Lost city emerges
Greece’s culture ministry says archaeologists have located the first tangible remains of a lost city that ancient Greeks believed was first settled by Trojan captives after the sack of Troy.
The ministry said excavations from September to early October in the southern region of the Peloponnese had turned up ‘‘proof of the existence of the ancient city’’ of Tenea, until now known mostly from ancient texts.
Finds included walls and clay, marble or stone floors of buildings, as well as household pottery, a bone gaming die, and more than 200 coins dating from the 4th century BC to late Roman times.
A pottery jar containing the remains of two human fetuses was also found in the foundations of one building. This was unusual, as the ancient Greeks typically buried their dead in cemeteries outside the city walls.
Lead archaeologist Elena Korka, who has been excavating in the area since 2013, said her team had only been digging in the rich cemeteries surrounding Tenea until this year.
‘‘The citizens seem to have been remarkably affluent,’’ Korka said, adding that the city probably did well out of trade, standing on a key route between the major cities of Corinth and Argos in the northeastern Peloponnese.
Not much is known about Tenea, apart from ancient references to the reputed link with Troy and to its citizens having formed the bulk of the Greek colonists who founded the city of Syracuse in Sicily. –AP