Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- List of illustrations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Delimiting the Messenians
- Chapter 3 The return of the Heraclids and the mythical birth of Messenia
- Chapter 4 The conquest of Messenia through the ages
- Chapter 5 Messenia from the Dark Ages to the Peloponnesian War
- Chapter 6 The Western Messenians
- Chapter 7 The earthquake and the revolt: from Ithome to Naupaktos
- Chapter 8 The liberation of Messene
- Chapter 9 Being Messenian from Philip to Augustus
- Chapter 10 Messenians in the Empire
- Chapter 11 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- Index of inscriptions
- Archaeological sites
- General index
Chapter 4 - The conquest of Messenia through the ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- List of illustrations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Delimiting the Messenians
- Chapter 3 The return of the Heraclids and the mythical birth of Messenia
- Chapter 4 The conquest of Messenia through the ages
- Chapter 5 Messenia from the Dark Ages to the Peloponnesian War
- Chapter 6 The Western Messenians
- Chapter 7 The earthquake and the revolt: from Ithome to Naupaktos
- Chapter 8 The liberation of Messene
- Chapter 9 Being Messenian from Philip to Augustus
- Chapter 10 Messenians in the Empire
- Chapter 11 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- Index of inscriptions
- Archaeological sites
- General index
Summary
Thanks to the fourth book of Pausanias' Description of Greece, there is virtually no event or complex of events in archaic Greek history for which the evidence of the ancient literary sources can be said to approach, in terms of comprehensiveness and level of detail, that for the Spartan conquest of Messenia. This is slightly embarrassing. Ephorus said that narratives of the most distant past are the more credible the less detailed they are (FgrHist 70 F 9), and a modern reader would concur, albeit with some qualification. However, Pausanias' narrative of the First Messenian War, which he dated to the second quarter of the eighth century, takes some twenty-four pages of Greek. It may help us absorb the implications of this fact if we recall that Pausanias was farther away in time from that war than we are from John Lackland and the battle of Bouvines. Of course, he certainly had recourse to the work of earlier authors, but the fact that his narrative is more than four times longer than all the remaining evidence for that war does not encourage optimism.
In a nutshell, this peculiar situation is at the root of all problems that affect the reconstruction of an archaic history of Messenia, not to mention Sparta.
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- The Ancient MesseniansConstructions of Ethnicity and Memory, pp. 68 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008