 Despite its ancestral connections to Sparta, which was an oligarchy, Tarentum appears to have been a democracy during Archytas’ lifetime. According to Aristotle (Pol. 1303a), the democracy was founded after a large part of the Tarentine aristocracy was killed in a battle with a native people, the Iapygians, in 473. Herodotus confirms that this was the greatest slaughter of Greeks of which he was aware (VII 170). There is no evidence that Tarentum was anything but a democracy between the founding of the democracy in 473 and Archytas’ death ca. 350. Some scholars have argued that Tarentum’s ties to Sparta and the supposed predilection of the Pythagoreans for aristocracy will have insured that Tarentum did not remain a democracy long and that it was not a democracy under Archytas (Minar 1942, 88–90; Ciaceri 1927–32, II 446–7). Strabo, however, explicitly describes Tarentum as a democracy at the time of its flourishing under Archytas (A4), and the descriptions of Archytas’ power in Tarentum stress his popularity with the masses and his election as general by the citizens (A1 and A2). Finally, Aristotle’s account of the structure of the Tarentine government in the fourth century (Pol. 1291b14), while possibly consistent with other forms of government, makes most sense if Tarentum was a democracy. The same is true of fr. B3 of Archytas, with its emphasis on a more equal distribution of wealth.