THE FOUNDING OF MESSENE AND ITS URBAN PLANNING SYSTEM
All the buildings in Messene have the same orientation and are arranged within the grid formed by horizontal (east-West) and vertical (North-South) streets. This urban planning system is known as the Hippodameian grid, named after its original visionary and creator, the architect, urban planner, geometer, and astronomer of the 5th century B.C., Hippodamus of Miletus.
It is noteworthy that this predetermined layout, based on the principles of isonomy, isopolity, and isomeria—that is, the virtues of the democratic polity— and characterized by extreme geometric precision, was adapted each time to the specific geomorphological and climatic conditions of the site, blending harmoniously into the natural environment.
The basic idea of the Hippodamian urban planning system, which stems from the ideal of democracy, is that all citizens should have plots of equal size and equal suitability and have access to public and sacred buildings, that is, to public spaces, which command attention through their monumental scale and rich ornamentation.
It was precisely on these principles that, in 369 B.C., by Epaminondas of Thebes and his Argive allies, the new capital of autonomous Messenia, which owes its name to the country’s first mythical pre-Doric queen, Messene, daughter of the Argive king Triopas and wife of the Lacedaemonian Polykona.
Tradition also attributes to Queen Messene the founding of the sanctuary of Zeus Ithomatas on the summit of Ithomi (Pausanias 4.26–33). Pausanias also informs us that as early as the reign of Glaukos (10th century B.C.), Messene was deified and worshipped.
She emerged as one of the city’s principal deities alongside Zeus Ithomatas. Her temple was uncovered in the southwestern part of the agora. It is a peripteral temple with 6 by 12 Doric-order sandstone columns. In its cella stood a chrysolite statue of the goddess and a fresco by Omphalion, a student of Nicias, depicting thirteen mythical kings and queens of the country.
The newly founded city is centered around its mythical founder, Queen Messene, while at the same time the worship of heroic ancestors, such as Aristomenes and Epaminondas, is reinforced. An ideological framework is created with the primary goal of promoting and highlighting the cultural identity of the Messenians and the new political order, as it took shape following the long-standing wars with Sparta and the subsequent long periods of captivity and exile.
