Politics and Geopolitics 113
the west coast in the latter part of the century in the time of Polydorus’ grand-
son Anaxandros, and there was apparently fighting toward the end of the cen-
tury in the time of the elder Leotychidas, a descendant of Theopompus. This,
too, makes sense. Given the size of Messenia, the magnitude of the task, and
the apparent diversity of its population, half measures were inevitable, but
experience would eventually reveal that they could not suffice. A conquest said
to have begun—as we would expect, given the military technology of the
time—with raids in the Stenyklaros plain could not be fully consolidated if
the peripheral districts were left to their own devices. Coming to grips with
the consequences of this unfortunate strategic fact may well have occupied the
Spartans throughout the seventh century. This would explain the second of
the two claims made regarding Epaminondas’ liberation of Messenia in 370:
that it was accomplished 230 years after that province fell under the Lacedae-
monian yoke.^37
We know next to nothing about Sparta’s ultimate organization of her do-
main in Messenia. There were communities of períoıkoı south of the Steynkla-
ros plain—at Thouria overlooking the Makaria plain, at Kardamyle and Pherae
on the Messenian Gulf, at various sites along the Nedon River on the flanks of
Mount Taygetus, at Kalamai inland from the Messenian Gulf, at Korone and
Asine on the peninsula ending at Cape Akritas, and at Mothone on the coast
in the far southwest, where, we are told, the Spartans settled a population
driven from Nauplia by the Argives. Communities of this sort existed as well
along the western coast at Koryphasion near Pylos, at Kyparissia to the north,
and at Aulon south of the Neda River; and Ampheia, to the northeast on the
lower slopes of Mount Taygetus, may have been a community of períoıkoı as
well. That there were others located in the marginal areas within both Laconia
and Messenia is certain, and there may well have been as many such commu-
nities in the Spartan domain as the one hundred claimed by Androtion.^38
The field surveys that have been taken suggest that, on the periphery,
where the períoıkoı lived, nucleated settlements were in Messenia, as in Laco-
nia, the norm. In the Soulima valley and to the west of it, however, there are
two sites with the remains of extensive buildings at Vasilikò and Kopanaki,
and this has sparked speculation that, in Messenia, the helots were set to work
on great plantations under the direction of overseers—for in the areas of that
province thought to have been worked by servile labor, there is, to date, evi-
dence from the period of Spartan domination for villages and even towns
but none for isolated farmsteads of the sort found in large numbers elsewhere