The Messenians were an ancient people who lived in the southwestern Peloponnese. For more than three centuries, they suffered under the oppressive rule of the Spartan polis to their east, occupying the lowest rung in Spartan society as helots. But the true social and cultural identity of the Messenians in this time remains one of the great mysteries of Ancient Greece.
While the exact dates are unknown, it is thought that the Spartans first swept across the Taygetos ridge into the fertile lands of Messenia in the 8th century BC. This invasion began the First Messenian War, which would prove a defining moment in Spartan history. For around 20 years the Spartans struggled to outmanoeuvre their enemy, until a successful siege of the Messenian stronghold on Mt. Ithome led to their capitulation and the alleged suicide of the Messenian king. The importance of this victory cannot be downplayed. Now in control of the fertile lands of Messenia, agriculture became the basis of the Spartan economy, allowing it to concentrate time and resources on its military.
The Messenians were reduced to the status of helots — serfs who were tied to the land on which they worked. They were not, however, the first to suffer this fate; the inhabitants of the region of Laconia, which surrounded the Spartan capital, had also been placed under helotage after being conquered by the city-state. Making up 70% of the population, the helots far outnumbered their Spartiate masters. According to Herodotus, there were seven helots for every Spartan around the time of the battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Each year the Spartans demanded a fixed share of the produce harvested by the helots, estimated to be around 50%. In addition to this extortion, helots were also ritualistically abused and humiliated. Each Autumn, for example, the Spartans declared war on the defenceless helots, allowing them to be killed for military training purposes. During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, the historian Thucydides relates an incident where 2,000 helots were massacred after being told they would be freed.
While the system of helotage provided an obvious economic benefit to the Spartans, their dependence on the numerically superior helots fuelled a constant fear of revolt which pervaded Spartan society. We know from the Spartan poet Tyrateus that a Second Messenian War took place in the latter part of the 7th century BC owing to a full-scale Messenian revolt. While the uprising was ultimately suppressed within a few years, the threat of future rebellion prompted the Spartans to create a state apparatus of intimidation. Thucydides writes that “most Spartan institutions have always been designed with a view to security against the Helots” — which included the creation of a secret police called the krypteia to monitor helot activity.
The question often raised is the extent to which the Messenians retained a distinct cultural identity during their long period of servitude. Modern scholarship is torn between two camps. ‘Continuists’ assert there is a connection between the Messenians ‘of old’ who fought against the Spartans in the 8th century BC, and the Messenians who were eventually liberated by Thebes after the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. ‘Discontinuists’ argue that Spartan rule would have cut off the ‘new’ Messenians from the cultural inheritance of their ancestors.
Continuists emphasise the importance of oral tradition in passing down Messenian traditions from generation to generation, and point to the archaeological record as proof of this dissemination. For instance, recent archaeological evidence has shown that under Spartan rule Messenians lived communally in small settlements, and that traditional Messenian sanctuaries continued to operate — highlighted by the dedication of votives in this period. On the other hand, influential discontinuists emphasise how Spartan oppression would have led to the degradation of Messenian culture, and that the transformative impact of liberation itself would have altered Messenian beliefs of their own identity. They assert that the ‘new’ Messenians to some extent invented their own history to make up for the interruption caused by the Spartan occupation. As evidence of this, they point to Pausanias’s account of the history of the Messenians in chapter four of his Description of Greece. Pausanias spends little time recounting the Messenians’ time as helots, instead harking back to the ‘old’ Messenians and the glorious deeds of the quasi-mythological figure Aristomenes during the Second Messenian War. This glaring omission can be explained in part by his apparent use of sources from no earlier than the 4th century BC, written probably by the Messenians themselves. Furthermore, in the ancient city of Messene, the centre of the Messenian world post-liberation, there are no commemorations spanning the Messenians’ period as helots, supporting the argument for some kind of discontinuity between the ‘new’ Messenians and the Messenians ‘of old’.
As the scholar Nino Luraghi rightly declares, however, both approaches fail to address the central question of what the Messenian identity even was in the first place. Indeed, both schools presuppose that the Messenians ‘of old’ were a united people with a culture distinct from their Laconian neighbours. On further analysis, however, one realises that the Messenians and Laconians were both ethnically Dorians. Moreover, as Luraghi points out, while the fantastical account of Pausanias asserts that the Messenians spoke the purest form of Doric Greek in the Peloponnese, the more grounded writings of Thucydides claim that the Messenians were such effective stirrers of trouble during the Peloponnesian War precisely because they were indistinguishable from Laconians in speech.
The complexity does not end there. As has been noted, not all helots were Messenian as a large proportion also came from Laconia. This is a crucial distinction to make — it is not possible to conflate Messenian attitudes with the attitudes of the helot class as a whole, and vice-versa. We have considerable evidence of some instances of a positive, cooperative relationship between helots and Spartans. At the Battle of Leuctra, for example, we are told that some 6,000 helots were called upon to hold off the Theban army,
The distinction between Messenian and Laconian helots helps to partially explain these contradictions, as we have ample evidence to suggest that Messenian helots were less cooperative than their Laconian counterparts. This is in keeping with the continuists’ argument of a unique Messenian identity, spearheaded by a lingering memory of freedom in the not-so-distant past. The most serious helot revolts seem to have been led by Messenians.
For example, in 465 BC helot rebels took advantage of an earthquake in Sparta to rise in a general revolt. The helots built a stronghold on Mt. Ithome where they held out for around ten years until the uprising was finally quelled. Thucydides suggests in a famous passage describing the event that most of the rebels were Messenians. Moreover, the helots who left after the revolt under truce terms were resettle by the Athenians in Naupactus, and presented themselves as Messenians. Three decades later, during the Peloponnesian War, most helot defectors were Messenian, rather than Laconian. These defectors, including the Messenians of Naupactus, helped support the Athenians at the Battle of Sphacteria in 425 BC. After the Athenians won the Archidamian War in the late 5th century BC, the Messenians and Naupactians dedicated a monumental statue of the goddess Nike to commemorate the victory, evidence of their support for the Athenians against the Spartans.
Ultimately, the precise nature of the Messenian identity remains unclear. It would seem, as the scholar Figueira argues, that the common thread of Messenian culture during the Spartan period was not defined by geographical boundary nor cultural lineage, but embodied by a spirit of resistance. As such, perhaps all rebel helots were accepted as Messenians, regardless of their true ancestry. This argument, if true, would bring much sense to a complex debate, and go a long way in unravelling the true identity of the Messenians.
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/3246204?seq=2
https://www.spartareconsidered.com/messenian-war-s-.html
https://classicalwisdom.com/politics/wars/the-history-of-the-messenian-wars/