Helots and Messenians Fortify Mount Ithome

Ithome rises like a crouched lion above the Messenian plain, its flanks cut by gullies and its summit broad enough for a town’s worth of walls. After the earthquake, rebels climbed it with sacks of barley, skins of water, and the expertise passed down from Eira’s defenders. Within weeks, parapets appeared; paths were trapped; lookouts scanned the Pamisos and the roads to Andania and Stenyclerus [2][4].

The siege logic was immediate. Control the ridge line; deny the approaches; raid when possible. From Ithome, small parties slid down at dusk to burn wagon trains bound for Spartan posts near Stenyclerus or to seize a harvest patch beneath the mountain’s southern face. The smell of smoke drifted toward the Messenian Gulf; the sound of runners’ feet, light on stone, carried up to the gate [2].

Sparta encamped in the foothills. They posted detachments along the Pamisos, blocked the routes over Taygetus, and began the style of operations learned at Eira: accumulate small gains, hold your ground, trust that the mountain will tire before the city does. But Plutarch’s emphasis—“the greatest peril”—is telling [4]. The helotry’s sheer numbers, exposed starkly at Plataea by Herodotus’ seven-to-one ratio, formed a potential army concentrated on a stronghold [3]. The arithmetic frightened, and rightly.

The rebels’ geography widened their options. Ithome’s western slopes look out toward the Messenian Gulf and Pylos, where boats could slip in with supplies; its northern approaches tie into routes toward Elis and Arcadia, where sympathizers might offer grain or refuge. From Andania’s shrines to the Pamisos’ fords, the terrain was a web the Messenians knew with intimate precision [2].

Pausanias will later tell us that this stand-off ended not with storming ladders but with a truce. For now, the fortress lived. Fires burned on the summit at night; the azure sky blazed at noon; the siege line below shivered in winter rains. Athenians would soon appear and just as quickly be sent away. But the heart of the crisis throbbed here, on Ithome’s stone [2][9].

Thucydides, looking back, will explain Spartan behavior during and after such risings: test helots, crown the brave, then make them “disappear” when fear peaks [10]. That psychology encamped at Ithome too. Every Spartan commander who walked the perimeter could count, as Herodotus had at Plataea, not only citizen shields but the multitude beyond them—now inside a mountain fort.