 54 ff., v. 17, xi. 18; W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (London, 1830), i. pp. 88-10o, ii. 328-334;

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