Tegea
Tegea is a historical city located in southeastern Arcadia, Greece, strategically positioned along the route between Sparta and the Gulf of Corinth. Founded around the 7th century BC, Tegea emerged from the amalgamation of several villages into a single urban center, benefiting from fertile arable land. It holds significant mythological importance, with various legends surrounding its origin, including connections to heroes such as Heracles and the founding figure Tegeates. Tegea played a notable role in ancient Greek warfare, notably participating in the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, where it sided with Sparta against Athens.
Throughout its history, Tegea experienced a series of alliances and conflicts, involved in the evolving political landscape of the region, including brief periods of autonomy and varying allegiances to larger powers such as Sparta and the Achaeans. The city is also renowned for its architectural heritage, particularly the Temple of Athena Alea, which was an important religious site and featured elaborate sculptures. Despite suffering destruction over the centuries, including from Alaric's Visigoths, Tegea maintained its significance into the Byzantine era. Today, archaeological remains, including temples and early Christian basilicas, provide insight into its storied past.
Tegea
A city in southeastern Arcadia (Peloponnese, southern Greece), on the route between Sparta and the Gulf of Corinth
The founder-hero Tegeates was said to have been the father of Gortys (see Gortyna). According to another myth, however, Tegea was established by Arcas' grandson Aleus, whose daughter Auge, ravished by Heracles, became the mother of Telephus, the future king of Mysia and Pergamum. There was also a story that another of Heracles' sons, Hyllus, was killed by Echemus, the king of Tegea. The town is mentioned in the catalog of ships in Homer's Iliad.
At an uncertain date before 600 BC (although some place the event considerably later) the villages of the valley basin, which contained good arable land, amalgamated to become a single town and city. About 560/550, after fighting that may have lasted for twenty years, its citizens induced Sparta to come to terms and form an alliance, and Tegea became a member of the Peloponnesian League. Its heavy (hoplite) infantry was renowned, and in the Persian Wars it provided the second strongest Peloponnesian contingent after that of Sparta, with which it shared the burden of the battle of Plataea (479). In 476/5 the Spartan king Leotychidas II took refuge at Tegea, which in c 471 revolted against the Spartan alliance and joined Argos, but suffered a decisive military setback in the neighborhood. In 468 it revolted once more, supported by all the Arcadian cities except Mantinea, but was again heavily defeated at Dipaea (c 466). During the Peloponnesian War, however, between Athens and Sparta, Tegea sided with the Spartans, out of hostility toward Mantinea, which took the Athenian side (420). At this period the Tegeans began to issue their own coins.
Their history during the fourth and third centuries continued to abound in vicissitudes. In 370 Mantinea helped the Tegean democrats to seize power within their own city and to form an Arcadian League, which soon entered into alliance with Elis and Argos; and in 362 Tegea fought alongside the Thebans at the battle of Mantinea, to break Spartan supremacy. In 316 it resisted a siege by Alexander the Great's successor Cassander. In 267 the Tegeans left the Arcadian League and rejoined Sparta, but subsequently became members of the Aetolian (c 240) and then the Achaean Confederacy (229/8) before returning to Spartan allegiance. In 223 the city was captured by Antigonus III Doson of Macedonia and restored to the Achaeans, but was taken again by Sparta in 218 and 210. In 207, however, the Achaean leader Philopoemen reoccupied Tegea as a base for his operations against the Spartans.
In Roman times the city maintained its position better than other Arcadian communities. The emperor Hadrian was a visitor in AD 124, a date from which Tegea reckoned the commencement of a new civic era. Later in the century Pausanias offered a detailed description of its monuments. Local coinage was revived for a brief period under the dynasty of Septimius Severus (193–217). Many buildings were destroyed by Alaric's Visigoths c 395, but there were still inhabitants in early Byzantine times.
Remains of an early temple of Artemis Knakeatis include column capitals very close in style to those of the Mycenaean past. But the most sacred building in Tegea was a large shrine outside the city dedicated to Athena Alea (345/335 BC), whose statue—together with the tusks of the Calydonian Boar—was removed by Octavian (the future Augustus) after his victory over Antony and Cleopatra VII at Actium (31 BC). This temple—the building in which the Spartans Leotychidas II and Pausanias had sought asylum—was burned down in 395/4 but replaced c 350/340 (?) according to the designs of Scopas, who also created its elaborate sculptures (of which fragments survive in the museums of Tegea and Athens). The Tegeans, according to Pausanias, also possessed a sanctuary of their special protector Athena Poliatis. According to tradition, Athena had vowed to Aleus' son Cepheus that the city should never fall, cutting off some of the hairs of the Gorgon Medusa (bronze snakes) as a guarantee, and giving them to Sterope, the daughter of Aleus, to be kept in a bronze jar.
The protagonists in this myth all appear on local coinage; but the temple, which stood on the acropolis hill (Phylactris or Acra, now Ayios Sostis), has not been found. Nor have other holy places mentioned by Pausanias, e.g. a second shrine of Artemis, who supposedly caused a tyrant of Arcadian Orchomenus, Aristomelidas or Aristocleides (of doubtful historicity), to be murdered, because he had fallen in love with a Tegean girl and had kept her in confinement. The colonnaded agora of the city, however, has been located, and there are remains of Christian basilicas of the fifth century AD; one of them was found to possess a mosaic pavement showing the seasons and the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.