Excursions



 


Ancient Messini
Ancient Messini
Castle Entrance
Traditional Houses
 



Municipality of Kalamata

Communication office

              “Messene, the most beautiful in all of Greece”

 

369 BC: An entire people, the Messenians, dispersed all around the Ancient World, return to their country, after 400 years. A country they only know through legends.

They migrate back to the land of their ancestors, to the promised land.

“The hills are softer there. The mountains more impressive.

It is green even in summer. And there’s plenty of water there”.

 They migrate back and turn the city of their dream into reality: Messene, the most beautiful in all of Greece

For 400 years the enemy is Sparta. Spartans and Messenians are both Dorians. Messenians  cultivate land and Spartans war. Messenians live in peace, participate to the Olympic Games and often win. Spartans, having to fight all the time, need helots: slaves to grow barley for them, press wine, make cheese, harvest figs, press oil from olives. Helots are needed and quickly.

In 740 BC, the Spartans struck at the height of the Olympic celebrations and invaded Messenia. The 1st Messenian War started. It lasted 20 years. The Messenians surrendered. They worked like slaves for the Spartans but a strong desire for freedom was growing. They instilled the idea into their children. It created a generation of rebellious young people, one of them Aristomenes. 
On the second half of the 6th century, Aristomenes and the Messenians (2nd Messenian War), with fighters from Arcadia, Argolid and Elis-the land of Olympia-, struck and scared the Spartans but not for long. Using all available means to fight Aristomenes, the Spartans resorted to buying his allies. The Messenians were left on their own and were once again defeated by the enemy.
A wave of refugees started its journey towards Arcadia, Nafpaktos, mainly towards the colonies, in Sicily and in North Africa-Libye.

After the Peloponnesian War (Athens against Sparta, 431-404 BC). Sparta rules Greece. But another force appears, Thebians and their ruler Epaminondas, gentle, refined, well versed in philosophy.
In 371, in Leuctra, Sparta, having spread fear and terror across the Peloponnese for 400 years, is utterly defeated by Thebians.
Right after the victory in Leuctra, Epaminondas invites all Messenians around the world to return home again to the land of their ancestors. They needed no further encouragement.

The settlers need water as well as security for their town to really flourish. The Ithome forming a natural barrier towards the East and the valley in the west seems perfect for the new city.
The city is built after the Hippodamian system (Hippodamus of Miletus), a concept of urban development with standardized organization of plots and land, houses and roads.

Building protective walls is the absolute priority, the agora, the theatre, functioning as cultural centre, the Asclepeiion with its temples and administrative buildings and the stadium will follow.

The Messenians have a thing about equality, as Dorians do, and so every family is allotted an equal plot of land to build on.
Planting is underway in the centre of town, but existing trees are left in place in many areas, too. An army of gardeners is working its way along the walls, which will soon provide safety in two ways. Even under a prolonged siege the Messenians will not have to starve.

Messene quickly became a very rich commercial centre, connected to three important ports. Its citizens had after all brought back plenty of wealth when they returned to the motherland from the various colonies. Via Kyparissia and Pylos on the west coast they established and maintained contact with Italy.

The town was more than one and a half kilometers wide and extended across 750 meters from north to south. At least 30.000 inhabitants would have crowded about in Messene in its peak, in the 2nd century BC.

The city wall, or better the area wall (with watchtowers), enclosing not just the built-up area but also enough space for farmers leaving outside, is nine and a half kilometers long and follows the hilltops in the terrain. The Messenians have to keep on fighting off the Spartans, but by now do so very skillfully. This admirable construction is a perfect example of the fortress architecture of the Ancient Greeks two gates: one pointing towards Sparta, the Laconian gate and another in the north, the Arcadian gate, a circular gatehouse at whose outer passage started the road to Arcadian Megalopolis, the other big city Epaminondas founded.

The ancient Greeks used to say that a settlement may be called ‘a city’ as long as it has a theatre, a gymnasium and an agora. Messini had all of them in their best ways!

In the Agora, the market area, the Messenians celebrate the Olympian Gods, but they also worship one more local goddess: Messene, first queen and mythical primeval mother of them, after whom the city is named.

Temple of Zeus Soter, Shrine of Demeter, Artemision, Shrine of Asclepius, son of Apollo and Arsinoe.

The public buildings:

The theatre for 10.000 spectators and luxurious actors’ accommodation (some of the rooms contain floor mosaics)

The fountain-house of Arsinoe, the town’s water supply

The Main entrance to the temple complex

Bouleuterion, where the elders deliberate and administer justice seated in 76 marble armchairs.

The small amphitheatre used for serious debates (5 tribes plus the foreigners).

Damophon’s tomb, Messene’s greater artist. (A column with inscriptions was found in which 7 cities express their great respect for the artist, including the islands of Milos and Kefalonnia).

