Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tegea

TEGEA, one of the chief cities of Arcadia, of which its territory occupied the south-eastern corner, being bounded on the S. by Laconia, on the E. by Cynuria and Argolis, on the N. by the territory of Mantinea, and on the W. by Mænalia. Its legendary founder was Tegeates, son of Lycaon. Like many other cities of ancient Greece, Tegea was formed by the union of a population which had previously lived dispersed in villages. The people were divided into four tribes,—the Clareotis, Hippothœtis, Apolloniatis, and Athaneatis. Tegea offered a stubborn resistance to the encroachments of Lacedæmon, and on more than one occasion defeated its ambitious neighbour. About 560 B.C., however, the Lacedæmonians found the bones of Orestes in Tegea and conveyed them to Sparta; and henceforward Spartan valour, backed by this powerful fetich, proved too much for the merely carnal weapons of Tegea. At Platæa (479 B.C.) 3000 Tegeans fought the good fight of freedom, and were the first to enter the breach which the Athenians had made in the Persian redoubt. Between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars hostilities again broke out between Tegea and Sparta, in the course of which Tegea was twice defeated. However, in the Peloponnesian War (431-404), and afterwards in the Corinthian War (395-387), Tegea sided with Sparta. But after the battle of Leuctra (371), when the star of Sparta began to decline, Tegea concluded an alliance with the victorious Thebans, and fought on their side against Sparta at the great battle of Mantinea (362). In the Macedonian period Tegea joined the Ætolian League, but Cleomenes, king of Sparta, having won it over to his side, the city was besieged and taken by Antigonus Doson, king of Macedonia, the ally of the Achæan League (222). In 218 the city was retaken, except the acropolis, by the Lacedæmonians under Lycurgus. After the defeat of Machanidas, tyrant of Sparta, by Philopœmen in 207, Tegea passed into the hands of the Achæan League. In the time of Strabo it was the only town of any importance in Arcadia. In the 2d century it was visited by Pausanias, who has left a fairly full description of it (viii. 45-53).

Of its buildings much the most famous was the great temple of Athene Alea, which had often afforded sanctuary to fugitives from Sparta. The old temple was burned down in 394 B.C., and Pausanius speaks of the newer temple as by far the finest and largest in the Peloponnesus (that of Zeus at Olympia, however, occupied nearly double the area). The architect was Scopas; and, as the recent German excavations have proved, the temple was a Doric peripteros, with six columns at each end and fourteen at each side. Of the columns which Pausanias mentions in addition to the Doric, the Corinthian may have stood in the pronaos and posticum, the Ionic in '‘the interior of the temple” (for έκτός we should probably read έντός in Pausanius, viii. 45, 5). The ancient image of Athene Alea was carried off by Augustus, and placed at the entrance to his new forum at Rome. The statues of .Æsculapius and Health, which in Pausanias’s time stood on the two sides of the image of the goddess at Tegea, were by Scopas. On the front pediment of the temple was sculptured the hunt of the Calydonian boar, on the back pediment the combat between Telephus and Achilles. Some fragments of these pedimental sculptures (comprising the head of the boar and two human heads, one helmeted) have been discovered; and, as they are the only existing sculptures which can be referred with some certainty to the hand of Scopas himself, they are of the highest importance for the history of art. The site of the temple, at the modern village of Piali, was partially excavated under the auspices of the German archaeological institute in 1879 and 1882. It appears that the foundations of the temple measured 49·90 metres (nearly 164 feet) by 21·30 (70 feet). As Tegea stood on a plain surrounded by mountains and liable to inundations, its site has been covered by an alluvial soil which has been favourable to the preservation of the ruins, and a thorough excavation might yield important results.

On the excavations, see Mittheilungen des deutschen archäologischen Institutes in Athen, 1879, p. 131 sq., 168 sq.; ibid., 1880, p, 52 sq.; ibid., 1883, p. 274 sq. On the artistic value of the sculptures, see ibid., 1881, p. 393 sq.; Jour. Hell. Stud., 1886, p. 115 sq.