Mantineies

Mantineies (Μαντίνειες) refer to a geographic area in Outer (Exo) Mani (Messenian) in which are two villages:

• Megali Mantineia, Avia and Akrogiali, part of the municipality of Avia
• Mikri Mantineia and Palaio Chorio, part of the municipality/city of Kalamata

From 1914 until 1998, two upper portions were independent communities, during the 19th century, Megali and Mikri Mantineia (Palaio Choirio) were part of the then municipality of Avia. The rest of the settlements contained its only inhabitants. Two Mantineies were joined into a single region, as may be discerned from the population, cultural and economic growth. The single character, its roots lost during the Medieval years, continued until today, among it, especially without its history, the main enrollment on its different municipalities. In an administrative field, its council is named only from the Oil Producing Council of Mikri Mantineia - Avia.

History

The traveller Pausanias mentioned from the historic years in the area that had the city of Avia. In the early 15th century, the location of ancient Avia was founded where the Mantineia's castle was built, it was under Venetian rule and was part of the homonymous barony. Avia had forgotten and mentioned only in Ptolemaic maps, in which imprinted in the ancient map of the area and not the later times.

The Medieval Mantineia was never founded. According to a tradition, Mantinies was founded from Arcadian Mantineia, when the residents relocated from the Slavic settlers from their trails and during the mid Byzantine years. As it remained isolated from the ancestral areas, it survives the toponym from Homeric times until recently, it was given from the Arcadian Mantineia mentioned in the Iliad.

Medieval Mantineia featured the key to Mani and played a role during the struggle of the 15th century between the Venetians, Turks and the Byzantine Desporate of Mystra. For the feudal domain of that time, Mantineia was an elected piece which many desired, when it had a castle, a port and a great village within. Its wall connected with Messenian cities as well as Giannitsa, Kalamata, Nisi, Androussa. Along with the founded cities mentioned in an inheritance by Nicephorus Melissinus? other than its buildings by Constantine XI Palaeologus in 1429.

One space that Mantineia settled was the Great Tzasis of Morea, oil producer of Giannitsa. Its family took roots in Mantineia for a hundred years, thereby providing the name Mantinaean. In the mid 15th century, Thomas Palaeologus built Mantineia and Kalamata. The population suffered from these struggles.

For suffering a part, its residents of Mantineia fled from the castle into a safe mountainous settlement called Ano Mantineia which was founded in 1463. Its residents broke down into two settlements, Pano Chora and Kato Chora, names that maintained its folk poem until today. In its maps from that time, now mentioned as Mantineia, it was known as Chores. Its last source and its two settlement in 1618 in the map of Petros Medikos.

Coastal Mantineia, Kato Chora unmentioned then, after the mid 17th century, was believed in a motion by Limberakis Gerakaris to be unsettled and ruined. Its residents only lived in Pano Chora, the ruined part was known as Palaiochora until today. Between the beginning of the next Venetian Rule in 1675, its greater area of Mantineias had founded a new settlement, believed from settlers, in 1700 it was mentioned as Mantineia Mikri in a distinct with the older renowned medieval Mantineia. It ran two settlements, Mikri and Megali Mantineia in which after the founding of the Greek state, it joined the municipality of Mantineia and after 1912 into two independent communities.

Until 1826 when the Battle of Verga occurred, Paliochora was abandoned. In the east coast of the Messenian Gulf, only houses that mentioned were by the Kapatanakidis from Almyros and Mylos and by Mavromichalis in Kitries, it had two ports of the area. Its inner coastal area was only abandoned. The traveller Gell which mapped the Kalamata-Kitries Road in 1805 mentioned only its buildings in Mylous, the Kapetanakidis tower, and other buildings. In 1826, the area was still uninhabited as there was a battle going on. In 1838 in a doctorate sign of the municipality of Avia, it did not mention the settlement of Palaiochora.

In the mid 19th century, residents of Megali Mantineis began to resettle again in the coastal area and slowly refounded the settlement of Palaiochora and founded Archontiko and 'Kopanous (now Akrogiali) /

In 1944, a powerful earthquake shocked its residents of Mikri Mantineia and settled to the coast to its present settlement. The older one remains partly abandoned and became Palio Chorio.

References

• Stavros Kapetanakis Mantineies of Manis
• Theodoros Belitsos, I Mantinies tou 1700, Ikonomika, kinonika, dimografiks ke onomatologika dedomena (Οι Μαντίνειες του 1700. Οικονομικά, κοινωνικά, δημογραφικά και ονοματολογικά δεδομένα = Mantineies in 1700, Economic Folklore and Onomatologic Roots)
• Theodors Belitsos To Vivlion Gamon tis Megalis Mantineias Avias (periodos 1869-1891) (Το Βιβλίον Γάμων της Μεγάλης Μαντίνειας Αβίας (περίοδος 1869-1891 = The Marriage Book of Megali Mantineia, Avia, (1869-91)