Date: April 18, 2005
Partners for the day: Caleb Chaplain (text) Peter Van Buren (images)
Site(s): Messene
Museum(s):
Principal Buildings/Monuments: Asklepion
Time Spent on Each Site: from ca. 11:30 to ca. 3:30 [ 4 hours]
Weather: Pleasant this morning in Sparta but fairly cold with scattered showers the rest of the day.
We left Sparta behind this morning at around 8:45 and headed towards the site of Messene. The sun was shining in Sparta and it seemed to bode well for the rest of our day. We drove over the mountains towards Messene just as the ancient Spartans would have except that they did not have buses. After exploring the walls that surrounded the ancient site, a little rain fell. After exploring the buildings of the site, however, rain began falling heavily and we canceled our trip to a castle and the beach. We, therefore, made our way from this site straight to our new hotel in Pylos.
The site of Messene was very surprising in its grandeur and exceeded my expectations. In previous classes, information concerning the Messenians was usually limited to brief descriptions of their revolts and role as helots under the Spartans. I arrived at the site not expecting to find anything impressive at all. During the Late Classical period, however, fortune took a better turn for the people of Messenia. In 369 BC, Epaminondas restored the Messenians to their land and helped them start the construction of a capital. This capital, Messene, is an extremely impressive site that flourished and remained important from the Late Classical period even into Roman times. This fact came as a surprise since all prior knowledge of the Messenians revolved around the fact that the country had been under Spartan control.
The fortification walls of Messene are extremely impressive in size and structure. This wall surrounds not just a small urban center, but follows the mountain ridge also surrounding fields, farms, and pastureland. This made it almost an impossibility to besiege the city because the Messenians could be self-sufficient. The walls are very thick and have towers periodically along the wall. The towers mainly have two levels inside. On the bottom level, soldiers shot ballistas enabling them to attack at a very far range because of the power of the weapons and their positioning high on the mountain ridge. On the top floor, soldiers used catapults again to attack at long range. The sheer magnitude of the walls was an impressive feature that was unexpected at Messene.
The grandeur of the buildings at Messene is even more of a shock to my preconceived notions than the fortification walls. The theater of Messene was one of the largest in antiquity with a width of about 98.6 meters! The Arsinoe fountain house made use of a 40-meter long cistern! This is massive in comparison to the fountain house that we had previously seen in the Kerameikos. The Askepieion Complex is very well laid out and contains many buildings such as a Temple of Asklepios, a Temple of Artemis, and a sebasteion, which is a temple for emperor worship. To the North of the Asklepieion Complex are the foundations for a very large Late Roman stoa, which is over 80 meters long! The gymnasium and stadium are also quite large and impressive because of the large stoas that surround them.
Upon entering the site, I expected to find the boring ruins of a city that was not even that impressive in its actual period of use. Messene, however, proved to be much more than I initially had imagined. I learned about the greatness of Messene both historically and architecturally after 369 BC. There seems to be a tendency in my mind to envision sites based on how they existed during the Classical period. I often am surprised by the remains of many structures at various sites that were flourishing after the Classical period. Messene was no exception to this rule. I was both surprised and impressed to see what became of the poor Spartan helots after 369 BC.