A heretic's take on Second Mantinea

[Justin Swanton]

As another aside, I found this article on ancient Tegea, which gives a map of the city walls. Transposing that onto Google Maps indicates that Epaminondas deployed just outside the walls which fits Xenophon perfectly.




Here is the march from the first to second battlefield, a distance of about 7,5km:




How was the march done? The infantry line would double files to open order, then countermarch and continue in open order (permitting individual files to navigate around obstacles) to the new site. The cavalry would follow behind the infantry, acting as a screen against enemy cavalry. Once the infantry reach the new site they would countermarch again to face back east and then double files to reform a solid line. Standard manoeuvres as described by the tacticians.

[Justin Swanton]

Working out the initial deployment, has anyone asked why the Argives painted their shields to look like Thebans?

Hint: this was a seriously tricksy battle.

[Jon Freitag]

The battle of Leuktra indeed was simple, and confined to one division of the forces engaged, and therefore does not make the writer's lack of knowledge so very glaring: but that of Mantineia was complicated and technical, and is accordingly unintelligible, and indeed completely inconceivable, to the historian. - Polybius: 12,25

One does try to see the wood in the trees nonetheless.

Justin, I continue enjoying your narrative building.  Your Polybius quote reinforces impressions formulating in my mind.

If Polybius writes that this battle is "unintelligible, and indeed completely inconceivable, to the historian" is this any less so 2400 years later?

As one example from your narrative, why is Epaminondas forming line of battle outside of Tegea and marching 11km north to the narrows dismissed as unlikely yet his forming line of battle and then marching west 7.5km (and uphill) with an enemy in the rear accepted?  Also, is there no concern for uncovering Tegea to the enemy in a march westwards?

Humans see patterns and causalities where none exists.  Without care, it is easy to pick data points or descriptions that fit the desired narrative and dismissing those that do not.  This can be seen even when the original source for both is the same.

Is that the situation here?  I am not saying that.  What I am saying is that analysis and inference require great care to not introduce bias into the results.

Like I say, I am enjoying your exercise very much and gives me plenty to consider.

[Justin Swanton]

The battle of Leuktra indeed was simple, and confined to one division of the forces engaged, and therefore does not make the writer's lack of knowledge so very glaring: but that of Mantineia was complicated and technical, and is accordingly unintelligible, and indeed completely inconceivable, to the historian. - Polybius: 12,25

One does try to see the wood in the trees nonetheless.

Justin, I continue enjoying your narrative building.  Your Polybius quote reinforces impressions formulating in my mind.

If Polybius writes that this battle is "unintelligible, and indeed completely inconceivable, to the historian" is this any less so 2400 years later?

Polybius IMHO goes a little too far in his criticism of some historians, though his point that the truth matters more in a historian than anything else is valid enough. His attempt to discredit Callisthenes' account of the Battle of Issus backfires badly against him. He has a dog in the fight and it shows.

But yeah, the popular theories of historians 2,400 years later....I'm strongly tempted to agree with him. Having said that one must try to get to the truth as far as possible, knowing when one can't go any further. My approach is to be very slow to dismiss the sources. I take them seriously and do everything possible to reconcile them. I find it really works.

As one example from your narrative, why is Epaminondas forming line of battle outside of Tegea and marching 11km north to the narrows dismissed as unlikely yet his forming line of battle and then marching west 7.5km (and uphill) with an enemy in the rear accepted?  Also, is there no concern for uncovering Tegea to the enemy in a march westwards?

The point is that Xenophon is clear that Epaminondas didn't march north but headed west instead. The only reason anyone thinks he marched north is that one feels the battle must have happened at the narrows in order to deserve the name "Battle of Mantinea", the idea being that south of the narrows was Tegean territory. But that is all pure assumption whereas Xenophon is reliable history.

Why did Epaminondas march at all? My take is that he wanted ground in his favour. High ground is very advantageous to hoplites, especially in othismos which, along with Paul Bardunias and others, I maintain was a physical shoving match, and shoving downhill is always easier than shoving uphill. The nearest decent high ground from where he was initially deployed was behind him in the western mountains. So there he went.

