New study on the impact of ancient Hellenic colonization in Southern Italy: Rathmann et al. (2019)

A new scholarly estimate on the number of ancient Greek colonists in Southern Italy has been published in a recent dental phenotype-based study by Rathmann et al. (2019). The study focuses on the coastal area of the Gulf of Taranto, specifically the coastal territory of southern Basilicata and southwestern Puglia. More precisely, it studied the ancient Hellenic colonies of Taras, Siris and Metapontion, as well as the nearby indigenous Italic villages of Incoronata, Santa Maria d’Anglona and Passo di Giacobbe (see maps below).

The study found that in this particular area the Greek colonists represented 18% of the total population during the Hellenic period, compared to 82% indigenous Italians:

“About 18% of the people [in this area] in post-colonial times were of Greek ancestry and lived equally distributed across Greek colonies and indigenous villages.”

It concludes, moreover, that the biological composition of Southern Italy remained relatively unchanged by the Greek colonization:

“Nevertheless, the overall biological composition and variability of southern Italy remained relatively unchanged across pre- and post-colonial periods. Our results support a scenario in which only few Greek colonists migrated to southern Italy and lived in smaller numbers alongside indigenous people in Greek colonies as well as in indigenous villages. Our results contradict a scenario in which large numbers of Greek invaders founded biologically isolated and substantially homogeneous colonial enclaves within conquered territories.”

In addition to being few in number in Southern Italy broadly speaking, the ancient Hellenic colonies themselves were not ethnically homogenous: that is to say, the colonies were inhabited both by Greeks and by indigenous Italians, thereby diluting the Greek element. Indeed, according to the study, the indigenous Italics far outnumbered the Greeks in the colonies, so much so that the ancient Hellenes would have been a minority even within their own city-states. It should be noted that Taras (present-day Taranto) was by far the largest Hellenic colony in ancient Southern Italy; during the Hellenistic period, therefore, the largest concentration of Greeks would have been found in this area. Yet, as per the findings, their figure is placed at only 18% in this region.

This already-low figure would have fallen considerably following the Roman conquest and establishment of Latin colonies from the 3rd century BC onward. However, this study limits itself only to the pre-Hellenic period and post-colonial Hellenic period in the Gulf of Taranto — in short, it concerns only the pre-Roman period, so it does not assess the effects which the Roman colonization brought to this area of the South. It is certain, though, that with the Roman conquest the overall percentage of Greeks would have greatly decreased, inasmuch as Latin colonies were established in part to demographically replace Greeks, facilitate Latinization and solidify Roman power over the territory.

It must be borne in mind, also, that the study concerns only the selected areas of southern Basilicata and southern Puglia shown in the maps below. It therefore does not cover Sicily, Calabria or Campania, nor does it cover the whole of Basilicata, nor the whole of Puglia, let alone all of Southern Italy. Naturally, if one were to take into account the entirety of Southern Italy, the figure of 18% would drop enormously and become minuscule, given that the entire interior of the country was densely populated by Italic peoples (see this map, taken from Sewell & Witcher 2015).

Here are the areas covered by this study and the findings:

Area examined by Rathmann et al. (2019)

The following is a long extract which explains the results:

“One scenario, largely drawn from ancient written sources, envisages Greek colonization as a mass migration of invaders who founded biologically isolated and substantially homogeneous enclaves within conquered territories. In this scenario, indigenous populations were deprived of land, resources, and occasionally women to fulfill the colonies’ needs, while being the object of gradual acculturation (or “Hellenization”)... An alternative scenario, based on archaeological evidence and the adoption of post-colonial theory, envisages Greek colonization as a more gradual process, where only few Greek colonists (mostly traders, artisans, and adventurers) sailed to the shores of southern Italy and lived peacefully alongside a much larger indigenous population. In this scenario, close collaboration resulted in intermarriage between newcomers and locals and eventually shaped new, admixed cultures. ...

In recent years, demographers and geneticists have tried to tackle the question of Greek colonization and its impact on southern Italy from a different angle using census sizes documented in ancient texts and/or modern DNA data from present-day Italians. However, whereas some studies estimated a rather large number of Greek migrants (e.g., Scheidel, 2003), others have suggested a substantially smaller founding population (e.g., Tofanelli et al., 2016). ...

One major problem with the various arguments put forward in support of both scenarios is that they are exclusively based on indirect evidence, namely: (a) ancient texts from Greek writers; (b) archaeological objects excavated in Italy, primarily pottery; and (c) modern DNA profiles of present-day southern Italians. To rely on this evidence alone is problematic because most ancient written sources postdate Greek colonization by several centuries and portray it solely from a Greek perspective. Similarly, movements of archaeological objects do not necessarily imply migration but can also result from trade or the diffusion and adoption of stylistic fashions. Finally, present-day DNA profiles may not accurately reflect the effects of past migration events due to movements of people in more recent times. ...

Surprisingly, only a handful of studies have utilized biodistance methods to address the impact of Greek colonization on southern Italy (Henneberg, 1998; Rathmann, Saltini Semerari, & Harvati, 2017; Rubini, Bonafede, & Mogliazza, 1999). These investigations found that inhabitants of Greek colonies showed marked biological differences to indigenous Italian groups... While this is an exciting finding, these studies were limited by several factors. ... Finally, none of the previous studies used adequate comparative data from Greece, which is essential to quantifying the degree of Greek genetic contribution to southern Italy. ...

