Magna Graecia

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Magna Graecia

Magna Graecia (Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
for "Greater Greece," Megalê Hellas/?e???? ????? in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
) is the name of the area in Southern Italy and Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
that was colonized

Colonies in antiquity

Colonies in antiquity were city-states founded from a mother-city, not from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis remained close, and took specific forms....
by Greek settlers in the eighth century BC, who brought with them the lasting imprint of their Hellenic civilization.

History
Antiquity
In the eighth and seventh

7th century BC

The 7th century BC started the first day of 700 BC and ended the last day of 601 BC.The Assyrian Empire continued to dominate the near east during this century, exercising formidable power over neighbors like Babylon and Egypt....
centuries BC, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, climate change, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in southern Italy (Cerchiai, pp.

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Encyclopedia

Magna Graecia (Latin

Latin

Greek language

Sicily

Colonies in antiquity

History

Antiquity

In the eighth and seventh

7th century BC

Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolia and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Seas and various straits....
and Massalia

Marseille

"Marseille" is the second-largest city of France and forms the third-largest aire urbaine, after those of Paris and Lyon, with a population recorded to be 1,516,340 at the 1999 census and estimated to be 1,605,000 in 2007....
). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
Magna Graecia (Latin, “Great Greece”), since it was so densely inhabited by the Greeks

Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
. The ancient geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scientist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's physical natural environment and human habitat .Though geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography....
s differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia

Apulia

Apulia is a region in southeastern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Otranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south....
and Calabria

Calabria

Calabria , is a Regions of Italy in Southern Italy Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian peninsula. It is bounded to the north by the region of Basilicata, to the south-west by the region of Sicily, to the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and to the east by the Ionian Sea....
— Strabo

Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions. This time period was the inspiration for Vergil's Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
, and used the Aeneid to link Rome with the glory of Ancient Greece.

With this colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language

Ancient greek language

#REDIRECT Ancient Greek...
, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis
Polis

A polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens. When used to describe Classical Athens and its contemporaries, polis is often translated as "city-state."...
. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic

Italic languages

The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European languages language family's Centum branch. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian language, Oscan language, and the aforementioned Latin....
and Latin civilisation

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
s. The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean

Chalcis

Chalcis or Chalkida, Halkida, Halkis or Chalkis , the chief town of the island of Euboea in Greece, is situated on the strait of the Euripus Strait at its narrowest point....
/Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, which was adopted by the Etruscans; the Old Italic alphabet

Old Italic alphabet

Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages....
subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world.

Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Capua
Capua

Capua is a city in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain....
, Neapolis (?e?p????, Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
), Syracuse

Syracuse, Italy

Syracuse is a historic city in southern Italy, the Capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is noted for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture and association to Archimedes, playing an important role in ancient times as one of the top powers of the Mediterranean world; it is over 2,700 years old....
, Acragas, Sybaris
Sybaris

Sybaris was a celebrated city of Magna Graecia on the western shore of the Gulf of Taranto. The wealth of the city in the 6th century BC was such that the Sybarites became synonymous with pleasure and luxury....
, (S?ßa???). Other cities in Magna Graecia included Tarentum
Taranto

Taranto is a coastal city in Puglia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto and is an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base....
(???a?), Epizephyrian Locris
Locri

Locri is a town and comune in the province of Reggio Calabria, Calabria, southern Italy. The name derives from the ancient Greek "Locris" ....
, Rhegium, Croton
Crotone

Crotone is a city in Calabria, southern Italy, on the Ionian Sea. Founded circa 710 BC as the Achaean colony of Croton , it was known as Cotrone from the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to Crotone....
(???t??), Thurii

Thurii

Thurii – Greek language: , called also by some Latin writers and by Ptolemy, Thurium , for a time also Copia and Copiae and sometimes written as Turios; – was a city of Magna Graecia, situated on the Gulf of Taranto, within a short distance of the site of Sybaris, of which it may be considered as having ta...
(T??????), Elea
Elea

Elea may refer to:* Velia , Italy* Elea, Kyrenia, Cyprus* Elea, Nicosia, Cyprus...
(???a), Nola
Nola

Nola is a city of Campania, Italy, in the province of Naples, situated in the plain between Mount Vesuvius and the Apennine Mountains. It is served by the Circumvesuviana railway from Naples....
(???a), Ancona
Ancona

Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche, a region of central Italy, population 101,909 . Ancona is situated on the Adriatic Sea and is the center of the province of Ancona and the capital of the region....
, Syessa
Sessa Cilento

Sessa Cilento is a town and comune in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy....
(S?essa), Bari
Bari

Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic sea, in Italy. It is the second economic centre of mainland Southern Italy and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas....
etc.

