Mantinea

Mantinea was a city in ancient Arcadia, Greece, formed around 500 BC through the consolidation of neighboring villages, and it became an important urban center of the Peloponnese. It was the site of two major battles: the First Battle of Mantineia in 418 BC, the largest land battle of the Peloponnesian War, in which Sparta and its allies defeated Athens and its coalition; and the Second Battle of Mantinea in 362 BC, a technical victory for Thebes that broke Theban hegemony because the general Epaminondas died in the fighting. Sparta dismantled the city in 385 BC, but it was later rebuilt, sacked and renamed Antigonia by the Macedonian king Antigonus III Doson around 223 BC, and restored to its original name under the Roman emperor Hadrian, who visited in 130 AD and built a temple there.