If the colonization process was driven by large groups of Greeks founding biologically isolated and substantially homogeneous enclaves within southern Italy (Scenario 1), then we would expect to see... that inhabitants of Greek colonies are biologically different from indigenous populations, with the former exhibiting lower levels of variability than the latter (due to isolation and genetic drift). Moreover, we would expect that Greek colonies are predominantly inhabited by individuals of Greek ancestry whereas indigenous villages are predominantly inhabited by individuals of Italian ancestry. Lastly, we would expect to see a general increase in biological variability and a change in the overall biological composition of southern Italy from the pre-colonial period to the post-colonial period (due to the transfer of new genes into the southern Italian gene pool). ...

Alternatively, if only few Greek colonists migrated to southern Italy and lived in small numbers alongside indigenous people in Greek colonies as well as in indigenous villages (Scenario 2), then we would expect to see... that inhabitants of Greek colonies are biologically similar to indigenous populations with both exhibiting similar levels of variability (due to the homogenizing effect of gene flow). ... Lastly, we would expect to see similar levels of biological variability and a largely unchanged overall biological composition of southern Italy from the pre-colonial to the post-colonial period (because numerically negligible gene flow will not significantly alter the southern Italian gene pool). ...

Validation of the naïve Bayes ancestry classification model revealed that Italians and Greeks of known ancestry in the training data were correctly classified in 80% of cases, which corresponds to a misclassification rate of 20%... The model misclassified Greeks more often (23%) than Italians (17%). ... Overall, classification identified the majority of the test individuals as Italian (82%) and only a few as Greek (18%). ...

In this study, we aimed at evaluating competing scenarios regarding the ancient Greek colonization of southern Italy. For this purpose we applied a set of individual-level biodistance analyses to a comprehensive dataset of archaeological human dental remains from several Greek colonies and indigenous settlements along the Gulf of Taranto. We found that... About 18% of the people in post-colonial southern Italy [ed.: in the Gulf of Taranto area, not all of Southern Italy] were of Greek ancestry (revealed by naïve Bayes classification). These people lived equally distributed across Greek colonies and indigenous settlements. Nevertheless, we found that the overall biological composition and variability of southern Italy remained relatively unchanged across pre- and post-colonial periods (as measured by PERMANOVA and Betadisper analyses). ...

Taken together, our results support a colonization scenario in which few Greek colonists settled in southern Italy and lived in small numbers alongside indigenous people in Greek colonies as well as in indigenous settlements. This scenario is favored by scholars inspired by post-colonial theory who have challenged the traditional colonial narratives surviving in ancient Greek texts and consider the colonization process as an interplay of actions of both colonizers and colonized. It is also supported by several archaeological discoveries associated with the early phases of Greek colonization, indicating close interaction between the first generations of Greek newcomers and local Italic populations. For example, settlement and burial data from Siris suggest that the early colony was an open, dispersed village with burial plots including a mix of Greek- and indigenous-style funerary practices. A similar conclusion was drawn from the archaeological evidence from the early colony of Taras. ...

Our results contradict a colonization scenario in which large numbers of Greek invaders founded biologically isolated and substantially homogeneous colonial settlements in hostile native lands. This more traditional interpretation of Greek colonization is largely based on ancient written sources from Greek writers. ... In this framework, the role of local populations, if at all considered, is essentially passive. ...

We estimated an overall Greek contribution of 18% to the population of southern Italy along the Gulf of Taranto during the post-colonial period (700–200 BC). Our estimated Greek contribution is close to the size spectrum proposed by historical demographers, who suggested 10% Greeks in pre-Roman southern Italy (Beloch, 1886). Our finding is also in line with preliminary strontium isotopic evidence, indicating that 10% (n = 20) of the post-colonial individuals in the study region are of non-local origin (Vos, 2018). Interestingly, our results also broadly agree with biodistance and isotopic studies conducted at other Greek colonies across the Mediterranean Basin (Keenleyside, Schwarcz, & Panayotova, 2011; McIlvaine et al., 2014; Stallo, Schepartz, Grimes, & Richards, 2010), which suggest that colonized territories were generally characterized by few Greek newcomers living alongside a much larger indigenous population.”

Finally, the authors of this study also cast explicit doubt on an earlier DNA study by Di Gaetano et al. (2009) which previously claimed that the Greek genetic contribution in Sicily amounted to 37%, on the basis — and rather questionable assumption — that E-V13 is a specifically “Greek” haplogroup:

“Our estimated Greek contribution of 18% differs from genomic estimates of the ancient Greek contribution to southern Italy derived from present-day DNA profiles. Di Gaetano et al. (2009) used the haplogroup lineage E-V13 to estimate a Greek contribution of 37% to the population of Sicily and attributed the migration influx to the Classical period (2,380 years before present, with a 95% confidence interval ranging between 6,940 and 675 years ago). A potential explanation for the discrepancy between our estimate and their genomic reconstruction could be that proportions of specific genetic lineages surviving in present-days populations may not be good proxies for assessing the effects of past migration events (Tofanelli et al., 2016). Moreover, their genomic estimate of the timing of the migration influx has a wide confidence interval spanning several millennia. The estimate provided in this study is directly derived from archaeological human remains and may therefore be a more accurate reconstruction of the initial Greek genetic contribution to southern Italy (but see further discussion below).”

