page_title: Maniots
section_title: During the Macedonian dynasty
hierarchical_section_title: Maniots / Medieval Mani / During the Macedonian dynasty
caption_attribution_description: Gythios
context_page_description: The Maniots or Maniates are a Greek ethnic group native to the Mani Peninsula, located in western Laconia and eastern Messenia, in the southern Peloponnese, Greece. They were also formerly known as Mainotes and the peninsula as Maina.
  Maniots are described as descendants of the ancient Dorian population of the Peloponnese and as such related to the ancient Spartans. The terrain is mountainous and inaccessible, and the regional name "Mani" is thought to have meant originally "dry" or "barren". The name "Maniot" is a derivative meaning "of Mani". In the early modern period, Maniots had a reputation as fierce and proudly independent warriors, who practiced piracy and fierce blood feuds. For the most part, the Maniots lived in fortified villages where they defended their lands against the armies of William II Villehardouin and later against those of the Ottoman Empire.
context_section_description: There is a description of Mani and its inhabitants in Constantine VII's De Administrando Imperio:
  Be it known that the inhabitants of Castle Maina are not from the race of aforesaid Slavs (Melingoi and Ezeritai dwelling on the Taygetus) but from the older Romaioi, who up to the present time are termed Hellenes by the local inhabitants on account of their being in olden times idolatres and worshippers of idols like the ancient Greeks, and who were baptized and became Christians in the reign of the glorious Basil. The place in which they live is waterless and inaccessible, but has olives from which they gain some consolation.
  The area inhabited by the Maniates (or Maniots) was first called by the name 'Maina' and was associated probably with the castle of Tigani (situated in the small peninsula of Tigani in Mezapos bay in northwestern Mani Peninsula). The Maniots at that time were called 'Hellenes'—that is, pagans (see Names of the Greeks)—and were only Christianized fully in the 9th century AD, though some church ruins from the 4th century AD indicate that Christianity was practiced by some Maniots in the region at an earlier time. The Maniots were the last inhabitants of Greece to openly follow the pagan Hellenic religion. This can be explained by the mountainous nature of Mani's terrain, which enabled them to escape the attempts of the Eastern Roman Empire to Christianize Greece by force.
caption: A characteristic door with the symbol of the double-headed eagle in Gytheio.
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