MANTINEIA, a city of ancient Greece, in Arcadia, was situated on the River Ophis, near the confines of Argolis, in the centre of the valley now called the Plain of Tripolitza. It was built for the inhabitants of four or five separate villages, who had coalesced into one community, and is said to have taken its name from Mantineus, son of Lycaon. Its soldiers were engaged in the Trojan war (Hom. Il. ii. 607). As allies of the Spartans, the Mantineians sent their contingent to the battle of Thermopylae. Jealous of the tyrannical policy of the Spartans, they joined the Athenian confederacy in the Peloponnesian war, but
were defeated along with their allies at the first battle of Mantinea in 418 B.C. (Thucyd. v. 66-81). For some time after this they yielded a reluctant submission to the Spartans, until, on being commanded by the latter to raze their walls, they rose once more to assert their freedom. They were defeated, however, by Agesipolis, King of the Spartans, in 385 B.C., and were driven within their city. There, too, their invaders, by damming up the River Ophis on its exit from the city, and thus sapping the walls, forced them to submit. The Mantineians then retired to the humble villages in which their forefathers had dwelt, and not until the tyranny of Sparta had been broken at Leuctra (July 371 B.C.) did they return to the city, and, with the aid of the Eleians and Arcadians, rebuild the walls. (Xen. Hell. vi. 5.) About six years after the completion of this work, an alliance which the Mantineians had formed with their old masters the Spartans, turned against them the hostility of the Theban general Epaminondas. Accordingly, that great man encountered them in 362 B.C. at the second battle of Mantinea, and defeated them, though at the cost of his own life. In 295 B.C. a third action was fought at this city between Demetrius Poliorcetes and the Spartans (Plut. Demetr.); and in 242 B.C., a fourth, between the Achæans and the Spartans (Pausan. viii. 10). A league which the Mantineians formed with the Spartans in 228 B.C. once more brought them into disaster; and in 226 B.C., Aratus, leader of the Achæan confederacy, captured and occupied their city. The garrison, however, which he left was soon put to the sword, and the Mantineians continued to resist the Achæans until 222 B.C., when their city was taken and pillaged, and themselves were sold for slaves, by Antigonus Doson, King of Macedonia (Polyb. ii. 54, 58, 62). In honour of this monarch the city changed its name into Antigoneia, and it did not recover its former title until the time of Hadrian. In 207 B.C. the fifth battle of Mantinea was fought between the Lacedæmonians and Achæans. The ruins of Mantinea are seen around Paleopoli, and have been described by Leake in his Travels in the Morea.