Tristan Hughes

Two hundred years after its foundation, Pestum, this idyllic Greek city, gradually came under threat.

Not from abroad, beyond the seas, but from closer to home, from inland.

As the 5th century went on, Lucanian power only increased, and they began to pressure Greek cities all across southern Italy, including Pestum.

By 400 BC, the scales had tipped and Pestum fell into the hands of the Lucanians.

It doesn't seem to have been a violent takeover, no destruction layer has been found in the archaeology.

Instead, there appears to have been an ethnographic shift, with the Lucanians now outnumbering the Greeks in the city.

For the people of Pestum, a new age in their story had begun.

An age where Lucanian overlords ran the show.

For haughty Greeks elsewhere, seeing Pestum fall into the hands of these so-called barbarians led them to deride the city.

They saw this as the beginning of a dark age in Pestum's story, where Greek culture was suppressed and barbarity reigned supreme.

One person who held to this view was a philosopher called Aristoxenus.

who hailed from Tarentum, which remained free of Italian control.

Remarking on Pestum's Lucanian takeover, he bemoaned the tragedy of the Greeks that lived there.

In Aristoxenus' view...

The Greeks that lived alongside Lucanians at Pestum had forgotten everything that made them Greek, that made them civilised and rational human beings.

It's a damning portrayal, but it's also fictional.

Because, contrary to what Aristoxenus would have us believe, the Greeks did not forget their beliefs.

Greek culture at Pestum was not suppressed.

In fact, the archaeology is revealing quite the opposite.

Inscriptions and dedications show how the Greek language endured alongside Oskan, the language that the Lucanians spoke.