Manduria

• a city of the Salentines, in Lower Italy, between Aletium and Tarentum, still called Manduria, Plin. 2, 103, 106, § 226; Liv. 27, 15, 4.

MANDU´RIA (Μανδύριον, Steph. B.: Eth. ΜανδυρῖνοςManduria), an ancient city of Calabria, in the territory of the Salentines, situated at the distance of 24 miles E. of Tarentum. Its name has obtained some celebrity from its being the scene of the death of Archidamus, king of Sparta, the son of Agesilaus, who had been invited to Italy by the Tarentines, to assist them against their neighbours the Messapians and Lucanians; but was defeated and slain in a battle under the walls of Manduria, which was fought on the same day with the more celebrated battle of Chaeronea, 3rd Aug., B. C 338. (Plut. Ages. 3, who writes the name Μανδόνιον; Theopomp. ap. Athen. 12. p. 536; Diod. 16.63, 88; Paus. 3.10.5.) This is the first notice we find of the name of Manduria: it would appear to have been a Messapian (or rather perhaps a Salentine) city, and apparently a place of considerable importance; but the only other mention of it that occurs in history is in the Second Punic War, when it revolted to the Carthaginians, but was taken by assault by Fabius Maximus,just before he recovered Tarentum, B.C. 209. (Liv. 27.15.) We have no account of its fate on this occasion, but it would seem certain that it was severely punished, and either destroyed or at least reduced to a degraded condition; for we find no mention of it as a municipal town under the Romans; and Pliny omits its name in his list of towns in this part of Italy, though he elsewhere (2.103. s. 106) incidentally notices it as oppidum in Salentino.T he name is again found in the Tabula, which places it at the distance of 20 M. P. from Tarentum, an interval less than the truth, the actual distarice being 20 geog. miles or at least 24 Roman miles. (Tab. Peut. )

The existing ruins are considerable, especially those of the ancient walls, great part of the circuit of which is still preserved: they are built of large rectangular blocks, but composed of the soft and porous stone of which the whole neighbouring country consists; and in their original state appear to have formed a double circuit of walls, with a broad street or way between the two, and a ditch on the outside. At present they are nowhere more than six feet in height. The modern town of Manduria (a flourishing place, with about 6000 inhabitants) does not occupy the site of the ancient city; the latter having been destroyed by the Saracens, the few remaining inhabitants settled at a place called Casal Nuovo, which appellation it retained till towards the close of the eighteenth century, when, having grown into a considerable town, it resumed, by royal license, its ancient name of Manduria. (Swinburne, Travels, vol. 1. p. 222; Romanelli, vol. 1. p. 53; Giustiniani, Diz. Geogr. vol. 5. p. 338.)

Pliny mentions the existence at Manduria of a well or spring of water, which was always full to the brim, and could not be either increased or diminished in quantity. This natural curiosity is still shown by the inhabitants of Manduria, and has been described by several recent travellers; it is said that it preserves a constant equality in the level of its waters, notwithstanding any addition that may be made to them or any quantity that may be withdrawn,--a statement exactly coinciding with that of Pliny. (Plin. Nat. 2.103. s. 106; Swinburne, Travels, vol. 1. p. 223; K. Craven, Travels, pp. 165--167.) The expression used by that author, who calls the basin or reservoir of the water lacus,h as given rise to the erroneous notion that there existed a lake in the neighbourhood of Manduria, for which there is no foundation in fact.

A town in Calabria, on the road from Tarentum to Hydruntum (Livy, xxvi. 15).

A Messapic city ca. 35 km SE of Tarentum. Its name first appears in connection with the death, beneath its walls in 338 B.C., of king Archidamos of Sparta, who had been summoned to help the Tarentines against the Messapians and the Lucanians (Plut. Ages. 3.2). There is another mention of the city. During the second Punic war, according to Livy (27.15), the city gave passage to Hannibal in 212 B.C. and in 209 B.C. Q. Fabius Maximus sacked it, taking 3000 prisoners and a great deal of loot. From that point on, the city declined and never regained the status of a Roman municipium. Pliny (HN 3.11) in his listing of the cities in this part of Italy, makes no specific mention of it but elsewhere in another passage (2.106.226) concerning the existence of a celebrated lacus he calls Manduria an oppidum. The name of the city appears in the Peutinger Table, which places it 20 Roman miles from Tarentum, a distance shorter than the actual one.

The most ancient evidence of life in the city comes from the necropolis, where some funerary objects were uncovered along with Corinthian pottery of the first ten years of the 6th c. B.C. and associated with local, Early Geometric vase production. It is probable that the first circuit walls of the city are to be dated to the beginning of the 5th c. B.C. The walls are about 2 km long and constructed of large, irregular blocks and fronted by a ditch which had been filled even in antiquity and recently have been revealed in the course of excavations. A second circuit wall, built outside the first, is well constructed of regular blocks. Set partly over the ditch of the first wall, it was constructed to enlarge and reinforce the wall. It dates to the 4th c. B.C. and was probably connected with the war against Tarentum and the death of Archidamos. The last and strongest circuit wall, with a perimeter of more than 5 km and a breadth of 5.5 m, faced inside and out with large blocks over a rubble core and fronted by a large ditch, was constructed in the 3d c. B.C., perhaps in the period of the Hannibalic war. The wall, in fact, was set over tombs whose grave gifts date to the second half of the 3d c. B.C. (pottery of Gnathia of the gadroon type). Outside the walls and in particular relation to the gates, often well preserved, and along the sides of the streets that lead from the gates, numerous rock-carved tombs have come to light. The richest of these (4th-3d c. B.C.) testify to the prosperity enjoyed by the city in that period. Numerous furnishings have been discovered comprising local geometric ware, among which the typically Messapic “trozzella” predominates, Gnathian and black glaze ware, and some bronze objects which are now preserved in the National Museum at Tarentum. Numerous Messapic inscriptions survive. The so-called Fountain of Pliny, is set in a large, natural grotto, was artificially adjusted and furnished with a stairway of 40 steps. The constant level of the water is unique and perhaps corresponds to the lacus mentioned above by Pliny.

W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, II (1857) 259 (E. H. Bunbury); L. Tarentini, Cenni storici di Manduria antica (1901); RE 14.1 (1928) 1046 (Philipp); K. Miller, Itineraria Romana, 362; N. Degrassi, “La documentazione archeologica in Puglia,” Atti del I Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (1961) 235; EAA 4 (1961) 815 (F. Coarelli); O. Parlangeli, Studi Messapici (1960) 112.