For the most part, the Maniots lived in fortified villages (and "house-towers") where they defended their lands against the armies of William II Villehardouin and later against those of the Ottoman Empire.

[3] Homer's "Catalogue of Ships" in the Iliad mentions the cities of Mani: Messi (Mezapos), Oetylus (Oitylo), Kardamili (or Skardamoula), Gerenia, Teuthrone (Kotronas), and Las (Passavas).

Mani was also featured in other tales such as when Helen of Troy (Queen of Sparta), and Paris spent their first night together on the island of Cranae, off the coast of Gytheio.

The Macedonians under the command of Philip V of Macedon tried to invade Mani and the rest of Laconia (219–218 BC) and unsuccessfully besieged the cities of Gythium, Las and Asine.

[10] In 195 BC, during the Roman–Spartan War, the Roman Republic and the Achaean League with assistance from a combined Pergamene and Rhodian force captured Gythium after a lengthy siege.

[15] During the Civil war between Antony and Octavian (32–30 BC), the Maniots and the rest of the Laconians supplied Augustus with troops for his confrontation with Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC) and in gratitude they officially recognized Augustus as Emperor and invited him at Psamathous (near modern Porto Kagio), and their Koinon stayed an independent state.

The agora, the Acropolis, the island of Cranae (Marathonisi) where Paris on his way to Troy celebrated his nuptials with Beautiful Helen after taking her from Sparta, the Migonium or precinct of Aphrodite Migonitis (occupied by the modern town), and the hill Larysium (Koumaro) rising above it.

Gaiseric tried to land his fleet at Kenipolis (near modern village of Kyparissos in Cape Tenaron), but as his army disembarked, the inhabitants of the town attacked the Vandals and made them retreat after heavy casualties.

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.

William of Champlitte and Geoffrey I Villehardouin defeated the Peloponnesian Greeks at the Battle of the Olive Grove of Koundouros (1205), and the Peloponnese became the Principality of Achaea.

He used the newly captured fortress of Monemvasia to keep the Tsakonians at bay, and he built the castle at Mystras in the Taygetus mountains overlooking Sparta in order to contain the Melengi.

The Ottomans under Selim II, preparing to invade the Venetian island of Cyprus, built a fortress in Mani, at Porto Kagio, and they also garrisoned Passavas.

These states were interested and sent several expeditionary forces to Mani, but with the exception of a Spanish expedition that sacked Passavas, they all failed to achieve anything.

[43] With Ottoman forces preoccupied with the Austrians, the Venetians under Morosini saw their opportunity to take over Turkish-held territories in the Peloponnese, beginning the Morean War.

[47] A Russian fleet of five ships and 500 soldiers under the command of Aleksey Grigoryevich Orlov sailed from the Baltic Sea in 1769 and reached Mani in 1770.

The Western Legion, under the command of John Mavromichalis (nicknamed The Dog), Piotr Dolgorukov, and Panagiotis Koumoundouros, consisted of 200 Maniots and 12 Russians.

Hasan's demands entailed the children of ten captains as hostages, all Maniot-held arms, and an annual head-tax to be paid as punishment for supporting the Russians.

[55] On January 9, 1792, Catherine II of Russia had her representative Alexander Bezborodko sign the Treaty of Jassy with Grand Vizier Koca Yusuf Pasha of the Ottoman Empire.

This was part of the Legion of Light Riflemen, a force made up of mainland refugees that defended the Ionian Islands and participated in Russian operations in the Mediterranean in the years 1805–1807.

[59][broken footnote] On March 17, 1821, 12,000 Maniots gathered in the church of the Taxiarchs (Archangels) of the town of Areopoli and declared war against the Ottoman Empire, preceding the rest of Greece by about a week.

[63][broken footnote] Ibrahim made good use of this turmoil and landed with his army (25-30,000 infantry, cavalry and artillery supported by the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet) at Methoni.

The Egyptians, not expecting any resistance, were caught by surprise at this sudden attack and were forced to retreat to a fortified position on the beach where they could receive support from their ships.

As he advanced towards Polytsaravos (nowadays a deserted place in the southern part of Taygetus), he was stopped by Theodoros Stathakos, who together with his family of thirteen people was waiting in their tower.

This was the last invasion of Mani by the Egyptians or the Ottomans, as the Peloponnese, central Greece, and some of the Aegean islands were liberated in 1828 after the naval forces of Bourbon Restoration France under Henri de Rigny, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under Edward Codrington, and the Russian Empire under Login Geiden defeated Ibrahim at the Navarino in 1827.

Later that year, an army of 6,000 men with five cannons under the command of General Christian von Schmaltz, assisted by five squadrons of royalist Maniots, once again besieged Petrovouni.

Exports from Exo Mani also included pine for masts as well as turpentine, hides as well as a tanning agent and prinokoki, a crimson-colored dye.

[21] The British historian David Armine Howarth states: "The only Greeks that have had an unbroken descent were the clans like the Maniotes who were so fierce, and lived so far up the mountain, that invaders left them alone.

They also differ from mainland, island and Asia Minor Greek populations who have been compared by PCA analysis, but they "partially" overlap with Sicilians and southern Italians.

This can be explained by the fact that Maniots (along with Tsakonians) inherited the lowest amounts of Slavic autosomal ancestry throughout the Peloponnese, especially the ones from Deep Mani.

Even though Tsakonians, divided between Southerners (15 samples) and Northerners (9 samples) also possess low levels of common ancestry with the Slavs at 0.2%–0.9% and 3.9%–8.2% respectively, they remain a distinct population from both the Maniots and the rest of the Peloponnesians, something that is attributed to isolation by distance and the possibility that Tsakonia in antiquity was inhabited by Doric-speaking Ionians (per Herodotus), while similarly conservative Mani by actual Dorians.