Tegea itself was quite safe. It was walled and the city gates were shut after Epaminondas' army left the city. It would have taken a siege to break into it and with Epaminondas nearby that wasn't going to happen.

Humans see patterns and causalities where none exists.  Without care, it is easy to pick data points or descriptions that fit the desired narrative and dismissing those that do not.  This can be seen even when the original source for both is the same.

True. After looking at the established facts or reliable affirmations of writers in Antiquity I form a hypothesis. I then test it to see if any of the data makes that hypothesis inconsistent or contradictory. I try to see what is wrong in my theorising on the understanding that living over 2000 years later makes it impossible to check up on what the writers affirm. If they don't seriously contradict each other (or at least the ones that matter) and if what they say matches geography, military science and any other branch of knowledge that can be brought to bear, and if they confirm my hypothesis, then I cautiously admit the possibility that I might be on to something. 

But I always have to be ready to change or dump my hypotheses - hanging on to them because I must be right is just stupid.

If there is too little data then I reserve judgement or speculate on the understanding it is speculation.

Is that the situation here?  I am not saying that.  What I am saying is that analysis and inference require great care to not introduce bias into the results.

In this case I think we have enough data to form a coherent picture that, being coherent, is very probably true.

[Jon Freitag]

Looks like a reasoned, methodical, and scientific approach to your studies.

[Justin Swanton]

The more I think about the road "leading from Mantineia to Pallantium" the odder it becomes. The Ocean grove was just north of the narrows. If the narrows was the border between Mantinea and Tegea, then any road from Mantinea crossing into Tegean territory would of necessity be heading to Tegea. Another road can branch off from that one and go to Pallantium, but the principal road should be between the main poleis in the area since it is on their territory. And for sure there weren't two parallel roads from Mantinea, one going to Tegea and the other going to Pallantium. This map makes it clear:




If however there is a common frontier between Mantinea and Pallantium, then one can speak of a road between the two, with another road branching off to Tegea. Like this:



This does serve to confirm Xenophon (and possibly explain the origin of Tripoli? Speculation mode here).


Can't resist:

Come you back to Mantinea,
Keep your distance from Tegea;
If you start at Pallantium
You'll be soon in Mantinea!

(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

[Erpingham]

It may be worth looking again at the map of 19th century routes Richard found



This shows two separate routes, one from Tegea to Mantinaea, the other Pallantium to Mantinaea.  They don't have a junction.  Now, the situation could be different in ancient times, but it is an alternative approach to speculative lines on a satellite photo.

There is a convenient road between Tegea and Tripolitsa.  Did it predate the Tripolitsa settlement?  Well it does link to a pass through the mountains, the only one south of Mantinaea, so potentially an ancient route.  I agree with your speculation that a junction where two trade routes cross could indeed be the origin of a settlement.  Though that would be true whenever the routes were constructed, so isn't probabative. 

[Erpingham]

In a bit of further googling, I found this information about the territory of Tegea

The polis of Tegea controlled the southern and larger part of the karstic plain of Tripolis,
situated at approximately 610-630 meters above sea level. Contrary to the northern
part of the plain, dominated by the polis of Mantineia, the part of the plain controlled by
Tegea is not completely flat, but rather consists of low, undulating hills. Towards the west the
territory bordered on the small polis of Pallantion, while in the east the territory stretched to
the peak of the Mount Parthenion ridge. There is every reason to believe that the foothills
towards the south were in large parts controlled by Tegea and included present-day Mavriki
and Vourvoura, although Sparta may have encroached upon Tegean territory during the
Archaic period and annexed the settlements of Karyai and Oion. Tegea's territory was
therefore quite large, slightly less than 400 km2, and furthermore, a fair part of it was good
agricultural land on the plain.



From
Knut Ødegård :State formation and urbanization at Tegea

Unfortunately, this is helpful about all the borders but the one with Mantinaea.

[Jon Freitag]

Anthony, this is a good bit of sleuthing to find Odegard's paper.  It is an interesting read too and provides a sense of the geographical and political attributes of the area.  With Tegea's territory listed as about 400 km², that area is roughly double the size of the Tegean southern part of the plain from the narrows south.

