Talk:Tegea

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The statement that Tegea was conquered by Sparta by 560 needs reconsidering in my opinion. Hrdt I. 66 states: "Throughout the whole of this early contest with the Tegeans, the Lacedaemonians met with nothing but defeats; but in the time of Croesus, under the kings Anaxandrides and Aristo, fortune had turned in their favour ». The taking (if absolute conquering can be assumed) of Tegea must then be placed during Anaxandridas’ reign which is about 560-525. So Tegea could not have been Spartan by 560, but rather by 525.

--Dimulescu (talk) 16:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here’s Jeffery’s take on this episode: (Archaic Greece, p. 121). Please note that even the actual conquering (in the meaning that Messenia for instance was unambiguously conquered) is under question mark. More likely Tegea was forced into alliance/collaboration with Sparta rather than its norther neighbour, Argos:

« In the long run Tegea would have had little hope against Sparta; but about the mid-sixth century the Spartans altered their policy. Delphi advised them to turn mythology to propagandic use: to acquire somehow for Sparta the bones of the hero Orestes son of Agamemnon, which lay in Tegeate territory. An impressive grave, presumably of the Bronze Age, was located in an ironsmith’s yard in the plain and rifled secretly for the Spartans by one of their trained Special Service élite known as the Agathoergoi. The Spartans now had on their side the great hero who had hitherto preserved the country in which he was buried; and would he have gone with them willingly unless they too had some right to call themselves his descendants? The Tegeates accepted this after some losses in further fighting, and a treaty was inscribed on stone at the border between Tegeate and ex-Messenian territory, in which Tegea undertook not to enfran chise or harbour Messenians thereafter. She was then taken into military alliance with Sparta, and thus became an early member of what developed into a military league of Peloponnesian states under Spartan hegemony. » --Dimulescu (talk) 00:16, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]