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Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a municipality in modern Arcadia
Arcadia

Arcadia, Arkad?a , or Arcady is a region of Greece in the Peloponnesus. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas....
, Greece
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
, with its seat in the village Stadio.

Ancient Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece, containing the Temple of Athena Alea
Athena Alea

Alea was an epithet of the Greek mythology Athena, prominent in Arcadian mythology, under which she was worshiped at Alea, Greece, Mantineia and Tegea....
. The temenos was founded by Aleus
Aleus

Aleus was in Greek mythology a son of Apheidas, and grandson of Arcas. He was king of Tegea in Arcadia, and married to Neaera, and is said to have founded the town of Alea, Greece and the first temple of Athena Alea at Tegea....
, Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
 was informed. Votive bronzes at the site from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer; there are sealstones and fibula
Fibula

The fibula or calf bone is a bone located on the lateral side of the tibia, with which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones, and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones....
e.






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Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a municipality in modern Arcadia
Arcadia

Arcadia, Arkad?a , or Arcady is a region of Greece in the Peloponnesus. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas....
, Greece
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
, with its seat in the village Stadio.

Ancient Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece, containing the Temple of Athena Alea
Athena Alea

Alea was an epithet of the Greek mythology Athena, prominent in Arcadian mythology, under which she was worshiped at Alea, Greece, Mantineia and Tegea....
. The temenos was founded by Aleus
Aleus

Aleus was in Greek mythology a son of Apheidas, and grandson of Arcas. He was king of Tegea in Arcadia, and married to Neaera, and is said to have founded the town of Alea, Greece and the first temple of Athena Alea at Tegea....
, Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
 was informed. Votive bronzes at the site from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer; there are sealstones and fibula
Fibula

The fibula or calf bone is a bone located on the lateral side of the tibia, with which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones, and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones....
e. In the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism
Synoecism

Synoecism, synoikism or syn?cism is the amalgamation of villages and small towns in Ancient Hellas into larger political units such as a single city....
 to form one city. Tegea was listed in Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
's Catalogue of Ships
Catalogue of Ships

The Catalogue of Ships is a passage in Book 2 of Homer Iliad , which lists the contingents of the Achaeans army that sailed to Troy. The sonorous catalogue gives the names of the leaders of each contingent, lists the settlements in the kingdom represented by the contingent, sometimes with a descriptive epithet that fills out a half-vers...
 as one of the cities that contributed ships and men for the Achaean assault on Troy.

Tegea struggled against Spartan hegemony
Hegemony

Hegemony first denoted the dominance of a Greek city-state over other city-states, then denoted the dominance of one nation over others. The political scientist Antonio Gramsci developed the former conceptions to identify the dominance of one social class over the other social classes in a society by means of cultural hegemony....
 in Arcadia
Arcadia

Arcadia, Arkad?a , or Arcady is a region of Greece in the Peloponnesus. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas....
 and was finally conquered ca 560 BCE. In the fourth century Tegea joined the Arcadian League
Arcadian League

The Arcadian League was a federal league of polis in ancient Greece. It combined the various cities of Arcadia, in the Peloponnese, into a single state....
 and struggled to free itself from Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
. The Temple of Athena Alea
Athena Alea

Alea was an epithet of the Greek mythology Athena, prominent in Arcadian mythology, under which she was worshiped at Alea, Greece, Mantineia and Tegea....
 burned in 394 BC and was magnificently rebuilt, to designs by Scopas
Scopas

Scopas or Skopas was an Ancient Greece sculpture and architect, born on the island of Paros. Scopas worked with Praxiteles, he sculpted parts of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, especially the reliefs....
 of Paros, with reliefs of the Calydonian boar
Calydonian Boar

The Calydonian Boar is one of the monsters of Greek mythology that had to be overcome by heroes of the Olympian age. Sent by Artemis to ravage the region of Calydon in Aetolia because its king failed to honor her in his rites to the gods, it was killed in the Calydonian Hunt, in which many male heroes took part, but also a powerful wom...
 hunt in the main pediment.The city retained civic life under the Roman Empire
Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
; it was sacked in 395 by the Goths
Goths

