Magna Graecia - Part 5: Exiled Spartans and Forgotten Greek Cities

Magna Graecia - Part 5: Exiled Spartans and Forgotten Greek Cities

By Dr Themistocles Kritikakos (Historian) In 706 BCE, Spartans arrived in what is now Puglia. They were not conquerors but exiles, cast out from their homeland. The Spartans established a settlement on the southern coast of Italy that would grow into the influential city of Taras (modern-day Taranto), named after the son of Poseidon. The exiled founders, known as the Partheniae (“sons of virgins”), were the offspring of emergency unions between …