Lepreum in 218 B.C.

Lepreum — Spring 218 BC · The Town That Freed Itself.

Lepreum (Lepreon) — the chief town of Triphylia, the strip of coast and upland between Elis and Messenia, facing the Libyan Sea and touching the south-west frontier of Arcadia. A small but proud community of mingled Minyan and Arcadian descent, named with its neighbours from Triphylus, son of Arcas, Lepreum has spent its history caught between greater powers — claimed by Elis, courted by Sparta and Arcadia, never quite its own master. Shortly before 218 BC the Eleans conquered and annexed the Triphylian towns; but in that very year, as Philip V of Macedon storms through the district, the Lepreates seize a quarter of their own town and defy the Elean, Aetolian and Spartan troops garrisoned among them, making a stand for their freedom and handing their city to the king.

Triphylia is a land of small towns that no one will leave alone. Lying between powerful Elis and liberated Messenia, with Arcadia at its back, its nine communities — Lepreum greatest among them — have been fought over for generations, annexed by the Eleans only shortly before this war. In 218 BC the storm reaches them: Philip V of Macedon turns from ravaging Elis to overrun the whole district, while the Aetolian Phillidas tries to hold it with Elean, Aetolian and Spartan troops. Into this the people of Lepreum make their own move. Though a thousand Eleans, a thousand Aetolians and pirates, five hundred mercenaries and two hundred Spartans hold their walls and citadel, the Lepreates seize part of their town and demand that every garrison depart — and with Philip’s Macedonians approaching, the garrisons give way. In six days the king masters all Triphylia; Lepreum, having freed itself, gives itself to him.