Given the geography of karstic plain of Tripolis and the mention that Tegea controlled the southern portion and Mantineia the northern portion, a reasonable demarcation between the two cities would be the constriction of the valley between the hills near Skopi.  With flooding and drainage an issue, perhaps a levee was in place at this point to control flood waters between Tegea and Mantiniea?

[RichT]

For obvious reasons I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. I'll just copy and paste what I said in the other thread: "Nobody knows exactly where the battle was fought. The established tradition, while a 'best guess', at least fits the known facts, and makes sense strategically. Other locations could be proposed, but in the absence of a better fit to known facts, or better strategic sense, there's no point doing so."

That hasn't changed.

[RichT]

Unfortunately, this is helpful about all the borders but the one with Mantinaea.

For Mantineia's borders (including with Tegea!) see

Mantineia and the Mantinike: Settlement and Society in a Greek Polis
Stephen Hodkinson, Hilary Hodkinson
The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 76 (1981), pp. 239-296 (62 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30103036

p. 242-3

"Its southern boundary, the border with ancient Tegea, lay at or just S. of the narrow stretch of plain between Mt. Krobriza (997 m, also called Kapnistra) and the spur of Mytika (1,oo7 m).10 These were its boundaries in Pausanias' day (viii I1. I, I2. 9). It is clear from the remarks of Thucydides (v 65- 4) that the Tegean border at least must have been similar in the Classical period."

But with n. 10:

"Pritchett 43 challenges the usual assumption that the border lay at the narrowest part of the plain, preferring to locate it along the line of katavothras a little way S. The construction of a watch-tower on the spur of Mytika, probably in the fourth century (Loring op. cit. (n. 3) 82-3; H. Lattermann, 'Nestane und das Argon Pedion', AA xxviii (1913) 395-428, at 425-7; Pritchett 45-6) suggests that the Mantineians expected secure control of that promontory, since it commands an extensive view over the plain of Mantineia, including the town. Several early nineteenth-century travellers discovered remains of a wall near the base of Mytika which some of them interpreted as a border wall. This explanation is unlikely. (Cf. Pritchett 44-5 and Fougeres, MAO 13, 126 n. 2 for alternative explanations and references to earlier interpretations. The remains had disappeared by the time of Fougeres' expedition in the late 1880s.) In view of Thucydides' remarks (v 65. 4) on Mantineian-Tegean struggles over the water at their border, it is reasonable to expect that the border may often have been moved."

[Erpingham]

The construction of a watch-tower on the spur of Mytika, probably in the fourth century (Loring op. cit. (n. 3) 82-3; H. Lattermann, 'Nestane und das Argon Pedion', AA xxviii (1913) 395-428, at 425-7; Pritchett 45-6) suggests that the Mantineians expected secure control of that promontory, since it commands an extensive view over the plain of Mantineia, including the town.

Assuming it was a Mantinaean one.  The Tegeans also had watchtowers elsewhere.  However, the evidence generally seems to point to the border being somewhere in this area.  There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a long southern extension of Mantinaean territory past modern Tripoli. 

[Justin Swanton]

It may be worth looking again at the map of 19th century routes Richard found



This shows two separate routes, one from Tegea to Mantinaea, the other Pallantium to Mantinaea.  They don't have a junction.  Now, the situation could be different in ancient times, but it is an alternative approach to speculative lines on a satellite photo.

There is a convenient road between Tegea and Tripolitsa.  Did it predate the Tripolitsa settlement?  Well it does link to a pass through the mountains, the only one south of Mantinaea, so potentially an ancient route.  I agree with your speculation that a junction where two trade routes cross could indeed be the origin of a settlement.  Though that would be true whenever the routes were constructed, so isn't probabative. 

There goes a beautiful theory. Damn. I should have checked up on ancient route maps.

Edit: Well, well, well. What have we here?



It might be possible to reconcile the two maps. The original road south from Mantinea led to Pallantium. When Pallantium shrank into insignificance after Second Mantinea it probably made sense to construct another road directly between Mantinea to Tegea as these were now the only two poleis in the area. This is the road Pausanias mentions. So the French survey map of 1832 shows the later road in orange. As the maps stands some of the roads look peculiar if they coexisted at the same time. Look at the two orange and black roads leading north from Mantinea and how they criss-cross over each other.