PDF (full text): Population History of Southern Italy During Greek Colonization Inferred from Dental Remains — Rathmann et al. 2019

See also:

• Demographics of Pre-Roman Southern Italy
• Demographics of Pre-Roman Sicily
• The Myth of Hellenic Continuity in Southern Italy
• References: The Myth of Hellenic Continuity in Southern Italy

References: The Myth of Hellenic Continuity in Southern Italy

What follows are additional citations in support of various statements referenced in the article The Myth of Hellenic Continuity in Southern Italy.

I. Sybaris and the Enotrians

“The immense increase of the population of Sybaris and Croton leads us to infer that great numbers of these subject Enotrians were admitted to the right of citizenship.”

(Source: Barthold Georg Niebuhr, An Epitome of Niebuhr's History of Rome, 1836, p. 11)

“Strabo's report (6.1.13) that Sybaris ruled four neighbouring ethne suggests that Sybaris in its heyday controlled non-Greek communities.”

(Source: Tobias Fischer-Hansen, Thomas Heine Nielsen and Carmine Ampolo, “Italia and Kampania”, in An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, 2004, p. 254)

“...the liberality of the Sybarites means that the city kept granting the citizen status not only to additional settlers coming from Greece but perhaps to some native Italians as well.”

(Source: Alain Duplouy, “Citizenship as Performance”, in Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece, 2018, p. 268)

“Diodorus states that one of the reasons for the increase of the population of Sybaris was its liberality in the granting of citizenship. Such liberality might have embraced not only additional settlers from Greece, but perhaps some native Italians as well. Relations with the natives differed from colony to colony according to circumstances, and there could be no rigid rules. Sometimes a Greek city was compelled to receive [Italic] natives into its citizen body, as for example Naples was when it was overrun by Samnites at the end of the fifth century [BC]. In the fifth century also, Gelon of Syracuse enfranchised mercenaries, of whom the majority were not Greeks...”

(Source: N. K. Rutter, “Sybaris: Legend and Reality”, in Greece & Rome, 1969, p. 171)

“An extensive citizenship is spoken of for Sybaris... Behind the formula “Sybarites and allies” therefore there seems to be an expanded notion of Sybarite citizenship. Strabo describes the Sybarite empire according to two components: there were twenty-five subjugated cities (hypékooi) alongside four tribes or ethnicities (ethne) organized into sub-districts. ... Hellenized Enotrians must have been granted citizenship in an attenuated form... It is obvious that the Enotrians, in fact, fell under the Sybarite empire. Only by considering the Enotrians can we understand who the four tribes subjugated by Sybaris were.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Alfonso Mele, Il mondo enotrio tra VI e V secolo a.C., 2001, p. 276)

“These Greeks founded what at the outset can only have been a modest village, but which soon would be transformed into the planned city of Archaic Sybaris ... we cannot but conclude that the Greek colonists, arriving in the Sibaritide in the late 8th century BC, settled in the margins of a well-organized indigenous [Italic-Oinotrian] culture that had its principal settlements in the foothills with each of these controlling well-defined portions of the territory. ... From Yntema's account it appears that Greek presence on the coasts of the gulf of Taranto and the Ionian seaboard was felt rather later than on the Tyrrhenian coast (Ischia). This opinion is shared by Kleibrink: “It seems to me that the presence of strong native groups in the Metapontino, Siritide, Sibaritide, and Crotonide in the 9th and 8th century BC precluded the speedy development of early Achaian settlement colonization. It was only during the first half of the 7th century BC that the natives in the coastal and subcoastal settlements began to associate themselves with groups of Greek traders. The evidence gained so far at Sibari and Crotone makes it likely that settlement here was not very different from that at Siris/Polieion and Incoronata/Metapontion... From the presence of potsherds of Thapsos and sub-Thapsos cups at Crotone, Sibari and Timpone della Motta we may perhaps infer hellenising influences half a century or a quarter century earlier than in the Metapontino and Siritide.” As to the scale of early Greek colonization, Yntema's estimates for the first half of the 7th century BC of the number of Greeks range from a few individuals to one or two dozen individuals in each case, which tallies with Kleibrink's idea of small agglomerations of hut and, later, cabin clusters. ... Kleibrink notes that, except on the Timpone Motta, evidence for Greek presence in the Sibaritide in the first half of the 7th century BC is largely absent, the site of Sybaris itself included. And indeed, to date only a few sherds of the late 8th and early 7th century BC have turned up... This is, of course, quite a different perspective from the “classical” one in which Greek domination would have been paramount from the beginning. ... Ideas on the impact of Greek colonization on the indigenous Oinotrian civilization have mainly been formulated by classical archaeologists and until recently relied heavily on the dominant role ascribed to the Greek colony of Sybaris in the historical sources and of course based on the urban reality that was Sybaris in the archaic period. Consequently, the sanctuary of Timpone Motta was [erroneously] interpreted as a Greek enterprise. The Groningen excavations led by M. Kleibrink have changed this perspective profoundly and have demonstrated that the Athenaion began as an indigenous cult place.”

(Source: Peter Attema, “Conflict or Coexistence? Remarks on Indigenous Settlement and Greek Colonization in the Foothills and Hinterland of the Sibaritide (Northern Calabria, Italy)”, in Meetings of Cultures in the Black Sea Region, pp. 75-78)

II. Thurii and Copia

“With the defeat of Taranto in 272 B.C. Thurii entered the Roman orbit. At the time of the Second Punic War, the city was invaded by Hannibal, who, in 204 B.C., transferred its inhabitants to Kroton. In 194 B.C., the Romans repopulated the center — by then deserted — thus founding the colony of Copia.”

