the heroism of King Euphaes and his successor Aristodemus (q.v.) ended in the subjection of Messenia to Sparta (c. 720 B.C.). Two generations later the Messenians revolted and under the leadership of Aristomenes (q.v.) kept the Spartans at bay for some seventeen years (648–631 B.C., according to Grote): but the stronghold of Ira (Eira) fell after a siege of eleven years, and those Messenians who did not leave the country were reduced to the condition of helots. The next revolt broke out in 464, when a severe earthquake destroyed Sparta and caused great loss of life; the insurgents defended themselves for some years on the rock-citadel of Ithome, as they had done in the first war; but eventually they had, to leave the Peloponnese and were settled by the Athenians at Naupactus in the territory of the Locri Ozolae. After the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.) Epaminondas invited the exiled Messenians scattered in Italy, Sicily, Africa and elsewhere to return to their country: the city of Messene (q.v.) was founded in 369 to be the capital of the country and, like Megalopolis in Arcadia, a powerful check on Sparta. Other towns too were founded or rebuilt at this time, though a great part of the land still remained very sparsely peopled. But though independent Messenia never became really powerful or able to stand without external support. After the fall of the Theban power, to which it had owed its foundation, it became an ally of Philip II. of Macedon and took no part in the battle of Chaeroneia (338 B.C.). Subsequently it joined the Achaean League, and we find Messenian troops fighting along with the Achaeans and Antigonus Doson at Sellasia in 222 B.C. Philip V. sent Demetrius of Pharos to seize Messene, but the attempt failed and cost the life of Demetrius: soon afterwards the Spartan tyrant Nabis succeeded in taking the city, but was forced to retire by the timely arrival of the Philopoemen and the Megalopolitans. A war afterwards broke out with the Achaean League, during which Philopoemen was captured and put to death by the Messenians (183 B.C.), but Lycortas took the city in the following year, and it again joined the Achaean League, though much weakened by the loss of Abia, Thuria and Pherae, which broke loose from it and entered the League as independent members (see Achaean League). In 146 B.C. the Messenians, together with the other states of Greece, were brought directly under Roman sway by L. Mummius. For centuries there had been a dispute between Messenia and Sparta about the possession of the Ager Dentheliates on the western slope of Taÿgetus: after various decisions by Philip of Macedon, Antigonus, Mummius, Caesar, Antony, Augustus and others, the question was settled in A.D. 25 by Tiberius and the Senate in favour of the Messenians (Tac. Ann. iv. 43).
In the middle ages Messenia shared the fortunes of the rest of the Peloponnese. It was overrun by Slavic hordes, who have left their traces in many village names, and was one of the chief battlefields of the various powers–Byzantines, Franks, Venetians and Turks—who struggled for the possession of the Morea. Striking reminders of these conflicts are afforded by the extant ruins of the medieval strongholds of Kalamata, Coron (anc. Asine, mod. Korone), Modon (Methone) and Pylos. At the present day Messenia forms a department with its capital at Kalamata, and a population numbering (according to the census of 1907), 127,991.
See W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (London, 1830), i. 324 sqq.; E. Curtius, Peloponnesos (Gotha, 1852), ii. 121 sqq.; C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland (Leipzig, 1868), Iii. 155 sqq.; E. P. Boblaye, Recherches géographiques sur les ruines de la Morée (Paris, 1835), 103 sqq.; Strabo viii. 358 sqq.; Pausanias iv., and the commentary in J. G. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece, vol. iii.; and articles by W. Kolbe, Athenische Mitteilungen (1904), 364 sqq., and M. N. Tod, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxv. 32 sqq. Physical features: A. Philippson, Der Peloponnes (Berlin, 1892), 340–381. Inscriptions: Inscriptions graecae, v.; Le Bas-Foucart, Voyage archéologique: Inscriptions, Nos. 291–326 A; Collitz-Bechtel, Sammlung der griech. Dialektinschriften, iii. 2, Nos. 4637–4692. (M. N. T.)
MESSIAH (Dan. x. 25, 26), and Messias (John i. 41; iv. 25),
transcriptions (the first form modified by reference to the
etymology) of the Greek Μεσσίας, (Μεσίας, Μεσείας), which in
turn represents the Aramaic מְשִּׁיהָא (mĕshīḥā), answering to the
Hebrew הַמָּשִׁהַ, “the anointed.”[1] There can be no doubt that
a magical power was ascribed to the anointing oil (cf. Frazer,
Golden Bough, 2nd ed., ii. 364 sqq.). The king was thereby
rendered sacrosanct (1 Sam. xxiv. 6 sqq.; 2 Sam. i. 14 sqq.; iv. 9
sqq.), and he was considered to be endowed with a special virtue.
