 It is important to recognize that the Tarentum in which Archytas exercised such influence was not some insignificant backwater. Spartan colonists founded it in 706. It was initially overshadowed by other Greek colonies in southern Italy such as Croton, although it had the best harbor on the south coast of Italy and was the natural stopping point for any ships sailing west from mainland Greece. Archytas will have grown up in a Tarentum that, in accord with its foundation by Sparta, took the Peloponnesian and Syracusan side against Athens in the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. VI 44; VI 104; VII 91). Athens allied with the Messapians (Thuc. VII 33), the long-standing enemy of the Tarentines, against whom Archytas would later lead expeditions (A7). After the Peloponnesian War, Tarentum appears to have avoided direct involvement in the conflict between the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius I, and a league of Greek cities in southern Italy headed by Croton. After Dionysius crushed the league, Tarentum emerged as the most powerful Greek state in southern Italy and probably became the new head of the league of Italiot Greek cities (A2). In the period from 380–350, when Archytas was in his prime and old age, Tarentum was one of the most powerful cities in the Greek world (Purcell 1994, 388). Strabo’s description of its military might (VI 3.4) compares favorably with Thucydides’ account of Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war (II. 13).