Editing Messene (section)

===Reconstitution of the city by the Thebans===

[[File:Stadion Messene2.JPG|thumb|The ancient [[Stadion (running race)|Stadion]]]]
After the defeat of the Spartan army at the [[Battle of Leuctra]] in [[Boeotia]], 371 BC, the [[helot]]s of Messenia revolted yet again against their Spartan overlords. This time the victorious general, [[Epaminondas]], entered the Peloponnesus with an army of Boeotians, [[Argives]] and Messenians living abroad. Epaminondas resolved to support an independent Peloponnesus by building three fortified cities, [[Megalopolis, Greece|Megalopolis]] and [[Mantinea]] in [[Arcadia (ancient region)|Arcadia]] and Messene in Messenia.<ref name=Alcock179-180>This section relies heavily on [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]], ''Guide to Greece'', Book IV, Sections 4.27.5-9, as elucidated by {{citation | first=Susan E | last=Alcock | contribution=Chapter 7 Liberation and Conquest: Hellenistic and Roman Messenia | title=Sandy Pylos: an Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino | editor-first=Jack L | editor-last=Davis | location=Austin | publisher=University of Texas Press | year=1998 | pages=179–180}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NoABCgAAQBAJ&dq=epaminondas+built+three+cities&pg=PT76|title=''Warfare in the Classical World'' by John Warry|isbn=978-1-84994-315-4 |last1=Warry |first1=John |date=25 June 2015 |publisher=Pavilion Books }}</ref>

After all due care to obtain omens from the gods, make sacrifices and invite the spirits of past rulers and heroes to live in Messene, including Queen Messene, Epaminondas invited construction engineers and artisans from anywhere to join him. In 85 days the combined armies and exiles guided by the engineers and artisans had completed the walled city of Messene over the site of the previous Ithome. The city included within its walls Mt. Ithome and enough agricultural land and spring captures to withstand a siege indefinitely. The policy was justified almost immediately. After the departure of the Theban army the Spartans attempted to retake Messenia, which then allied itself with the [[Macedon]]ians. This time the long struggle with Sparta was brought to a final end by the Macedonian conquest of Greece.

After the departure of the allies, the new city and the fate of Messenian independence were left in the hands of the Messenian exiles, who had returned primarily from Sicily and North Africa. Apparently, they had maintained a transitory community in exile, or diaspora, for some 300 years.{{citation needed|date=July 2021}} They spoke a Doric dialect. Pausanias reports, "even to this day they preserve it in its purity better than anywhere else in the Peloponnese."<ref>[[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]], IV.27.11.</ref> As the Arcadians are known to have spoken a dialect closely related to [[Mycenaean Greek]], the exiles restored were not from the original Achaean refugees of the return of the Heracleidae, but were the Doricised population that developed in the 7th century BC under the subsequently dispossessed Heraclid dynasty of Messene.