First Messenian War
| First Messenian War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Messenian Wars | |||||||||
 View over Messenia from the summit of Mt. Ithome |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Sparta | Messenia | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Alcmenes, Polydorus: Agiad kings; Theopompus: Eurypontid king | Euphaes, king of Messenia, son of Antiochus, grandson of Phintas; Cleonnis | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| Maximum of 3,000 infantry, 1,500 cavalry | Roughly the same as the Spartan | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 1,800 | 2,700 | ||||||||
The First Messenian War was a war between Messenia and Sparta. It began in 743 BC and ended in 724 BC, according to the dates given by Pausanias.
The war continued the rivalry between the Achaeans and the Dorians that had been initiated by the Return of the Heracleidae (Dorian Invasion). Both sides utilized an explosive incident to settle the rivalry by full-scale war. The war was prolonged into 20 years. The result was a Spartan victory. Messenia was depopulated by emigration of the Achaeans to other states. Those who did not emigrate were reduced socially to helots, or serfs. Their descendants were held in hereditary subjection for centuries until the Spartan state finally needed them for defense.
Pausanias says that the opening campaign was a surprise attack on Ampheia by a Spartan force commanded by Alcmenes, Agiad king of Sparta, in the second year of the 9th Olympiad. The end of the war was the abandonment of Mt. Ithome in the first year of the 14th Olympiad. The time of the war is so clearly fixed at 743/742 BC through 724/722 BC that other events in Greek history are often dated by it. Pausanias evidently had access to a chronology of events by Olympiad. The details of the war are not so certain but Pausanias gives an evaluation of his two main sources, the epic poem by Rianos of Bene for the first half and the prose history of Myron of Priene for the second half. Nothing survives now of the sources except fragments.
A second method of dating presented by John Coldstream takes archaeology into consideration as well as other literary evidence, arriving at somewhat later dates. Argos had entered the war on the Messenian side toward the end of it. They decided to eliminate Asine in reprisal for its assistance to Sparta during the Spartan invasion of Argos. After the war Sparta placed the refugees in a new settlement called Asine on the Messenian Gulf, today's Koroni. The destruction level at the old Asine is dated 710 BC, more precise actually than can be obtained for most archaeological dates.
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