3000 years of history
One of the things I love most about Greece is the way the past constantly impinges on the present. This is a country which will not let you ignore its history, especially in the Peloponnese where the very stones seem to speak of the past. And even in the Mani, at its outer limits, you are acutely aware of what has gone before. What follows is an attempt to link the main events of Greece’s chequered history specifically to the Mani and the surrounding area. I apologise in advance to the purists for what will inevitably be a simplified and truncated account.
It is often difficult to unravel the early history of Greece from the mythology surrounding it. 
I have been assured by Greeks that Kalogria is the beach chosen by Zeus to seduce Leda, in the form of a swan. The eggs which resulted from this union, once hatched, produced the twins, Castor and Pollux, and Helen and Clytemnestra – or so we are told. Kalogria may be the perfect setting for seduction but the rest is clearly fantasy. More rooted in fact is the saga of the Trojan War. Most historians and archaeologists agree that such a war took place around 1250 B.C. – it’s the reason behind the war which is open to conjecture. It may indeed have been fought over exorbitant charges levied by the Trojans on Greeks who wanted to trade in the Black Sea, but the traditional version of a war waged by Greek princes to rescue the abducted Helen has much more appeal – and could hardly be closer to home. It was from Sparta that Paris stole Helen and it was on the picturesque island of Kranai, just off Gytheion, that the lovers spent their first night. Agamemnon, the overall leader of the Greek army came from further north in the Peloponnese in his stronghold at Mycenae but Nestor, the wise old man of the Greek army, came from just across the water in Pylos where the remains of his palace (including what must be Europe’s first bathroom) can still be seen today. Homer’s Catalogue of the Ships lists several Maniot contributors to the Greek forces: Kardamyli, Oitylo and Enope (modern Kambos). And Mycenaean tombs have been found at Kambos and Proastio. So, fact or fiction?
The next significant period in Greek history after the collapse of the Mycenaean world is the fifth century B.C. (I did warn the purists….). This is generally acknowledged to be the golden age of Greece but in the Mani life was far from golden. While Athens was performing plays, refining its democracy and building the Parthenon, the Messenians who lived on this side of the Taygetos mountains were subjects – slaves, in fact – of Athens’ arch rival, Sparta, obliged to work land that had once been theirs for the benefit of their masters. Any attempt at rebellion was brutally suppressed by the Spartan fighting machine. No wonder so little of note has survived from that period: the Messenians had other things on their minds.
But in 371 B.C, Sparta was finally defeated (by Thebes) and Messenia was once again free. To celebrate this freedom the Messenians built a splendid new city: Messene, about 20 kilometres north of Kalamata. As you walk around ancient Messene today you can sense their jubilation and their hopes; it was a city to be proud of, an impressive example of Hellenistic town planning and one that every visitor to the area should see.
Freedom, sadly, is sometimes short-lived and it wasn’t too long before another conquering nation appeared on the Messenian scene – Rome. By the middle of the second century B.C. Greece had become part of the Roman empire and remained so for the next five hundred years. This was not, however, the unmitigated disaster it might have been. It can be argued, in fact, that Roman rule brought a degree of stability to the area – and the Romans certainly had the good sense to admire and preserve the achievements of the Greeks. Rome seems to have felt an affinity with Spartan military values and treated Sparta almost like a tourist resort; the famously meagre remains there are more Roman than Greek. At Messene there is much more to see: everywhere you look you will find traces of the distinctive Roman brickwork – and the conversion of the Greek stadium to an arena more suited to Roman tastes in entertainment is a classic Roman move. In the Mani proper, at Thalames and Kiparissos, (neither of them major players), we get some idea of the relationship of ordinary settlements with Rome. Statue bases can be seen there which, from their inscriptions, once bore statues of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his mother Julia. Obviously we have no idea of the circumstances in which these statues were commissioned, but as Marcus Aurelius was a fairly benign emperor, and certainly pro-Greek, it seems reasonable to assume that they were prompted more by respect than by anything more sinister.
Empires, however, do not last forever. When, in the fifth century A.D., the barbarians came flooding across Europe from the north, Rome and its western empire (now Christianised) finally fell. But the eastern half of the empire survived well into the mediaeval period and Constantinople (modern Istanbul) emerged as the new religious and intellectual centre. To modern historians this has become known as the Byzantine Empire. Greece – and Athens, in particular, – became a relative backwater during this time, but in the southern Peloponnese Byzantium has certainly left its mark. I long ago lost count of the Byzantine churches in the Mani. There are literally hundreds: in the mountains, by the sea, in villages and in inaccessible places. Many are in bad repair, but there are also some gems which have survived and they recapture an earlier, more devout age. There was, however, also a more sophisticated side to Byzantium and this is just as visible in the southern Peloponnese. In Mystras and Monemvasia we have two extraordinary Byzantine towns. The haunting ruins of churches, libraries, and palaces in Mystras provide us with a window into the rich artistic and intellectual life of Byzantium, while Monemvasia, with its spectacular walled fortress, is testament to its commercial importance.