Thus whosoever curses the king is stoned as though God Himself
had been cursed (2 Sam. xix. 22). In ancient Egyptian cultus
the priest, after he has solemnly saluted the gods, begins the
daily toilet of the god, which consists in sprinkling his image,
clothing it with coloured cloths, and anointing it with oil (Erman,
Die aegyptische Religion, p. 49). In the magical texts of
Babylonia a similar virtue was attached to oil: “bright oil,
pure oil, resplendent oil that bestows magnificence on the Gods
. . . the oil for the conjuration (šiptu) of Marduk” (Tallquist,
Maklû series, tablet vii. col. 1, 31 sqq.; cf. Gressmann, Der
Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie, p. 258, sqq.). We
have, in Schrader’s K.I.B. v. letter 37 (p. 98), evidence from
the Tell el-Amarna tablets that the anointing of kings was
practised in Egypt or Syria in 1450 B.C. (c.) in a letter addressed
to the Egyptian king by Ramman-nirari of Nuḥašši. On the
intimate relation which in primitive times subsisted between the
sorcerer and the king see the citation from Frazer’s Early
History of Kingship, p. 127, in the article Priest, and cf. p. 29:
“Classical evidence points to the conclusion that in prehistoric
ages . . . the various tribes or cities were ruled by kings who
discharged priestly duties” (p. 31). Thus the early kings of
Assyria were priests of Assur (Ašur), the tutelary deity of
Assyria. Tiglath-Pileser I. (c. 1100 B.C.) calls his predecessors,
Šamši-Ramman and Išmi-Dagan, iššakku (pa-te-si) of the God
Assur (Prism-insc. col. vii. 62, 63). Later kings, e.g. Shalmaneser
II. (Nimrud-obelisk, line 15, monolith, line 11) and
Assur-bani-pal (Rassam cyl. col. vii. 94) call themselves by the
more definite title of šangu of Assur. The Hebrew word with
the article prefixed occurs in the Old Testament only in the
phrase “the anointed priest” (Lev. iv. 3, 5, 16; vi. 22 [15]), but
“Yahweh’s anointed” is a common title of the king of Israel,
applied in the historical books to Saul and David, in Lam. iv. 20
to Zedekiah, and in Isa. xlv. 1 extended to Cyrus. In the
Psalms corresponding phrases (My, Thy, His anointed)[2] occur
nine times, to which may be added the lyrical passages 1 Sam ii.
10, Hab. iii. 13.
In the present attitude of literary criticism it would be most difficult to assert, as Robertson Smith did in the 9th edition of this work, that “in the intention of the writers it [i.e. the term messiah or “anointed”] refers to the king then on the throne.” Nor would most recent critics agree with Professor Driver (L.O.T., 8th ed. p. 385) in considering Pss. ii. and lxxii; as “presumably pre-exilic.” G. Buchanan Gray (J.Q.R., July 1895, p. 658 sqq.) draws a parallel between the “king” in the Psalms and the “servant” in Deutero-Isaiah or Yahweh’s “Son” (in Hos. xi. 1, &c.) which is applied to Israel either actual or idealized. It would be possible so to interpret “king” or “anointed” in some Psalms, e.g. lxi., lxiii. and lxxxiv., but hardly in Pss. ii., lxxii. and lxxxix., where the Messianic reference is strongly personal.[3] In the Psalms the ideal aspect of the kingship, its religious importance as the expression and organ of Yahweh’s sovereignty, is prominent. When the Psalter became a liturgical book the historical kingship had gone by, and the idea alone remained, no longer as the interpretation of a present political fact but as part of Israel’s religious inheritance. It was impossible, however, to think that a true idea had become obsolete merely because it found no expression on earth for the time being; Israel looked again for an anointed king to whom the words of the sacred hymns should apply with a force
- ↑ The transcription is as in Γεσσούρ Γεσσίρ for גְשוּד, Onomastica, ed. Lag., pp. 247, 281, Βασ. β ii. 3. For the termination -ας for הא, see Lagarde, Psalt. Memph., p. vii.
- ↑ The plural is found in Ps. cv. 15, of the patriarchs as consecrated persons.
- ↑ In Ps. lxxxiv. 9 [10] it is disputed whether the anointed one is the king, the priest, or the nation as a whole. The second view is perhaps the best.