(Source: Luca Cerchiai, “Sybaris and Thurii”, in The Greek Cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily, 2004, p. 118)

“The quarrels of the cities of Magna Graecia had left some of the most fertile sites in that fertile region unoccupied. Croton and Sybaris had united for the destruction of Siris, and not long afterwards Sybaris herself was destroyed by Croton. The land thus laid waste remained unappropriated and uncultivated. ... After the destruction of Sybaris by the Crotoniates in 510, the remnant of the inhabitants had found a home in Scidrus and Laus, colonies of their city. Here they dwelt for fifty-eight years... In 453-452 the Sybarites were collected by Thessalus... A new town was built... But the hatred of the Crotoniates was not satisfied by sixty years of desolation. Five years after its foundation, they attacked the new city and destroyed it. After this expulsion, the Sybarites abandoned the attempt to found a city for themselves, and sent to Hellas for assistance... Colonists came forward not from Athens only but from various parts of Peloponnesus... and a new city arose, called Thurii... but when the town was built ... [the descendants of the Sybarites] ... claimed to be the rightful owners of the soil, the real founders of the colony; the rest were a foreign and subordinate class. ... Such intolerable pretensions quickly led to an outbreak, in which the new colonists slew nearly all the Sybarites, and expelled the rest. ... Further details are unknown to us, but it is obvious that the city [of Thurii] was a Hellenic colony... In a very few years the colonists were involved in wars, which arose apparently from their own aggressions. ... In 434 [BC] there were seditions in the city... The last remnant of the unfortunate Sybarites, after their expulsion from Thurii, had settled on the Traeis, a river already memorable for the defeat of their ancestors. Here they were attacked and destroyed by the Lucanians, who, following the example of the Campanians in Central Italy, began from this time forward to molest the cities of Magna Graecia.”

(Source: Evelyn Abbott, A History of Greece, vol. 3, 1900, pp. 16-22)

III. Kyme (Cumae) and the Campanians

“Who were these Campanians? According to Diodorus, the 'Campani' were formed in 438/7 BC. The historian would appear to be referring to a body of native Samnites who had grown sufficiently numerous and distinctive to take on an individual identity. They were different from the Etruscans of Capua, in whose region they lived, different from the Greeks of Cumae and Neapolis on the coast, and, as plain-dwellers at least, different from the hill-dwelling Samnites. ... the [Etruscan] Capuans were forced to acknowledge the native [Italic] presence fifteen years later, when their city was taken by the Campani. In 421/0 BC, the Greeks at Cumae suffered a similar fate. The brief notices of Livy and Diodorus on these events suggest a wholesale takeover by the Campani of both cities, with death or slavery for the original [Greek and Etruscan] inhabitants.”

(Source: Greek Colonists and Native Populations, 1990, p. 275)

“In 421 [BC], Samnite hill-tribes known as Oscans that had been moving into Campania captured Cumae. The city retained some Greek population but from now on was predominantly Oscan.”

(Source: Douglas Kelly, “Cumae”, in Conflict in Ancient Greece and Rome, 2016, p. 222)

“At Cumae, conquered by the Oscan invaders in 421 BC, there are signs of extensive Oscanization. Oscan replaces Greek as the best-attested language in inscriptions, Oscan names are vastly more frequent than Greek ones, and the cults, civic government, and material culture of the city all reflect those of the Italian invaders.”

(Source: Kathryn Lomas, “The Polis in Italy: Ethnicity, Colonization, and Citizenship in the Western Mediterranean”, in Alternatives to Athens. Varieties of Political Organization and Community in Ancient Greece, 2002, p. 167)

“At Cumae, much of the Greek population fled in 421 BC (Livy, 4.44.12; Diod. 12.76.4, Dion. Hal. 15.6.4). By the time the city officially adopted Latin in 180 BC, the main language was Oscan (Livy, 40.42.13).”

(Source: Kathryn Lomas, “Urban Elites and Cultural Definition: Romanization in Southern Italy”, in Urban Society in Roman Italy, p. 124)

“After its capture in ca. 420 B.C. Cumae was resettled by the Samnites, became a typical Oscan city, and lost all traces of its Greek culture and language. By the time of Trimalchio the children at Cumae will have probably spoken Oscan as their mother tongue, perhaps Latin, but certainly not Greek.”

(Source: Gilbert Bagnani, “Trimalchio”, in The Phoenix: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, vol. 8, 1954, p. 83)

“Cumae had been the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy, but it was conquered by the Oscan-speaking Samnites during the fifth century [BC] before finally being made a civitas sine suffragio in 338 BC (i.e. its citizens then had the 'private' rights of Roman citizenship, plus the duty to serve in the army, but lacked the 'public' right to vote). Since citizenship automatically entailed a closer political and cultural affinity with Rome, presumably including the wider use of Latin on an informal basis, we might be tempted to interpret Livy's account as pointing to some issue of public law. But given that there was no legal requirement to ask for permission to use Latin, the request seems rather to have a more symbolic function, namely to confirm that the Cumaeans' attitude to Latin was a strongly positive one and that they wanted the Romans to know they were using Latin, as an expression of their new identity and allegiance.”

