4 - Taras: native hostility, territorial possession, and a new-ancient past

Summary

Taras, the Spartan colony in southern Italy, had two founders: one an eponymous mythical hero, the other a historical figure. The two, both individually and in their ’rivalry’, seem to express two challenges which are basic to the Greek colonial experience: the possession of territory and the focus of political and ’historical’ identity. Those challenges seem to have found an especially sharp focus at Taras. Its foundation oracle expressly commands the founder to make war on the natives, and the burial of its founder in the agora is supposed to signify territorial possession as against the claims of the natives. The alternative ’founder’ (the eponymous Taras), besides expressing the idea of territorial possession, reflects the challenge of acquiring ’an ancient history’. Here Taras is not unique; as we have seen, Sparta too searched for ancient roots. My focus in this chapter, therefore, will be the study of these three aspects at Taras: the divine sanction of war between colonists and natives, hero cult and ideas of territorial possession, and the question of national, ’historical’ identity.