MESSENIA
“A land where fruit trees blossom, myriad fountains flow
And flocks and herds are grazing in the meadows fair.
Nor wintry are the winds of winter, nor too near
The flaming Sun comes driving in his four-horse car.”
EURIPIDES, Fragment of the _Cresphontes_.
Telemachus, in search of his father, sailed down the western coast of
the Peloponnesus, landed at “sandy Pylos,” the home of Nestor, and by
this old friend was sent across country to Menelaus at Lacedæmon. The
long drive was broken by a night at Pheræ. According to a tradition that
still has its supporters the modern site of Pylos is Navarino, in the
centre of the western coast of Messenia, while Pheræ is represented by
Kalamata, on the northeastern shore of the Messenian Gulf. A growing
tendency to push Nestor’s realm further up the coast, out of Messenia,
and to place Pheræ in Arcadia is due, in part, to the discrepancy
between the lot of modern travellers on their way from Kalamata to
Sparta and that of the two young princes of the Homeric story.
Telemachus and the son of Nestor mounted an inlaid chariot at early
dawn, their two horses, touched lightly by the whip, flew eagerly
onward, and at sunset, as all the ways were darkening, the wheat-bearing
plain of Lacedæmon opened before their eyes. Moderns, whether merchants
or sightseers, must spend an equally long or longer day in riding on
mules or plodding horses over the difficult paths of Mount Taygetus,
whose massive bulk forms an almost impenetrable barrier between Messenia
and Laconia. The narrow bridle paths of the Gorge of the Nedon, which is
the trade route, and the savage beauty of the Langada Gorge exclude
highways for royal cars and on-rushing steeds.
Whether or no Kalamata was once an insignificant way-station between two
princely domains, it is now one of the most prosperous towns of the new
nation, separated from Athens only by a day’s ride in an express train,
and the natural starting point for excursions in Messenia.
From this rich southern plain it is easy to reach the confines of the
more northern plain, which was the country’s heart. Here was the capital
of its prehistoric kings, and here about the mountain fortresses of
Ithome and Eira occurred the chief events of its pitiable historic life.
Ithome is one of the highest fortified mountains in Greece, but can be
ascended by roadways which only below the fortress peaks change to rocky
paths, insecure even for mountain horses. From this summit, by the
favour of Zeus of the open sky whose sanctuary it once was, all Messenia
can be overlooked. It is indeed a lovely country. The mountain ranges to
the north and east have reserved their sterner influences for other
peoples, while the open sea along the western and southern coasts
bestows the largess of a perfect climate. The country between Kalamata
and Ithome is one of great fertility and beauty. Orchards of gray-green
olives are broken by dark cypresses, while lemon and orange groves,
unknown to Euripides, add their peculiar radiance to the landscape. In
the spring, almond trees delicately lift their pink blossoms above long
hedges of glistening green cactus, and the green grass of the wayside
fields nurses buttercups and scarlet anemones, purple and yellow irises,
and thick clusters of deep blue flowers.
The loveliness of Messenia decided her history, which was one of
passionate and futile resistance to foreign greed. The Spartan poet
Tyrtæus said that the soil of Messenia was “good to plough and good to
plant.” Long before his day the Spartans had stretched out their hands
for it, and from the eighth century to the fourth they never
relinquished their grasp. During the more important epochs of Greek
history Messenia was but a province of Laconia.
But it was a province capable at any time of revolt. The two early
“Messenian Wars,” of the eighth and seventh centuries, were the stepping
stones by which Sparta rose to a place of power in the Peloponnesus.
Beset by agrarian difficulties, she needed more land, and the most
fertile land of Greece was to be had for a little blood. Of the second
war we have a few fragmentary memorials in the contemporaneous martial
verses of Tyrtæus. But in general both wars would be almost obliterated
from history were it not for the fact that Pausanias, having access to
some late prose and poetry which repeated the native legends, in an
unwonted mood of imaginative sympathy gave himself up to recounting the
pathetic efforts of Messenia toward freedom. There is the usual
material: heroes and fortresses, Aristodemus and Ithome in the first
war, Aristomenes and Eira in the second; oracles and portents; fair
maidens and faithless wives; kings and cowherd lovers; storms and
marvellous escapes; courage and despair. Aristomenes, as Pausanias says,
shines out like Achilles in the Iliad, “the first and greatest glory of
the Messenian name.” But in spite of his heroic and prolonged defence of
Eira, the Messenians by the sixth century were serfs of the Spartans,
paying to their masters a half of all the produce raised by their own
hands from their own farms,—asses, Tyrtæus called them, worn by
intolerable loads.
In the fifth century they took advantage of an earthquake and an
insurrection of slaves at Sparta to rise once more and encamp on Ithome.
They were defeated and obliged to choose between serfdom and exile. But
by this time their petty rebellions had become important in the affairs
of the greater powers of Greece. Ithome was the rock on which the
political life of Cimon of Athens suffered shipwreck.
During the next ninety years the nationalism of Messenia was a homeless
and restless force, seeking, wherever it might, to harm Sparta and to
glorify itself. During the Peloponnesian War the Messenians by their
knowledge of the country materially aided the Athenians in the dramatic
battle of Sphacteria off the Messenian Pylos, and the surrender of the
Spartans, Thucydides says, amazed all Hellas.
At last, about 370 B. C., the “Poland of Greece” found a friend in the
man whose practical idealism was dominating the period. Epaminondas, in
pursuance of his policy of weakening Sparta by reviving other
Peloponnesian states, determined to found a new capital of Messenia,
Messene by name, on the slopes of Ithome. Ruins of this city still
exist, and the most imposing of them, the fortification known as the
Arcadian Gateway, is famous as an example of skilful Greek engineering.
Lying toward Megalopolis, also a beneficiary of Epaminondas, it seemed
to reunite in a new hope the old Arcadia and the old Messenia whose
friendship had been so futile. To-day, still a strangely impressive
monument, it may serve as a symbol of Messenia’s share in the spirit of
Greece. Impotent in literature and art and unsuccessful even in war, the
men of this country conserved through many generations and vicissitudes
that intense national feeling which existed at the core of every Greek
state, shaping Greek history and penetrating Greek literature. Wherever
history became large and literature became universal the force of
national consciousness was likely to become diffused, but in a state
like Messenia it was obscured neither by other national gifts nor by its
own success.
The Messenians, Pausanias tells us, “wandered for nearly three hundred
years far from Peloponnese, and in all that time they are known to have
dropped none of their native customs, nor did they unlearn their Doric
tongue.” After the victory at Leuctra “the Thebans sent messengers to
Italy, Sicily and the Euesperitæ inviting all Messenians in any part of
the world whither they had strayed to return to Peloponnese. They
assembled faster than could have been expected, for they yearned towards
the land of their fathers and hatred of Sparta still rankled in their
breasts.” And for them Epaminondas made a new city, sending “men who
were skilled in laying out streets, building houses and sanctuaries and
erecting city walls.” The Arcadians sent victims for the sacrifices. The
exiles, home at last, prayed to their ancient gods and called upon their
ancient heroes to come and dwell among them. “But loudest of all was the
cry for Aristomenes, and the whole people joined in it.” This call from
his own people has been, we may hope, full compensation to his dead ears
for the dumb or sneering lips of history.