(Source: James Clackson and Geoffrey Horrocks, The Blackwell History of the Latin Language, 2011)

IV. Lokroi Epizephyrioi (Locri)

“After being occupied by Hannibal in 215 BC, it was taken by the Romans in 205 and became a municipium. It increasingly lost importance and was reduced to a minor center. During the imperial age the Greek language in Locri fell into disuse, and the inscriptions from that period which have come down to us are all written in the Latin language and alphabet.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian Bʹ Diethnes Historiko kai Archaiologiko Synedrio Aitōloakarnanias, Agrinio 29, 30, 31 Martiou 2002, vol. 1, 2004, p. 140)

V. Metapontion (Metapontum), Incoronata and Torre di Mare

“The historian [Antiochos of Syracuse] records that Metapontion was developed on the site of a previous settlement which was connected with either the city of Siris or an indigenous [Italian] group — a statement substantially confirmed by the available archaeological evidence.”

(Source: Luca Cerchiai, “Metapontion”, in The Greek Cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily, p. 130)

“If Thasos [an island in the Aegean Sea] is likely to be evidence for a relatively straightforward story of Greek settlers replacing natives and setting up a culturally Greek town, the story at Italian Metapontion seems certainly more complex. ... [at the site of Incoronata] the twenty-seven seventh century burials in 'native' style... in the nearby cemetery suggest that the settlement changes do not indicate a change of population, but rather an assimilation of some aspects of Greek material culture by the indigenous people.”

(Source: Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200-479 BC, 1996, pp. 224-225)

“The earliest signs of settlement at Metapontion date to the early seventh century BC, and take the form of structures similar in form to those at Incoronata, and accompanied by a similar mix of indigenous and native pottery. ... No single 'colonising' episode is thus to be detected in the history of settlement in this area. Greeks and natives seem to have shared goods, shared ideas, and, in the end, shared settlement. When manifestly Greek structures ... were established in the early sixth century BC, we can be certain that there was conscious reorganisation of the community going on, but there is no reason to believe that this reorganisation excluded natives. ... The Metapontion evidence strongly suggests that Greek settlers came in dribs and drabs from the end of the eighth century BC on, joined [Italian] natives and encouraged a material culture which was ever more Greek in form. Whether or not there was a new influx of Greek settlers about 600 BC, there was certainly ... a taking in hand of the civic community and its facilities which implies a determined assertion of identity by the community.”

(Source: Idem, pp. 225-226)

“A substantially different picture [of Greek colonisation] has been proposed on the basis of evidence mostly assembled by the archaeological service (De Siena and Giardino 1999) and the new excavations at 'Greek Incoronata' (Denti 2008). ... The presumed Greek 'primacy' was thus notably called into question. Moreover, as at nearby 'indigenous Incoronata', a number of enchytrismos burials have been attested ... which are no doubt indigenous. Based on this revision, therefore, Incoronata could be considered indigenous and seen as being transformed at the start of the seventh century BC, when Greek settlers were welcomed, for example artisans, which would have led to a 'creolisation' process of the community. It is now also clear that the entire Ionic coast between Metapontum and Policoro in the first half of the seventh century housed 'mixed' [Italic and Greek] populations: a similar situation has, for example, been found at the site where Metapontum would later be founded... This new research documents fluid 'mixed' [Italic-Greek] communities along the Ionic coast during most of the seventh century BC, rather than trading posts or [homogenous] Greek settlements founded to dominate indigenous people.”

(Source: Massimo Osanna, “The Iron Age in South Italy: Settlement, Mobility and Culture Contact”, in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 2015)

“Up to this point, we have spoken of Greeks — Greek roads, farmhouses, and sanctuaries... In the interpretation of this early archaeological evidence of Greek and indigenous contact, there are the same entrenched and fiercely defended positions among scholars from the West and East. We hear that Incoronata, after the natives were “driven out”, was a purely Greek emporion or polis. [Some of them insist that the] inhabitants of the dugouts that contained both Greek and [indigenous] handmade pottery in the chora of Olbia were “Greek” with no possibility of their being, instead, mixed. This interpretation reflects the view common, a half century or more ago, in the waning years of modern colonialism. These hardened positions owe much to overly sharp distinctions between Greeks and barbarians... Some arguments are based on later Greek texts which attempt to establish territorial claims, made centuries after these first colonial contacts... De Siena, who has investigated the pre-Greek settlements surrounding Incornata, maintains that it was a native [Italic] village whose culture was transformed internally over time under Greek influence. ... This material record, more often than not, has been ignored by archaeologists of colonial settlements, East and West. ... The area of the future chora of Metapontion was occupied by a number of sites of the pre-colonial [pre-Greek] period. They include the Neolithic site at Pantanello, the Bronze Age settlements at Termitito, San Marco, and S. Vito, and a very extensive network of Iron Age villages dating from the 9th to the 7th century BC occupied by the “Oenotrians” [mentioned in] Greek tradition. [The Oenotrians] settled in villages with impressive necropoleis all along the southern coast of the Ionian Sea. Often only the necropoleis are known, but as De Siena's excavations have shown, the plateaus along the south bank of the Basento river were densely populated by hut settlements in the 9th and 8th centuries BC, immediately before Greek contact. The Greeks did not arrive on a deserted shore, in an eremos chora, or among savage and backward peoples. The natives had a developed culture, as evidenced by the rich grave goods of their necropoleis. Agriculture was the basis of the economy and it must have been thriving. The Greeks saw an opportunity to participate and seized it.”

