Sparta founded exactly one colony in its entire history, and it did so almost by accident. Yet, the city that emerged from it would become richer, more cosmopolitan and, for a time, more powerful than its mother city, all from a stretch of Puglian coast the Spartans had never intended to settle in the first place.
The story begins with the First Messenian War. With so many Spartan men away fighting, the state had allowed unions between Spartan women and men who did not hold full citizenship, partly to prevent the population from shrinking while the army was gone.