Following the Pyrrhic War

Pyrrhic War

The Pyrrhic War was a complex series of battles and shifting political alliances among the ancient greece , roman republic, the Italian peoples , and the Carthage...
, Magna Graecia was absorbed into the Roman Republic.

The Middle Ages

During the Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages is a period in the history of Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire spanning roughly five centuries from AD 500 to 1000....
, following the disastrous Gothic War

Gothic War (535–552)

See Gothic War for the war on the Danube.The Gothic War was a war fought in Italian Peninsula and the adjoining regions of Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica from 535 until 554 between the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire and the forces of the Ostrogothic Kingdom....
, new waves of Byzantine Christian Greeks

Byzantine Greeks

Byzantine Greeks or Byzantines or Romaioi, is a conventional term used by modern historians to refer to the medieval Greeks or Hellenization citizens of the Byzantine Empire, centered mainly in Constantinople, the southern Balkans, the Greek islands, Asia Minor and the large urban centres of the Near East and Northern Egypt....
came to Magna Graecia from Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
and Asia Minor, as Southern Italy remained loosely governed by the Eastern Roman Empire. The iconoclast emperor Leo III appropriated lands that had been granted to the Papacy in southern Italy and the Eastern Emperor loosely governed the area until the advent of the Lombards

Lombards

The Lombards were a Germanic peoples originally from Northern Europe who settled in the valley of the Danube and from there invaded Byzantine Italian peninsula in 568 under the leadership of Alboin....
then, in the form of the Catapanate of Italy

Catapanate of Italy

The Catepanate of Italy was a province of the Byzantine Empire, comprising mainland Italy south of a line drawn from Monte Gargano to the Gulf of Salerno....
, superseded by the Normans

Normans

The Normans were the people who gave their names to Normandy, a region in northern France. They descended from Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock....
. Moreover the Byzantines would have found in Southern Italy people of common cultural root, the Greek-speaking eredi ellenofoni of Magna Graecia.

Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became entirely Italianized (as Paestum

Paestum

Paestum is the classical Roman name of a major Graeco-Roman city in the Campania region of Italy. It is located in the north of Cilento, near the coast about 85 km SE of Naples in the province of Salerno, and belongs to the commune of Capaccio....
had already been in the 4th century BC) and no longer spoke Greek, remarkably a small Griko

Griko language

Griko, sometimes spelled Grico, is a Modern Greek dialect which is spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region in southern Italy, and it is otherwise known as the Grecanic language....
-speaking minority still exists today in Calabria

Calabria

Salento

Salento is the south-eastern extremity of the Apulia region of Italy. It is a sub-peninsula of the main Italian peninsula, sometimes described as the "heel" of the Italian "boot"....
. Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian was a ancient Greek dialects of ancient Greek Greek language. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon....
, Byzantine Greek

Medieval Greek

Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek , is a cover term for all forms of the Greek language that were spoken and written during the time of the Byzantine Empire....
, and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
elements, spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region. There is rich oral tradition

Oral history

Oral history can be defined as the recording, preservation and interpretation of history, based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker....
and Griko folklore

Folklore

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, superstitions, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group ....
, limited now, though once numerous, to only a few thousand people, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. Records of Magna Graecia being predominantly Greek-speaking, date as late as the eleventh century (the end of Byzantine domination in Southern Italy).

Modern Italy

Today a small minority of around 30,000 speakers of Griko

Griko language

Calabria

Apulia

Apulia is a region in southeastern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Otranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south....
. Though modern Griko is closely related to the koine, or common Greek, which had spread throughout the Mediterranean in Hellenistic

Hellenistic civilization

File:Diadochen1.pngHellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Ancient Greece influence in the Classical Antiquity from 323 BC to about 146 BC ....
times, it is said to maintain some elements of Doric

Doric

Doric, an adjective, and synonym of Dorian generally used in its own set of names, may refer to:* Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians.* Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture....
Greek, and some believe its origin may ultimately be traced to the colonies of Magna Graecia.

Magna Graecia

History

Antiquity

The Middle Ages

Modern Italy

Citations

See also

External links