If Hellenistic Messenia was a land re-exploring and celebrating its hard-won freedom and autonomy, that fortunate state did not last long. At a peace conference ending just one of the innumerable Greek conflicts that scarred the last three centuries B.C., one far-sighted speaker reminded the assembled powers of 'the clouds now rising in the west' -- the growing power of Rome. It was not long before Rome and Messenia came in contact, and the following centuries would see Messenia taking various sides in the various civil conflicts leading up to the decisive Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. The Messenians at that time -- together with most of Greece, with the notable exception of Sparta -- chose to side with Antony and Cleopatra against Augustus. Augustus played his own part in perpetuating the endless hostility of Sparta and Messenia by rewarding his allies with the territory of certain Messenian cities.

By most chronologies, the victory of Augustus at Actium signals the end of the Hellenistic period, and the transformation of Greece as a whole into the Roman province of Achaia. With this formal annexation, Messenia joined the Roman empire, becoming subject to imperial rule, imperial laws and imperial taxes. Apart from episodes such as Nero's short-lived declaration of freedom for all the Greeks in 67 A.D. (rescinded almost immediately by Nero's less profligate successor, Vespasian), Messenia would remain part of a larger empire from the late first century B.C. until the early nineteenth century War of Greek Independence -- almost two thousand years later. Over that long time span, the local histories of Messenia, and that region's specific responses to changing world orders, still require attention: but the particular conditions of the Hellenistic era ended in Messenia with the coming of Rome.