Memorial to female warriors

In ancient Greece social circumstances are not so easy for women. The more powerful the men become, the more the women weaken. This is not the case in Messene, though. Heroines, as well as heroes, are buried in the central cemetery in the middle of the city.

A young woman would be buried together with her perfume, the cult concerning the body was especially sacred and beauty-care was an absolute obligation for the Hellenes.

Coins are also engraved along with the dead bodies; coins are the fee for Charon who poled the deceased across the river Acharon into the Underworld. The heads of the drachmas help the archaeologists to determine the year of death.

 The majestic propylaea of the sports complex: the entrance to a further highly sacred area. That of the cult of the body.

Hercule’s dom, tombs and treasure trove, the Gymnasium and the Stadium.

Sport is like religion in Antiquity. And there is no celebration in ancient Greece without sports. From the stands, the spectators watch the athletes in training for the Olympic Games,

A greek gymnasium is first and foremost, a hall for gymnastics and only very secondarily a school. Young men were prepared for an adult life over a period of 3 years. Reading and writing, arithmetic and geometry, literature and philosophy but physical education was considered more important.

Native Messenians attended this school., Greeks from other parts of the country, too, and so did youths from Roman homes in the later time. On average, about a hundred boys per age-groups received instruction in Messene. With 3 years to complete a total of 300 students. (Students names on the columns).

The tombs outside the Arcadian Gate. The Romans who did not care for graves inside the town extended the cemetery at the Arcadian gate.  

The Shrine of Zeus on the Ithome. in 746 AD a monastery, Voulkano, was founded. It is abandoned now. In the wall of the monastery there are building elements of the ancient place of worship. Up here the Messenians entrenched themselves with sacrifices to Zeus after victorious campaigns.

In 336 BC Alexander the Great becomes king and with him Greece expands greatly. Greek empire stretches as far as India. Messene is developing into a majestic metropolis, soon considered across Alexander’s vast empire as the most beautiful in all of Greece.

In 146 BC, Greece becomes a Roman province. Messene is still inhabited by Messenians, but the Romans alter the town to suit their own purposes. Only gladiator fights now take place in the stadium. With Rome demanding vast tax-payments, Messene is getting poorer.

Nero changes all that. He was not as bad as his reputation suggests. He admired the Greeks but despised the Spartans. The Messenians feeling grateful for this change in attitude, built , at least, three statues dedicated to him in the Agora. In 67 AD he visits Greece and is heard thinking out loud about moving the capital of the Roman Empire to Olympia.

The two cultures, Greek and Roman, were not hostile to each other and coexisted in a peaceful and mutually fruitful way. Marriages between Romans and Greeks were extremely rare exceptions.

 Late-Roman era: late Roman stoa and a luxury villa with wonderful mosaics

 Messene’s gymnasium continues to do a good job. By now regarded as a breeding ground of champions far beyond Greece’ s borders, increasing numbers of foreign students are drawn towards the southwest corner of the Peloponnese. Non-Greek instructors train future Olympic champions here.

 In the Messene of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD the old gods continue to be worshipped, but the sacrifices are getting smaller all the time. The Christians smash all the statues of nudes to pieces and build churches where temples once stood.

In Messene –far from both Romes- Zeus, Poseidon and their lot are held on to for a long time, but they seem to have lost their power.

 4th century AD. The early-Byzantine settlement can only hold out for 200 years. Then the Klepsydra spring completely inundates the area. It will be covered under nine meters of alluvial soil when, in the 19th century, archaeologists finally start digging here. In this doomsday atmosphere hordes from the north devastate the city: Alaric and the Goths, in 395). When an earthquake brings down the old splendor there is no strength or money left to repair the damage. In the 8th century the Christians erect the first large basilica. But it remains the only one.

 It was the French Scientific Team directed by A. Blouet that first excavated the site, in 1829. Thirty years later, the Greek Archaeological Society continued the excavations. Systematic and in depth excavations were done under the direction of A. Orlandos 100 years later until 1979, the year that Askipieion came to light. In 1985, the Greek Archaeological Society in Athens, sent Professor Petros Themelis to Messene for the first time and a year later made him director of the “Messene Research Project”. He has been directly involved in the excavations of the Ancient Messene in each of the 19 years that followed. He is doing a marvelous work. The largest in scale excavations taking place in Greece at the moment are in Ancient Messini. Moving artifacts (sculptures, inscriptions, vases e.c.t.) as well as great buildings come to light every day. At the same time, the conservation and the restoration of the ancient buildings is taking place so that no ancient buildings will be destroyed in any way in the future.

MUNICIPALITY OF  KALAMATA
28, ARISTOMENOUS STREET
24 100 KALAMATA GREECE
Tel.: +3027210 60706 Fax: +3027210 60760
E-mail: depak@kalamataculture.gr