The Sicels and Messene were to remain free of Carthaginian and Syracusan influence, as was Leontini.
This new Messene, today's Ancient Messene, was constructed over the ruins of Ithome, an ancient city originally of Achaean Greeks, destroyed previously by the Spartans and abandoned for some time.
•
He supposed that the region around Ithome would already have had that name, to be reutilized by Epaminondas a thousand years later.
•
In 85 days the combined armies and exiles guided by the engineers and artisans had complete the walled city of Messene over the site of the previous Ithome.
He was said to have brought the rites of the Great Goddesses from Eleusis to Andania in Messene.
In 315 BC Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, seized the city of Messene, present-day Messina.
Messene remained the capital for several hundred years until the Byzantine Empire moved the seat of Messenia east of Mt. Ithome.