Lost city discovered in Greece

ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s culture ministry said Tuesday that archaeologists have located the first tangible remains of a lost city that the ancient Greeks believed was first settled by Trojan captives of war after the sack of Troy.

A ministry statement said excavations from September to early October in the southern Greek region of the Peleponnese 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 B.C. to late Roman times.

A pottery jar containing the remains of two human fetuses was also found amid the foundations of one building. That was unusual, as the ancient Greeks typically buried their dead in organized cemeteries outside the city walls.

Lead archaeologist Elena Korka said her team had only been digging in the rich cemeteries surrounding Tenea until this year. “This year, we excavated part of the city itself,” Korka said.

The cemeteries are located near the modern village of Hiliomodi about 60 miles southwest of Athens.

“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.

So far, 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.

Korka said the excavations will continue.

Tenea survived the Roman destruction of neighboring Corinth in 146 B.C. and flourished under Roman rule.