MANTINEIA (MANTINEA), an ancient city of Arcadia, in a long narrow marshy plain (now called after the chief town Tripolitsa) bounded on the W. by Mt. Maenalus, on the E. by Mt. Artemision, and without opening to the coast, the water per colating through underground passages (katavothra) to the sea. Tegea (q.v.), about Io m. S. of Mantineia, continually disputed the supremacy of the district.
Mantineia is mentioned in the Homeric catalogue of ships, but in early Greek times was only a cluster of villages, insignifi cant compared with Tegea, and submissive to Sparta. But soon after the Persian wars, its five constituent villages, at the sugges tion of Argos, were merged into one city, whose policy was hence forth guided by three main considerations: its democratic consti tution of small freeholders; its ambition to control the Alpheus watershed and Arcadian roads to the Isthmus, and its chronic disputes with Tegea. About 469 B.C. Mantineia alone of Arca dian townships refused to join the league of Tegea and Argos against Sparta. Though formally on the same side in the Pelopon nesian War it employed the truce of 423 in fierce but indecisive war with Tegea. Mantineia regained its autonomous position in the Achaean League in 192, and its original name in A.D. 133. Under the later Roman Empire the city dwindled into a mere vil lage (which since the 6th century bore the Slavonic name Go ritza) and as a result of malaria and Turkish rule has disap peared.
The site was excavated by the French school at Athens, in 1888. The agora and adjacent buildings, and the walls about 4 m. in circumference have been investigated. When the city was rebuilt in 3 70 B.C., the river Ophis, which formerly ran through the town, was divided so as to encircle the walls.
(I). The first battle, in the Peloponnesian War (q.v.), is of
no strategic importance but of some interest in the evolution of tactics. On the one side were the Spartans and their allies under the Spartan king Agis, while the other was mainly composed of Argives and Mantineans. As the Spartan line advanced, a drift to the right occurred—a common occurrence in ancient battles, due to the natural instinct of each man to hug closely to his neighbour's shield as a protection to his own unguarded, i.e., non shield bearing, side. Agis, seeing that this drift would cause his left flank to be overlapped by the enemy, sought to prolong his left. This stretching caused a gap in the centre, and the enemy, pouring into the gap, broke up the Spartan left wing. This dis aster, however, was offset by the success of the Spartan right. (See Thucydides v. 71.) (2). The second, and more justly famous battle, took place in 362 B.C., and is memorable not only for Epameinondas's further development of the epoch-making tactics which he had intro duced at Leuctra (q.v.), but also for his death in the moment of victory. He is immortalized by two battles. A year after Leuc tra, Epameinondas had led the forces of the newly formed Ar cadian League in a march on virgin Sparta itself. The march had been admirably carried out in three converging columns over mountain routes in mid-winter and with deep strategical insight Epameinondas had made an indirect approach to his goal, slipping past Sparta and then moving up from its rear. Strong reinforce ments came to Sparta from her allies in the Peloponnesian League, and his own design was thwarted by the dwindling away of his own allies, whose troops preferred easy plunder to the chance of de cisive victory. He was thus compelled to retire rather than pay exorbitantly for military success, but only after establishing the new Messenian state as a check on, and counterpoise to, Sparta in southern Greece. And with his subsequent foundation of Megal opolis as a further check his grand strategy had attained the greater political object of definitely overthrowing Sparta's long supremacy in the Peloponnese. But with his subsequent if tern porary supersession, Theban democracy forfeited its advantages by short-sighted policy and blundering diplomacy, and enabled its Arcadian allies, repudiating gratitude in growing conceit and ambition, to dispute Theban leadership.