(Source: Joseph C. Carter, “Towards a Comparative Study of Chorai West and East: Metapontion and Chersonesos”, in Surveying the Greek Chora: The Black Sea Region in a Comparative Perspective, 2005, pp. 193-195)

“In view of this, how should we imagine the nature and scale of the Greek settlement? Recently D. Yntema and M. kleibrink have published articles in the Dutch journal Babesch in which they attempted to estimate the nature and scale of the earliest Greek presence at various places in South Italy. ... On the strength of the available archaeological evidence, Yntema arrives at the conclusion that by about the middle of the 7th century small groups of Greeks were present in various parts of the coastal strip of south-eastern Italy. These groups began at indigenous [Italian] settlements (such as Otranto, Brindisi and l'Incoronata) or founded new settlements that attracted a native population (such as Siris). ... From Yntema's account it appears that Greek presence on the coasts of the gulf of Taranto and the Ionian seaboard was felt rather later than on the Tyrrhenian coast (Ischia). This opinion is shared by Kleibrink: “It seems to me that the presence of strong native [Italian] groups in the Metapontino, Siritide, Sibaritide, and Crotonide in the 9th and 8th century BC precluded the speedy development of early Achaian [Greek] settlement colonization. It was only during the first half of the 7th century BC that the natives in the coastal and subcoastal settlements began to associate themselves with groups of Greek traders. The evidence gained so far at Sibari and Crotone makes it likely that settlement here was not very different from that at Siris/Polieion and Incoronata/Metapontion...” As to the scale of early Greek colonization, Yntema's estimates for the first half of the 7th century BC of the number of Greeks range from a few individuals to one or two dozen individuals in each case, which tallies with Kleibrink's idea of small agglomerations of hut and, later, cabin clusters. ... The image clearly shows the modest scale of the settlement [of Metapontion], while the text describes it as occupied by Greek merchants and craftsmen, together with indigenous [Italian] people...”

(Source: Peter Attema, “Conflict or Coexistence? Remarks on Indigenous Settlement and Greek Colonization in the Foothills and Hinterland of the Sibaritide (Northern Calabria, Italy)”, in Meetings of Cultures in the Black Sea Region, pp. 75-76)

“Some of the settlements later claimed by the Greeks as colonies appear to have been ethnically mixed at first. At Metapontum the cemetery of Pantanello offers fascinating insights into the early years of the colony. The earliest burials here ... are a mixture of Greek and Italian. ... Some of these burials, however, contain bodies placed on their side in a flexed position, which is an Italian rather than a Greek practice and suggests that the dead really were Italians. ... The mere fact of receiving a burial ... and the lack of spatial segregation between Greek and non-Greek burials suggests that the early population of Metapontum was socially and ethnically mixed. This is supported by evidence from the settlement that both Greek and indigenous [Italian] pottery was produced there. Further out into the territory of Metapontum the same pattern is found at the important site of Incoronata. Here Greek and Italian house types co-existed, as well as Greek and Italian pottery and other objects, suggesting that this was a mixed community. Nor is Metapontum a unique case. Pithecusae was a mixed community, as was Siris/Heraklea. During the seventh century this diversity disappeared, and by c. 600 [BC] Greek settlements had a more uniformly Greek identity. It is not clear whether this was because the local Italian populations were driven out or because they adopted Greek customs and became archaeologically indistinguishable from Greeks. ... A more aggressive phase of expansion receives some support from Greek accounts which present colonisation as a violent process. Diodorus claims that the Greeks arrived with divine sanction to persecute the Italians... This – and similar narratives of conflict – are shaped by the attitudes of the fifth and fourth centuries [BC], when warfare between the Greeks and their [Italian] neighbours was endemic... This variety of narratives matches the archaeological evidence, which reveals a diversity of experience suggesting that the impact of colonisation on the local population varied between different communities. The arrival of the Greeks in eighth-century [BC] Italy seems to have resulted from piecemeal migration and settlement rather than organised colonisations, and the impact on the local populations varied considerably. In some areas Greeks and Italians co-existed peacefully, while in others the disappearance of indigenous Italian settlements shortly after the arrival of the Greeks reveals a more traumatic process.”

(Source: Kathryn Lomas, The Rise of Rome: From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars, 2018, pp. 31-33)

“Hannibal now occupied Metapontum ... [in] B.C. 207, he withdrew his forces from Metapontum, and, at the same time, removed from thence all the inhabitants in order to save them from the vengeance of Rome. From this time the name of Metapontum does not again appear in history; and it seems certain that it never recovered from the blow thus inflicted on it. But it did not altogether cease to exist... Cicero speaks of visiting it in terms that show it was still a town. (Cic. de Fin. v. 2; see also Appian, B. C. v. 93.) That orator, however, elsewhere alludes to the cities of Magna Graecia as being in his day sunk into almost complete decay; Strabo says the same thing, and Pausanias tells us that Metapontum in particular was in his time completely in ruins, and nothing remained of it but the theatre and the circuit of its walls. (Cic. de Amic. 4; Strab. vi. p. 262; Paus. vi. 19. § 11.) Hence, though the name is still found in Ptolemy, and the “ager Metapontinus” is noticed in the Liber Coloniarum (p. 262), all trace of the city subsequently disappears, and it is not even noticed in the Itineraries where they give the line of route along the coast from Tarentum to Thurii. The site was probably already subject to malaria, and from the same cause has remained desolate ever since.”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 2, 1857, p. 347)

“This abandonment [of Metapontum] must have been fatal... After that, it is only in the 13th and 14th centuries that we have news of these lands being repopulated. Recall in fact that where Metapontum once stood, there arose the village of Santa Trinità, later called Torre di Mare, which however did not have long life and soon disappeared, leaving behind only the name.”

