TARAS
later Tarentum (Taranto) Apulia, Italy.
On the N coast of the Gulf of Taranto, the city lies
some 366 km SE of Naples on a peninsula to the W of
which is the main outer harbor (Marina Grande), protected from the sea by the small islands of St. Peter and
St. Paul (the ancient Choerades), and to the E of which
lies an inland lagoon (Mare Piccolo), serving as an inner harbor. The acropolis of the city (the modern Città Vecchia) lay at the tip of the peninsula between the two harbors. During the Middle Ages it was made into an
island by the construction of a canal to the SE connecting the two harbors.
The presence of stone-lined graves at Scoglio del
Tonno on the mainland to the NW of the acropolis indicates that the area was inhabited as early as Neolithic
times. Nearby, in 1899, were discovered Neolithic hut
foundations with stone hearths; above this a Bronze Age
settlement of the Apennine type, consisting of a wooden
platform supported by piles, on which five huts had been
built; and, above the Apennine settlement, Late Mycenaean pottery. The earliest Iron Age inhabitants of the
site may have been Iapygians who imported Greek pottery for their own use. There is an Early Iron Age settlement in the Città Nuova, that portion of the city on the mainland to the SE of the acropolis. In a well on the
Via Cavour some 350 vases of native manufacture were
found. These vases, both in decoration and in shape, appear to be the ancestors of Apulian Geometric and may
have been produced by those Iapygians who occupied the
site before the Greek colonists arrived.
Eusebius (
Chron. 91b Helm) gives 706 B.C. for the
founding of the colony by the Spartans. The first settlement may have been a few kilometers to the S at
Satyrion (Leporano), which had been named in an
oracle to Phalanthos, the founder of the colony (
Diod.
Sic. 8.21). According to the legend, the city was founded
by the Parthenians, the illegitimate children of Spartan
women, who lived with Helots while their husbands were
fighting in Messenia. Denied the full rights of citizenship, these children founded a colony at Taras (
Strab. 6.3.2;
Paus. 10.10.6-8).
At the end of the 6th c. B.C., Taras was ruled by Aristophilides (
Hdt. 3.136), who appears to have been king
according to the Spartan system. At the beginning of the
5th c. B.C. the city won a series of victories over the
neighboring populations and dedicated at Delphi two victory monuments. But in ca. 473 B.C. Taras suffered a
severe defeat at the hands of the Iapygians, who headed
a native confederation (
Hdt. 7.170;
Diod. Sic. 11.52).
After this defeat, a democracy was established in the
city. By the middle of the 5th c., after the decline of
Kroton, it became an extremely wealthy and powerful
city. In 433-32 B.C., it founded a colony at Heraklea
(modern Policoro). During the Peloponnesian War,
Taras allied itself with the Syracusans and contributed
ships to the fleet (
Thuc. 8.91.2). In the first half of the
4th c. B.C., under the administration of the philosopher-mathematician Archytas, the city enjoyed especial fame
and prestige; but later it had difficulty in maintaining
itself against pressure from the surrounding native populations and turned first to its mother city for aid and then to foreign mercenary kings.
The city first came into contact with the Romans in
282 B.C. when ten Roman ships sailed into the Gulf of
Tarentum. The Tarentines called in Pyrrhos of Epeiros
to aid them. Pyrrhos, after two initial victories, was finally defeated in 275 B.C., and Taras surrendered to the
Romans. During the second Punic war, the city was captured by Hannibal in 213 B.C., but was retaken three
years later by Q. Fabius Maximus and thoroughly looted
(
Liv. 27.16.7). In 122 B.C., C. Gracchus attempted to revive the city by establishing a Roman colony there, but
he only transformed it into a provincial Italian town,
which Horace mentions (
Carm. 3.5.53-6) as a quiet retreat suitable for a tired businessman. After the reign of
Justinian the town, together with the rest of S Italy, belonged to the Byzantine Empire. In A.D. 927 it was completely destroyed by the Saracens, but in A.D. 967 it was rebuilt by the emperor Nikephoros Phokas, who once
again established Greek as the common language of the city.