The Goths were East Germanic tribes who, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, invasion the Roman Empire and later adopted Arian Christianity. In the 5th and 6th centuries, divided as the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, they established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in the Iberian peninsula and Italy....
. Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
 visited the city in the second century CE. The "tombs" he saw there were shrines to the chthonic founding daemones: "There are also tombs of Tegeates, the son of Lykaon, and of Maira
Maira

The Maira is an Italy river, a right tributary of the Po River, which runs through the province of Cuneo in eastern Piedmont. Its source is in the Cottian Alps near the Col de Mary on the France border....
, the wife of Tegeates. They say Maira was a daughter of Atlas
Atlas (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Atlas was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens. Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Klym?ne :...
, and Homer makes mention of her in the passage where Odysseus
Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses , in Greek mythology , was a legendary Greeks king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's Epic poetry, the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
 tells to Alkinous his journey to Hades
Hades

Hades refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive case , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades"....
, and of those whose ghosts he beheld there." The site of ancient Tegea is now located within the modern town of Alea
Alea, Greece

Alea , accented form: Al?a is a village and a community in Argolis, Greece. Its 2001 population was 146 for the village and 793 for the community....
, which was referred to as Piali (not to be confused with Palaia Episkopi). Alea is located about 10 kilometers southeast of Tripoli
Tripoli, Greece

Tripoli is a city in the central part of the Peloponnese, Greece, and the capital of the prefecture of Arcadia. The municipality is the largest city in the prefecture as well and presently one of the few growing places in Arcadia....
. The municipality of Tegea has its seat at Stadio. The province of Megalopoli is bordered to the west and the province of Kynouria is bordered to the east.

See also

  • Communities of Arcadia


External links

  • Photo gallery of archaeologuical sites and bibliography.
  • - black and white photo essay of the site and related artifacts
  • - a brief peer-reviewed essay discussing the army of the ancient Tegea


Nearest places

  • Alea
  • Stadio
  • Svoleika


Communities

  • Alea
  • Episkopi
  • Garea
  • Kamari
  • Kerasitsa, where the politician Gregoris Lambrakis
    Gregoris Lambrakis

    Gregoris Lambrakis was a Greece politician, physician, Athletics , and member of the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Athens....
     was born in 1912
  • Lithovounia
  • Magoula
    • Giokareika (pop: 51)
  • Manthyrea
  • Mavriki
    Mavriki

    Mavriki , older forms: -o and -on, also with the first 1 accented and Kato Mavriki , is a Greece village located about south of Aigio, west of Corinth and Athens, north-northwest of Kalavryta and east of Patras....
  • Psili Vrysi
    • Bouzaneika (pop: 45)
  • Rizes
    Rizes

    Rizes is the easternmost and most populous village in the municipality of Tegea in Arcadia prefecture, Greece. Its primary economic activity is agriculture....
  • Stadio
    • Agios Sostis
    • Akra (pop: 42)
  • Tziva
  • Vouno
  • Stringos-Demiri


Historical population


Persons

  • Anyte of Tegea
    Anyte of Tegea

    Anyte of Tegea was an Arcadian poet, admired by her contemporaries and later generations for her charming epigrams and epitaphs. Antipater of Thessalonica listed her as one of the nine earthly muses....
  • Cepheus, mythical king and an Argonaut
    Argonauts

    In Greek mythology, the Argonauts were a band of heroes who, in the years before the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece....
  • Gregoris Lambrakis
    Gregoris Lambrakis

    Gregoris Lambrakis was a Greece politician, physician, Athletics , and member of the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Athens....











North: Korythios and Tripoli
Tripoli, Greece

Tripoli is a city in the central part of the Peloponnese, Greece, and the capital of the prefecture of Arcadia. The municipality is the largest city in the prefecture as well and presently one of the few growing places in Arcadia....

West: Valtesio and Tripoli (NW)TegeaEast: North Kynouria
North Kynouria

North Kynouria or V?reia Kynour?a is a Communities and Municipalities of Greece in Arcadia, Greece. It is located in the eastern part of the prefecture, between the northwestern shores of the Argolic Gulf and northern Laconia Prefecture....

South: Skyritida
Skyritida

Skyritida is a municipality in Arcadia, Greece. It has a population of 2,248, as recorded in 2001. The seat of the municipality is in Vlachokerasia....