Arcadian Gate
Creators: Kayne Khoury Copyright © The Contributors. Sharing and remixing permitted under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (cc-by).
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https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/435916987
37.186704837, 21.9133102359
- Representative Locations:
- Imagery location of the Arcadian Gate (550 BC - 330 BC) accuracy: +/- 5 meters.
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- Arcadian Gate (English, modern)
- Arcadian Gate located at Messene (550 BC - 30 BC)
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gate (of a city), city gate, wall (of a city), city wall
Pleiades
The Messenians built the Arcadian Gate of Messene in the 4th century BCE. It is located at the base of Mount Ithome, and was likely the main entrance to the city. The Theban General, Epaminondas, freed the Messenians from Spartan hegemony and established the city for the newly freed population. The gate is connected to an expansive fortification that extended nine kilometers around the city. The first excavations on the site took place in 1895. The gate has exterior and interior openings separated by a circular inner courtyard decorated with double niches and Herms. The large limestone blocks and monumental size of the gate are reminiscent of the Cyclopean masonry style of Mycenaean architecture, perhaps as a deliberate echo of the Bronze Age ruins in Messenia. See Luraghi, 217-218; Van Damme, 87-88; and Unwin, 164.
Kayne Khoury, Alexa Frazey, Jeffrey Becker, Julia Doncaster, Adam Rabinowitz, and Carlos Martinez, 'Arcadian Gate: a Pleiades place resource', Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places, 2021 <https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/435916987> [accessed: 18 April 2024]
{{cite web |url=https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/435916987 |title=Places: 435916987 (Arcadian Gate) |author=Khoury, K. |accessdate=April 18, 2024 2:05 pm |publisher=Pleiades}}