[Justin Swanton]

"Pritchett 43 challenges the usual assumption that the border lay at the narrowest part of the plain, preferring to locate it along the line of katavothras a little way S. The construction of a watch-tower on the spur of Mytika, probably in the fourth century (Loring op. cit. (n. 3) 82-3; H. Lattermann, 'Nestane und das Argon Pedion', AA xxviii (1913) 395-428, at 425-7; Pritchett 45-6) suggests that the Mantineians expected secure control of that promontory, since it commands an extensive view over the plain of Mantineia, including the town. Several early nineteenth-century travellers discovered remains of a wall near the base of Mytika which some of them interpreted as a border wall. This explanation is unlikely. (Cf. Pritchett 44-5 and Fougeres, MAO 13, 126 n. 2 for alternative explanations and references to earlier interpretations. The remains had disappeared by the time of Fougeres' expedition in the late 1880s.) In view of Thucydides' remarks (v 65. 4) on Mantineian-Tegean struggles over the water at their border, it is reasonable to expect that the border may often have been moved."

That was actually my thought, just before doing this post. The border probably shifted quite a bit since there was no natural obstacle between Mantinea and Tegea, and nothing says it couldn't - at least at one time or another - have extended far enough south to form a frontier with Pallantium (would it benefit Mantinea to have a frontier with Pallantium?) The question is an open one, so, at the present state of our (non) knowledge, nothing precludes Epaminondas' move westwards from Tegea from ending up in Mantinean territory.

[Justin Swanton]

"Its southern boundary, the border with ancient Tegea, lay at or just S. of the narrow stretch of plain between Mt. Krobriza (997 m, also called Kapnistra) and the spur of Mytika (1,oo7 m).10 These were its boundaries in Pausanias' day (viii I1. I, I2. 9). It is clear from the remarks of Thucydides (v 65- 4) that the Tegean border at least must have been similar in the Classical period."

Pausanias: After the sanctuary of Poseidon you will come to a place full of oak trees, called Sea, and the road from Mantineia to Tegea leads through the oaks. The boundary between Mantineia and Tegea is the round altar on the highroad.

Pausanias speaks in the present tense, i.e. this is the current boundary imposed by the Roman administration in the 2nd century. It doesn't have much bearing on the boundary half a millenia earlier. He doesn't incidentally say how far south of the oaks the boundary is. It could be at the narrows or further south. Not that that matters. 500 years is too long.

Thucydides:  Meanwhile the Lacedaemonians with the Arcadian allies that had joined them, entered the territory of Mantinea, and encamping near the temple of Heracles began to plunder the country. Here they were seen by the Argives and their allies, who immediately took up a strong and difficult position, and formed in order of battle. The Lacedaemonians at once advanced against them, and came on within a stone's throw or javelin's cast, when one of the older men, seeing the enemy's position to be a strong one, hallooed to Agis that he was minded to cure one evil with another; meaning that he wished to make amends for his retreat, which had been so much blamed, from Argos, by his present untimely precipitation. Meanwhile Agis, whether in consequence of this halloo or of some sudden new idea of his own, quickly led back his army without engaging, and entering the Tegean territory, began to turn off into that of Mantinea the water about which the Mantineans and Tegeans are always fighting, on account of the extensive damage it does to whichever of the two countries if falls into.

I've edited this, having misread the translation. Thucydides doesn't precisely say at what point the Spartans crossed the Mantinean frontier and how much further north they moved to plunder Mantinean territory. The border itself could be at the narrows or further south. Where exactly would Agis stop up the Mantinean water supply? The ground appears to be dead flat south of the narrows as far as this point, after which there are gently undulating hills. I imagine (can't conclusively prove anything yet) that this is the territory that could be damaged by messing about with the water. Thinking about it, Agis re-enters Tegean territory to "turn out of the course, turn aside, divert" (ἐκτρέπω) the water. How does that affect Mantinean land and not Tegean land? What exactly is he trying to do?