There is also an ancient Tegea near Kissamos in the island of Crete, see Tegea, Crete

Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece"This sanctuary had been respected from early days by all the Peloponnesians, and afforded peculiar safety to its suppliants" Pausanias, Description of Greece iii.5.6 containing the Temple of Athena Alea ("Winged Athena", an archaic iconographic representation). The temenos was founded by Aleus, Pausanias was informed. Description of Greece viii.4.8. Votive bronzes from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer; there are sealstones and fibulae. The temple burned in 391 BCE and was magnificently rebuilt, to designs by Scopas of Paros, with reliefs of the Calydonian boarhunt in the main pediment.The Calydonian boar and the head of Atalanta have been removed to the museum at Athens

In the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism to form one city.Compare the origin of Sparta. Tegea was listed in Homer's Catalogue of Ships as one of the cities that contributed ships and men for the Achaean assault on Troy.

Tegea struggled against Spartan hegemony in Arcadia and was finally conquered ca 560 BCE. In the fourth century Tegea joined the Arcadian League and struggled to free itself from Sparta. The city retained civic life under the Roman Empire; it was sacked in 395 by the Goths.

Pausanias visited the city in the second century CE. The "tombs" he saw there were shrines to the chthonic founding daemones: '"There are also tombs of Tegeates, the son of Lykaon, and of Maira, the wife of Tegeates. They say Maira was a daughter of Atlas, and Homer makes mention of her in the passage where Odysseus tells to Alkinous his journey to Hades, and of those whose ghosts he beheld there."Pausanias, Guide to Greece 8.48.6

Tegea is now located within the modern town of Alea, also it was referred to as Piali (not to be confused with Palaia Episkopi). Alea is located about 10 kilometers southeast of Tripoli. It is also a municipality whose seat is Stadio.

The province of Megalopoli is bordered to the west and the province of Kynouria is bordered to the east.

See also

• Communities of Arcadia

Notes