Kings of Arcadia (historical context)

In this article you may:
a. Get a glimpse about Arkadia and Pausanias
b. Understand why there is a special section at the beginning of the book Arkadika with a list of the kings of Arkadia.


    Arkadia is placed in south mainland Greece, in the peninsula of Peloponnese. It is placed exactly in the middle of this peninsula and in ancient times the Arkadian borders were in fact the mountains that surround this regional unit with no access to the see. Today, Arkadia is directly connected to the sea on the East side of Peloponnese as its borders have slightly change, through time.

Map of Peloponnese
Europe > Greece > Peloponnese
Map of Europe. See Greece in
yellow & Peloponnese in red.
    Pausania was an ancient geographer and traveller of the 2nd century. In order write his work, he visiting all parts of Greece during his time in order to write down and preserve whatever cultural aspects had survived from the Antiquity. All these because he sensed that if no one will keep records of the past, this will eventually fade away. And he knew that it was too great a past to let it fall into oblivion. His eighth book is devoted to Arkadia.

    While writing his eighth book, Arkadia, Pausanias feels the need to -first and foremost- introduce the Arkadian kings to his readers and present them in the form of a narrative diagram. What he probably wants is his readers to be familiar in advance with the list of kings that he himself concluded to as the one closest to the truth, after going across Arkadia and listening to all local variations regarding the kings, based on the opinions and historical documemts with which each community presented him upon to his questions.

    But because Arkadia had many strong communities with contradictions and conflicts amongst them, each community preserved a unique version for the pasts that varied from community to community within Arkadia. For example, we see that Apheidas was a king according to the community of Tegeans but the initial list does not preserve his name as one of the kings.

    Should we consider this as an inconsequence? Not necessarily. We shall imagine it more as the local truth of the ancestors of Tegea, a truth that was compromised when the total of all the communities -The Arkadians- decided to create a common identity-myth-history-economy etc. For the Arkadians have a peculiar feature. They bare their regional describing name 'Arkadians' but simultaneously they bare their hometown decribing name like 'Tegean' (=from Tegea), 'Methydrieus' (=from Methydrion) etc. They were people of their communities, with strong and unique to their eyes past which was shaped form their inter-community disagreements but they were also Arkadians, united to defend the Arkadian land from external forces, mostly Sparta. The official date that the Arkadians, the people of the communities of the Arkadian land, decided to act united against the common enemy is the date that Megalopolis, the capital of this 'Arkadian Union', was founded between 371-368 BC. But the date of the first historical hinds of a common Arkadian spirit or when was the first realisation that united they could achieve more, is still a debate in scholarship.

    Now let's focus on the kings of Arkadia. It is understandable that because of the way Pausanias gathered his evidence, the list of kings he presents may or may not be completely aligned with the truth. Although we should always bare this in our mind when reading the work of Pausanias, we should rest assured that he would have never intended to alternate the facts but rather shape his opinion (and, thus, ours too) based on the facts that made more sense to him. The additional, non Pan-Arkadian information, were added in the smaller sections that dealt specifically with the region that these came from. But maybe not. Moreover, Pausanias' attempts to provide dating for the events and legendary or historical figures are quite often confusing. Unfortunately, no other complete list of kings has survived that can offer a decent comparison and, as usual, other surviving sources create more confusion to the dates than help. Thus, dating the kings is extremely risky and will probably lead you to inaccurate conclusions.

Find the video about the kings of Arkadia according to Pausanias here.

All images ©️ 2020 arkadiantales.blogspot.com