(Source: Atti della Societa per gli studi della malaria, vol. 9, 1908, p. 359)

“Metapontum suffered the looting and rash devastations caused by the wild hordes of Spartacus, so much so that from then on it definitively declined. When Cicero went there in 50 BC, it must have been a small settlement. Its existence is attested by the archeological record until the first decades of the 2nd century AD. But at the time of the Antonine dynasty, when Pausanias came to visit the city ... nothing remained of the city except the theater and the enclosure of its walls. The ruins continued to be called by its ancient name until the end of the 11th century, when a village built on the left bank of the Basento river, near the current railway station, began to be called SS. Trinità and later Torre di Mare. This village was already uninhabited in the 17th century due to malaria.”

(Source: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Notizie degli scavi di antichità, 1966, p. 141)

“At the end of the 16th century, therefore, it can be assumed that the residential consistency of Torre di Mare was that of a sparsely populated center which was about to disappear completely, in keeping with the urban vicissitudes of other centers located along the long Ionian coastline, abandoned and deserted also due to malaria and famine... The towers were the only defensive bulwarks of a now desolate territory, and one of these, Torre di Mare, around which a small nucleus of population had gathered, was probably struck down later by the plague of 1656; moreover, the area was inhospitable and unhealthy also because it was malarial and, little more than half a century later, in the annals regarding the fires of 1669, it was declared uninhabited. ... At the end of the 17th century, in the year 1698, the now empty land of Torre di Mare became a fiefdom of Alfonso Filomarino, duke of Torre di Teverolaccio, and it would remain in the possession of this family throughout almost the entire 19th century, as a rural property organized into a fortified farm. ... Due to the absence of significant cartographic documentation, the historical memory of Torre di Mare in the 18th and 19th centuries is essentially limited to more or less suggestive descriptions reported in the chronicles and travel diaries of foreigners who traveled through the Lucanian region during that period...”

(Source: Gioia Bertelli, Torre di Mare I: ricerche archeologiche nell'insediamento medievale di Metaponto, 1995-1999, vol. 1, 2002, pp. 47-48)

“The two municipalities of Bernalda and Pisticci for years advanced a petition that the station of Torre di Mare be given the name of Metaponto; and the request was justly granted. ... The municipality of Pisticci generously paid 300 lire to have the name changed.”

(Source: Michele Lacava, Topografia e storia di Metaponto, 1891, p. 121)

VI. Siris and Nova Siri

“According to Strabo (6.1.14), Siris was settled by the indigenous Chones who were violently conquered by Ionians from Colophon fleeing their homeland. However, cooperation between the Greeks and the indigenous population is suggested by a communal cemetery.”

(Source: Christina S. Lane, “Siris, Destruction by Croton, Metapontum, and Sybaris (ca. 570 or 550)”, in Conflict in Ancient Greece and Rome, 2016, p. 504)

“Whatever may have been the origin of this legend, there seems no doubt that Siris was originally a city of the Chones, the native Oenotrian inhabitants of this part of Italy (Strab. I.c.). A legend found in the Etymologicon (s. v. Σίρις), according to which the city derived its name from a daughter of Morges, king of the Siculi, evidently points in the same direction, as the Morgetes also were an Oenotrian tribe. From these first settlers it was wrested, as we are told, by a body of Ionian colonists from Colophon... The date of the destruction of Siris cannot be fixed with any approach to certainty: it was probably after 550 B.C., and certainly preceded the till of its rival Sybaris in B.C. 510. Its ruin appears to have been complete, for we meet with no subsequent mention of the city.”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 2, 1857, p. 1013)

“So far as Strabo could ascertain, the city of Siris was originally a settlement of the native Chonians (Oenotrians), from whom it was taken by a band of fugitive Ionians who had fled from Colophon... There is therefore no reason to doubt that the account of Strabo is correct... But at some period between this date [570 B.C.] and the destruction of Sybaris (510 B.C.) Siris seems to have aroused the jealousy of her neighbours. ... Whatever the cause, we are informed that Metapontum on the one hand, Sybaris and Croton on the other, joined their forces against the city, forced her into the Achaean league, or expelled the inhabitants. The site was apparently left desolate or only imperfectly populated...”

(Source: Evelyn Abbott, A History of Greece, vol. 2, 1900, pp. 501-502)

“The current name [of Nova Siri] derives from a revival of the name of an ancient Greek colony called Siris, which arose and developed near the river of the same name. ... Until 1872 [Nova Siri] was known was “Bollita”, which according to an etymological reconstruction by Raccioppi derives from Boletum... Other toponymy studies instead say that it derives from Castrum Boletum...”

