Qualla: Mantinea https://qualla.com/mantinea en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Mantinea https://qualla.com/mantinea Mantinea: Introduction https://qualla.com/mantinea/ Photo credit Lord Windsor, Public domain. Diotima of Mantinea taught Socrates what he knew about love. The philosopher himself says so in Plato's Symposium — though whether she was real or a device, scholars still argue. What is not argued is that Mantinea, the city she supposedly called home, sat at the center of the Greek world's most turbulent centuries, hosting three decisive battles on the same plain and surviving destruction twice. Not many cities can say that.

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Image: Lord Windsor | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/sqxv-mantinea-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Mantinea: The Plain That History Kept Choosing https://qualla.com/mantinea/ Photo credit C messier, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Arcadian plateau around modern Tripoli is broad and bowl-shaped, ringed by mountains — Lyrkeia to the north, Mainalo to the southwest — and flat enough that armies could maneuver freely. Ancient commanders understood its geometry. When Sparta and Athens fought for dominance o...

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Image: C messier | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/sqxv-mantinea-the-plain-that-history-kept-choosing.mp3 0:06 2 full Mantinea: A City Built, Dismembered, and Rebuilt https://qualla.com/mantinea/ Photo credit Kamil Teremeski, CC BY 4.0. Mantinea itself coalesced around 500 BC through the amalgamation of several neighboring villages — a process the Greeks called synoecism, the gathering-together of peoples. Its patron god was Poseidon, and it filled the plain with temples. The fortifications were originally polyg...

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Image: Kamil Teremeski | CC BY 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/sqxv-mantinea-a-city-built-dismembered-and-rebuilt.mp3 0:06 3 full Mantinea: A Democracy Worth Studying https://qualla.com/mantinea/ Photo credit Violeta Meleti, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mantinea was no ordinary city. By 420 BC it was already a democracy — Thucydides notes that the Mantineans joined an Argive alliance partly because it was a fellow democracy, a remarkably self-aware political statement for the fifth century. Aristotle found its system unusual eno...

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Image: Violeta Meleti | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/sqxv-mantinea-a-democracy-worth-studying.mp3 0:06 4 full Mantinea: Hadrian's Temple, Pausanias's Tour, and the Marble That Survives https://qualla.com/mantinea/ Photo credit SchneesturmKatze, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Roman emperor Hadrian visited Mantinea in AD 130, restoring its ancient name — it had been renamed Antigoneia by the Macedonian king Antigonus III Doson after he sacked it in 223 BC. Hadrian also built a temple here dedicated to his lover Antinous, who had drowned in the Nile...

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Image: SchneesturmKatze | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/sqxv-mantinea-hadrians-temple-pausaniass-tour-and-the-marble-tha.mp3 0:06 5 full Mantinea: What the Mountains Still Hold https://qualla.com/mantinea/ Photo credit SchneesturmKatze, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mountains remain the valley's frame. The seat of the modern municipal unit Mantineia is Nestani, a village of fewer than five hundred people in 2011, sitting in the northeastern part of Arcadia. The valley below it has flooded more than once in the modern era — mid-twentieth-cent...

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Image: SchneesturmKatze | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/v/mantinea-wp/sqxv-mantinea-what-the-mountains-still-hold.mp3 0:06 6 full