Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tarentum

TARENTUM, or Taras, now Taranto, a famous Greek city of southern Italy, situated on the north coast of the bay of the same name, at the entrance of the only secure port on the gulf. This port, now called the Mare Piccolo, is a bay 16 miles in circuit, landlocked by a low rocky peninsula. The entrance is so narrow that it is crossed by a bridge of seven arches; it was already bridged in Strabo’s time. The modern town, in the province of Lecce, which is the see of an archbishop and had in 1881 a population of 26,611, stands on the peninsula, which is now rather an island, the isthmus connecting it with the mainland having been cut through for defence by Ferdinand I. The ancient citadel occupied the same site, but the city in its best days was much larger, traces of the walls being visible about 2 miles from the gates of the modern town. The remains of antiquity are inconsiderable.

Tarentum was a Spartan colony founded about the close of the 8th century B.C.. (Jerome gives the date 708) to relieve the parent state of a part of its population which did not possess, but claimed to enjoy, full civic rights. Legend represents these Partheniæ (so they are called) as Spartans with a stain on their birth, but the accounts are neither clear nor consistent, and the facts that underlie them have not been cleared up. The Greeks were not the first settlers on the peninsula: recent excavations have brought to light signs of a pre-Hellenic trading-place, and the name of Taras may be older than the colony. To the Greeks Taras was a mythical hero, son of Neptune, and he is sometimes confounded with the œeist of the colony, Phalanthus. Situated in a fertile district, especially famous for olives and sheep, with an admirable harbour, great fisheries, and prosperous manufactures of wool, purple, and pottery, Tarentum grew in power and wealth and extended its domain inland. Even a great defeat by the natives in 473 B. C., when more Greeks fell than in any battle known to Herodotus, did not break its prosperity, though it led to a change of government from aristocracy to democracy. A feud with the Thurians for the district of the Siris was settled in 432 by the joint foundation of Heraclea, which, however, was regarded as a Tarentine colony. In the 4th century Tarentum was the first city of Great Greece, and its wealth and artistic culture at this time are amply attested by its rich and splendid coins; the gold pieces in particular (mainly later than 360) are perhaps the most beautiful ever struck by Greeks (see Numismatics, vol. xvii. p. 637). In the second half of the century Tarentum was in constant war with the Lucanians, and did not hold its ground without the aid of Spartan and Epirote condottieri. Then followed war with Rome (281), the expedition of Pyrrhus, and at length, in 272, the surrender of the city by its Epirote garrison (see the details in vol. xx. p. 743 sq.), Tarentum retained nominal liberty as an ally of Rome. In the Second Punic War it suffered severely, when it was taken by Hannibal (212), all but the citadel, and retaken and plundered by Fabius (209). After this it fell into great decay, but revived again after receiving a colony in 123 B.C. It remained a considerable seaport, and its purple, second only to that of Tyre, was still valued, but in Strabo's time it had shrunk nearly to the limits of the present town. After the fall of the Western empire it was held from time to time by Goths, Lombards, and Saracens, but was not finally wrested from Byzantium till Robert Guiscard took it in 1063.

For special literature about Tarentum, see Busolt, Griech. Gesch., i. 206 sq.