Little remains of either the Greek or the Roman city,
since the modern town has been built on top. Remnants
of an archaic Doric temple, dating to ca. 575 B.C. and
perhaps dedicated to Poseidon, survive on the acropolis
(Via Maggiore). The two surviving columns of the peristyle together with their stylobate have now been freed
from the surrounding modern buildings; the drum of a
third column and the SE corner of the temple have also
been found. The columns are rather heavy in proportion, and the intercolumniation is narrow. Nearby, at the
crossroads of the Via di Mezzo and the Vico della Pace,
were found fragments of a sculptured frieze belonging
to a temple of the Corinthian order. The subject matter
represents a combat in which Tarentine warriors take
part. The frieze has been dated to the second half of the
4th c. B.C., but the style of the sculptures seems to be
that of the 1st c. B.C. The temple may have been dedicated to Pax. Also in the old city, an Altar of Aphrodite, perhaps belonging to a temple, was found near the church of S. Agostino.
Deposits of terracottas indicate the presence of sanctuaries going back to the 7th and 6th c. B.C. In the region
of Pizzone in the SE part of the new city, the deposits
go back to the 7th c. and identify the place as a Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone. At Fondo Giovinazzi,
also in the new city between the churches of S. Antonio
and Santa Lucia, some 30,000 terracottas were found,
the earliest group going back to the 6th c. B.C., the latest
dating to the first half of the 3d c. B.C. The character of
the terracottas seems to identify the sanctuary as having
belonged to Kore and the chthonic Dionysos. A third
sanctuary, also located in the new city, to the S near the
Castello Saraceno, overlooking the Marina Grande, was
dedicated to Apollo and the Muses. The terracottas of
Apollo holding a lyre and those of the Muses date from
the end of the 5th c. B.C. to the beginning of the 3d c.
B.C. A series of reliefs dedicated to the Dioskouroi and
dating from the 4th and 3d c. B.C. were found near the
Chiesa del Carmine in the SW part of the new city and
may indicate the presence of a sanctuary to the Dioskouroi in this spot.
Before the late 6th c. B.C. the city probably lay within
the walls of the acropolis, which, according to Strabo
(
6.3.1) was completely fortified although no traces of
the wall remain. After this date the city began to expand
towards the SE into the region now called the Città
Nuova. This new area also received a fortification wall,
only a few traces of which are now visible. On the side
of the Marina Grande, the walls have been destroyed,
but become visible in places where they leave the outer
sea and turn E through the area now called Montegranaro. About half way along, they turn N through Marmarini and Collepazzo. On the side of the Mare Piccolo they can be found in two places under water. The
large blocks probably date to ca. 400 B.C., the greatest
period of Tarentine expansion. Nothing now remains of
the cross-wall built by Hannibal in 213 B.C. in the extreme NW end of the new city between the outer and
inner harbors as a protection against the attacks of the
Romans from the acropolis. Hannibal thus completed
the entire fortification of the lower city, which comprised
an area of over 3 square km.
Strabo tells us that the agora was located just outside
the acropolis and therefore may be placed in the NW
end of the new city. In this area was the main crossroad
of the town, leading from the outer to the inner harbor.
This can be identified as the Broad Street mentioned by
Livy (
25.11.17) and Polybios (8.29.1). No traces of this
street remain, but it probably ran along the same course
as the modern Corso Due Mari. It seems likely that the
street plan of the modern city follows in many respects
that of the ancient one. The Broad Street was crossed at
the N by a major E-W street called Batheia which led
to the Temenid gate through which Hannibal entered the
city. A second major street, called Soteira, may have
crossed the SW part of the city, taking much the same
course as the modern Lungomare Vitt. Emanuele III. A
portion of pavement 2.5 m wide discovered N of the
Castello Saraceno may well have belonged to the Sotera
street. Other portions of the ancient street system have
been found to the SW of the Villa Peripato on the Via
Pitagora (here a segment 5 m wide was uncovered) and
in the region of Solito.
