This walk talks you up to the summit plateau of Mount Ithome, with views over the site of ancient Messene.
Ithome is not a high mountain: it’s just 800 metres above sea level.
But it is a spectacular sight: it stands high above the plains below, and it is a constant backdrop if you visit the ancient city.
It also had a big cultural significance in the history of the Peloponnese.
I don’t completely understand why it’s not more visited. Thousands of people go to ancient Messene, but I don’t think many of them make it up here!
Horns of the Peloponnese
Strategically it was an important place.
This is the site where the Messenians were besieged by the Spartans in the First Messenian War (743-724 BCE).
You can see why it would have been hard to dislodge them from the mountain, with its steep sides and fortifications. What must it have been like for these people crowded up here on the summit?
It was also important for conflicts in the Peloponnese in later centuries.
The Greek historian Polybius tells us that Philip V Macedon climbed up to the summit of Ithome to sacrifice to Zeus, after his bloody intervention in the civil conflict in Messene in the early third century BCE.
Polybius depicts him standing there with the entrails of the slaughtered animals in his hands, examining them for omens, and asking his companions for advice on whether he should occupy the mountain.
Demetrius of Pharos is clear about the advantages:
‘It is only by holding on to both of the horns that you can keep the ox under control’, referring by the ‘horns’ to Acrocorinth and Mount Ithome, and by the ‘ox’ to the Peloponnese. (Polybius, Histories7.12.3)
But in the end Philip decides against it. He is swayed by Aratus, who in Plutarch’s longer account of the incident tells Philip that he doesn’t need the mountain to exercise his authority. Aratus draws on the long-standing association between mountains and bandits:
For it is robbers who cling to rocks and occupy cliffs. (Plutarch, Aratus 50).
Zeus and the nymph Ithome
Mount Ithome also had a complex and interconnected religious landscape.
There are two sanctuaries halfway up the hill. The first is in honour of Artemis Limnatis. The other has traditionally been associated with goddess of childbirth Eileithyia, but more recent analysis suggests it may instead have been a sanctuary of Demeter.
There was also sanctuary of Zeus on the summit, as we know from Pausanias 4.3.9.
We don’t have much archaeological evidence for it: it is probably under the site of the Old Voulkano monastery at the west end of the summit plateau. Some sections of the monastery include material which probably comes from the ancient sanctuary, including a stone tripod base built into the monastery walls.
That means Philip was sacrificing at an established site that was important for the city’s identity. There are surviving coins from Messene from the fourth century BCE with images of Zeus Ithomatas holding an eagle in one hand and a thunderbolt in the other. There is also evidence for a yearly festival called the Ithomaia.
Ithome was also one of many mountains, including Mount Lykaion in Arkadia, which were claimed as Zeus’ birthplace or his place of upbringing.
Pausanias 4.33.1 tells us that water was carried every day up to the summit from that same spring in a ritual designed to commemorate the washing of the infant Zeus by the two nymphs — one of them named Ithome — who nursed him.
Human sacrifice
But perhaps the most shocking story from Mount Ithome is an account of human sacrifice.
Narratives of human sacrifice are quite rare in ancient Greek culture, and when they do occur they are often associated with the mythical past, as in the stories about Mount Lykaion.
But for Ithome we have an account that is located in historical time, in the Second Messenian War, in the early 7th century BCE–although from a very biased source writing nearly 1000 years later!
The passage is in the work of the early Christian writer Clement of Alexandria. He reports it as one of several examples of human sacrifice in order to demonstrate the bloodthirsty quality of the traditional Greek and Roman gods:
Aristomenes the Messenian sacrificed 300 men to Zeus Ithomatas, thinking that sacrifices of such quantity and quality bring good omens. Among them was even Theopompos, the Spartan king, a noble offering. (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 3.1)
The word noble here is presumably sarcastic!
The route
You start in the village of Mavromati and head east along the road for a few hundred metres, then take a sharp left on to the dirt track that leads up to the summit.
At the first main hairpin bend you have option to go straight on to visit the remains of the sanctuaries of Artemis Limnatis (near to the track) and Eileithyia/Demeter (a few hundred metres to the west).
On the summit you can wander round and look at the remains of the monastery buildings.
You get an amazing view of the ancient city spread out below.
On the way down you need to retrace your steps back to the dirt track. Very soon you see a faded sign pointing off into the undergrowth to the right. That takes you to a path that leads through undergrowth over rocky ground all the way down the mountainside.
It brings you out finally opposite the tavernas in the village of Mavromati down below, at the Clepsydra spring, with its mulberry tree.
We can’t know for sure which spring the water-carriers set off from, when they carried their daily water up to Zeus on the summit. It may have been the spring that stands near to the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis. But possibly it was this one. And if so, this is presumably this is the path they took…
The round trip is about 7 km, with 400 metres of ascent.
The start point for the route is here. The downloadable GPX file is below.