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.
TEGNÉR, Esaias (1782-1846), the most celebrated of Swedish writers, was born November 13, 1782, at Kyrkerud in Wermland. His father was a pastor, and his grandparents on both sides were peasants. His father, whose name had been Esaias Lucasson, took the surname of Tegnerus—altered by his fifth son, the poet, to Tegnér—from the hamlet of Tegnaby in Småland, where he was born. In 1799 Tegnér, hitherto educated in the country, entered the university of Lund, where he graduated in philosophy in 1802, and continued as tutor until 1810, when he was elected Greek lecturer. In 1812 he was named professor, and continued to work as a lecturer in Lund until 1824, when he was made bishop of Wexiö. At Wexiö he remained until his death, twenty-two years later. Tegnér's early poems have little merit. He was comparatively slow in development. His first great success was a dithyrambic war-song for the army of 1808, which stirred every Swedish heart. In 1811 his patriotic poem
Svea won the great prize of the Swedish Academy, and made him famous. In the same year was founded in Stockholm the Gothic League (
Götiska förbundet), a sort of club of young and patriotic men of letters, of whom Tegnér quickly became the chief. The club published a magazine, entitled
Iduna, in which it printed a great deal of excellent poetry, and ventilated its views, particularly as regards the study of old Icelandic literature and history. Tegnér, Geijer, Afzelius, and Nicander became the most famous members of the Gothic League. Of the very numerous poems written by Tegnér in the little room at Lund which is now shown to visitors as the Tegnér museum, the majority are short, and even occasional lyrics. His celebrated
Song to the Sun dates from 1817. He completed three poems of a more ambitious character, on which his fame chiefly rests. Of these, two, the romance of Axel and the delicately-chiselled idyl of
Nattvardsbarnen (“The First Communion,” 1820), translated by Longfellow, take a secondary place in comparison with Tegnér's masterpiece, of world-wide fame. In 1820 he published in
Iduna certain fragments of an epic or cycle of epical pieces, on which he was then working,
Frithiofssaga or the Story of Frithiof. In 1822 he published five more cantos, and in 1825 the entire poem. Before it was completed it was famous throughout Europe; the aged Goethe took up his pen to commend to his countrymen this “alte, kräftige, gigantisch-barbarische Dichtart,” and desired Amalie von Imhoff to translate it into German. This romantic paraphrase of an ancient saga was composed in twenty-four cantos, all differing in verse form, modelled somewhat, it is only fair to say, on an earlier Danish masterpiece, the
Helge of Oehlenschläger.
Frithiofssaga is the best known of all Swedish productions; it is said to have been translated nineteen times into English, eighteen times into German, and once at least into every European language. It is far from satisfying the demands of more recent antiquarian research, but it still is allowed to give the freshest existing impression, in imaginative form, of life in early Scandinavia. In later years Tegnér began, but left unfinished, two important epical poems,
Gerda and
Kronbruden. The period of the publication of
Frithiofssaga (1825) was the critical epoch of his career. It made him one of the most famous poets of Europe; it transferred him from his study in Lund to the bishop's palace in Wexiö; it marked the first breakdown of his health, which had hitherto been excellent; and it witnessed a singular moral crisis in the inner history of the poet, about which much has been written, but of which little is known. Tegnér was at this time passionately in love with a certain beautiful Euphrosyne Palm, the wife of a town-councillor in Lund, and this unfortunate passion, while it inspired much of his finest poetry, turned the poet's blood to gall. From this time forward the heartlessness of woman is one of Tegnér's principal themes. It is a remarkable sign of the condition of Sweden at that time that a man not in holy orders, and so little in possession of the religious temperament as Tegnér, should be offered and should accept a bishop's crozier. He did not hesitate in accepting it: it was a great honour; he was poor; and he was anxious to get away from Lund. No sooner, however, had he begun to study for his new duties than he began to regret the step he had taken. It was nevertheless too late to go back, and Tegnér made a respectable bishop as long as his health lasted. But he became moody and melancholy; as early