In the new city scattered house remains have been
found, but imperfectly recorded. A rectangular foundation at Scoglio del Tonno near the pre-Greek settlement
indicates the presence of a suburb in this area. In 1880
in the grounds of the Villa Peripato were found the remains of a Greek building, identified as a peripatos (public lounge). Tarentum had two theaters, neither of which has been uncovered. It has been suggested that the
Roman amphitheater, situated to the SW of the Chiesa
del Carmine, was built on the site of the larger of the
two Greek theaters. On the other hand, it may have stood
either on the site of the Castello Saraceno or in the
region to the E of the Villa Peripato overlooking the
Mare Piccolo. The smaller theater may have been near
the agora.
Like the Spartans, the Tarentines buried within the
walls of their city. Several thousand graves have been
found within the new city, spanning the entire life of the
Greek city from the 7th to the 2d c. B.C. Tombs are especially concentrated in the areas of Santa Lucia, the
Arsenal, Fondo Tesoro, and Vaccarella. The majority of
the burials consists of rectangular trenches either cut into
the native rock or constructed of blocks and covered with
stone slabs. Because of the large number of Protocorinthian vases which have come from the Via d'Aquino in
the W part of the new city, it is likely that the oldest
cemetery was here. Other Protocorinthian and Corinthian
vases have been found at the Arsenal and at Vaccarella.
An especially fine archaic tomb on the Via Capotagliata
has yielded twelve Attic B-F vases, dated to the second
quarter of the 6th c. B.C. A second type of burial consists
of chamber tombs with painted walls, inside of which
are funeral couches, with their fronts decorated in relief,
and ornate sarcophagi some of which have painted lids
in the form of temple pediments. The walls themselves
served as the foundation for a naiskos which surmounted
the tomb.
A good tomb of this type belonging to athletes was
found on the Via Crispi. It had two Doric columns supporting a gabled roof and yielded Attic B-F pottery, including a panathenaic amphora, from the end of the 6th c. B.C. During the 4th and 3d c. B.C., a shallow gabled
naiskos became popular, such as on the
tomba a Camera
no. 1 in the Via Umbnia (a second tomb was found 20 m
away). This naiskos, made from local limestone, is in the
form of a small temple containing both metope (combat
scenes) and pedimental sculpture. The chamber tomb
itself is built out of stuccoed sandstone; it yielded a large
quantity of Gnathia ware. Numerous wells have been
found throughout the city. These have yielded statuettes
and terracotta reliefs of the 5th and 4th c. B.C.
Remains belonging to the Roman city are few. Baths
have been discovered in two places in the new city, by
the Castello Saraceno and by the church of S. Francesco.
Over the bridge connecting the acropolis with the Scoglio
del Tonno runs an aqueduct known as Il Triglio. A second aqueduct, Il Saturo, is to be found in the SE part of
the city. By the Masseria del Carmine runs a wall built
in the opus reticulatum technique. In 1960 the remains
of a villa were uncovered in the Via Nitti. A fine museum
houses not only the finds from the city itself but also
objects from the neighboring provinces.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Viola,
NSc (1881) 487-547; H.
Klumbach,
Tarentiner Grabkunst (1937)
I; P. Wuilleumien,
Tarente des Origins a la Conquête Romaine
(1939)
MPI; T. J. Dunbabin,
The Western Greeks (1948);
L. Bernabò Brea, “I Rilievi Tarantini in Pietra Tenera,”
RivIstArch NS 1 (1952) 5-241; F. G. Lo Porto, “Ceramica Arcaica dalla Necropoli di Taranto,”
AsAtene 37-38 (1959-60) 7-230
I; id., “Tombe di Atleti Tarantini,”
AttiMGrecia 8 (1967) 3 1-98
PI; J. C. Carter, “Relief
Sculptures from the Necropolis of Taranto,”
AJA 74
(1970) 125-37.
W.D.E. COULSON