But it would be a mistake to think of the Byzantine period as one of quiet devotion and artistic achievement. Its long history is very much a struggle for survival. Islam was a constant threat although, ironically, it was fellow Christians from the west who hastened its collapse. In 1204, to their eternal shame, Norman and Frankish crusaders, encouraged by the financial ambitions of Venice, sacked Constantinople and broke up the Byzantine Empire into a series of Latin kingdoms. And once more, the southern Peloponnese, situated too conveniently on their route from west to east, was caught up in it all. Venice took control of all the key ports: Monemvasia, Koroni and Methoni. The last two, known as the “eyes” of Venice, have survived as splendid examples of Venetian building skills. As for the Mani proper, it became part of the kingdom given to Geoffrey de Villehardouin; his legacy is a string of Frankish castles at strategic points throughout the area (Passava and Tigani possibly the most important). On a personal note, I get a buzz whenever I look at the acropolis behind my house in Stoupa and reflect that it was once crowned by a Frankish castle (and before that, who knows……)
The Byzantine Empire was mortally wounded by the events of 1204 but it wasn’t quite dead. It enjoyed a last, late flowering in the fourteenth century after Constantinople had been regained – and Mystras experienced something of a renaissance. But it was only a matter of time before it succumbed to the greater threat from the east: the Ottoman Turks. On Tuesday, May29th, 1453, after being battered by cannon for 53 days, Constantinople fell to the Turks: a fateful day for Greece and Christendom. (Even now, Greeks will not marry on a Tuesday). For Greece it meant nearly 400 years of subjection to a very different conqueror, one with an alien language, an alien culture and an alien religion. The seeds were sown of the hostility still felt by many Greeks towards Turkey.
In the Mani, however, the Turks did not have an easy time of it. The Maniots, naturally warlike and accustomed to feuding between themselves, proved formidable foes. And in this instance the difficult terrain worked in their favour. So the Turks were frustrated at every turn and any victory was short-lived, despite attempts to control proceedings from castle bases (at Kelefa, Passava and Zarnata). The times were turbulent but the Mani was never subdued.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, revolution was in the air throughout Europe and in Greece it gave them the spur they needed. Greeks at home and abroad were fired by the vision of a liberated Greece and in1821 the vision was transformed into action – one in which the Mani was, fittingly, to play a key role. On March 17th Petros Mavromichalis led his forces out of Areopoli and marched to Kardamyli to join other Maniot forces. Together they attacked the Turks at Kalamata on the 23rd and secured the first victory of the war which would eventually set Greece free. It was a long struggle, well documented elsewhere, but it did finally achieve what Greeks had dreamed of for centuries: the birth of an independent Greek state. Maniots are understandably proud of their role – and the square in Areopoli is the place to be on March 23rd to witness their celebrations.
That’s really the end of the story. The Greek state has moved on since, at varying speeds and with varying fortunes, all of which is part of a different story. However, there remains one event without which no account of the Mani is complete: the Second World War and its aftermath. When you sit in a village kafenion in the company of the old men, sooner or later the conversation turns to those years. They have tales to tell of the daring shown by Greek resistance fighters against the Italian garrison in Kardamyli and of individuals who hid allied servicemen in caves along the coast as they retreated south before the advancing Germans. Life here was hard (in Kalamata people were starving) but it was to get worse. It’s only in more recent years that Greeks here have felt able to talk about what they call their “big mistake”, the civil war into which Greece was plunged from 1946 to 1949. The atrocities were horrific; friends and families were divided, leaving permanent scars. The memorial, just outside Saidona, to those who died in the civil war, cannot fail to move you. Village by village, the dead are listed: entire families, it seems, wiped out.
What has struck me most while writing is the powerful sense of identity displayed by Greeks. Throughout virtually 2,000 years of occupation they have remained unmistakably Greek, preserving, more or less intact, their language, their traditions and their religion. The threats of the early twenty-first century seem more likely to be economic ones - I have no doubt that the response of the Greeks, and of Maniots in particular, will be as spirited and as individual as it has been in the past.