(Source: Istituto Enciclopedico Italiano, Basilicata, Calabria CZ: appendice I Sassi di Matera, 2001, p. 43)

VII. Poseidonia (Paestum)

“Greek settlements were in some cases invaded by Oscans and subjected to Oscanisation, and there must have been periods of bilingualism. Paestum, for example, 60 km south-east of Naples, was originally a colony of Sybaris but in 410 [BC] it fell to the Lucanians and was Oscanised.”

(Source: J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language, p. 148)

“For the poleis of Sicily and southern Italy, the period from the late fifth century [BC] until well into the third was one of real change. ... The most striking individual examples include the political takeover of the Greek polis Poseidonia by Oscan-speaking people by the end of the fifth century [BC], and the takeover of Messana in the 280s [BC] by the Oscan-speaking mercenaries of Agathokles, after his death (Costabile 1984; Dench 1995: 55-6).”

(Source: Andrew Erskine, A Companion to the Hellenistic World, 2009, p. 299)

“Aristoxenos says that the Greek people of Poseidonia have become completely barbarised and have turned into Etruscans or Romans. We know from archaeological evidence that Poseidonia was (relatively peacefully) taken over by an Oscan-speaking elite around the fifth or fourth century [BC] — so it was probably the Lucanians that Aristoxenos was thinking of when he says 'Etruscans' (Wonder 2002; D'Angelo 2019).”

(Source: Katherine McDonald, Italy Before Rome: A Sourcebook, 2021)

“This renewed interest in the study of the Italic peoples perse has produced very important contributions on the problem of status and role of the peoples — in the case of Poseidonia/Paestum, these would be the Oscan-speaking Lucanians of Samnitic descent, who came to settle into the Greek city of Poseidonia. Far from a 'barbarization' of the city lamented by Greek eyewitnesses, both the well-studied figurative repertoire of the painted chamber tombs of the Italic elites and the use of the Oscan language documented for public inscriptions are new important features of the fourth-century Lucanian city and point to the key role of the Italic elites in the sociopolitical organization of the city in the later fourth and early third century BC. Of particular relevance is a dedicatory inscription to Jupiter on a stele set up by the magistrate Statis Statilies and found in the early 1980s on the lower tiers of the ekklesiasterion, the assembly hall of the Greek city. This suggests Italic membership and authority among the ruling elite of Paestum in the later fourth century. Other epigraphic texts in Oscan made available by the most recent research at the site are a welcome addition to the sizeable group of Latin inscriptions pertaining to the colony and spanning the last three centuries BC. ... The Latin colony established in 273 BC inside the existing urban center of Poseidonia/Paestum is, in some respects, one of the best documented case studies of a colonial implantation at the site of a pre-existing, well-structured urban settlement.”

(Source: Maurizio Gualtieri, “The Archaeology of 'Integration' in Western Lucania: A Review of Recent Work”, in Processes of Cultural Change and Integration in the Roman World, 2015, pp. 79-80)

“Buried within the fill inside the ekklesiasterion was an inscription of the late fourth century BC, which attests to a significant Italian presence in the city. ... It is a dedication to Jupiter by a magistrate whose name appears to be Statis Statilies, an Oscan name, known from other inscriptions. Overall there are few inscriptions from Poseidonia before the Roman period. The prominent position of the inscribed stele within the ekklesiasterion and its Oscan elements suggest Italian membership and authority in the governing class of the city. This is further supported by a slight anomaly on one of the coin issues of the mid-fourth century BC which contains the additional signature... probably an Italian name. ... It is unclear under what circumstances the Italians would have become part of the community of the Greek city. Was it the result of a rapid influx due to specific, possibly military, circumstances as suggested by Strabo? Or was it rather a slower process of migration and intermixing which affected the majority of the Greek cities on the coasts of Italy? The evidence points to the latter...”

(Source: Elena Isayev, Inside Ancient Lucania: Dialogues in History and Archaeology, 2007, pp. 115-117)

“The type of burial deposits and the tombs themselves are unlike earlier Greek burials but similar to those found at Lucanian sites. Evidence suggests both Lucanians and Greeks lived in the city. ... Much of Poseidonia's fortification wall may have also been built during this period. An Oscan inscription has been found in the ekklesiasterion. It is a late fourth century dedication to Jupiter by a magistrate with an Oscan name (Crawford 2011, Paestum 1; Poccetti 1979, 116‒117; Greco 1981).”

(Source: John W. Wonder, “The Lucanians”, in The Peoples of Ancient Italy, 2017, p. 375)

“Aristoxenus says in his Sympotic Miscellany that we [Tarentines] are acting like the people of Poseidonia who live on the Tyrrhenian Sea. What happened to them is that, although they were originally Greeks, they have turned into barbarians and become Etruscans or Romans, and they have changed their language and the rest of their customs. ... The Achaean polis of Poseidonia had been taken over in the late fifth century by the Lucanians, a large non-Greek people in south-central Italy. The exact identity of the city's new rulers matters little to Aristoxenus, however, since he misidentifies them as either Tyrrhenians (i.e., Etruscans) or Romans. He focuses instead on the idea that Greeks no longer dominate their own community. Their culture has vanished, as we see from two key indicia of Hellenic identity: the people of Poseidonia no longer speak Greek but (presumably) speak Oscan, the language broadly shared by most peoples of southern Italy, and their daily customs have changed as well.”

(Source: Mark R. Thatcher, The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy, 2021, p. 214)

“Poseidonia's proximity to foreign influences accounted for its brief tenure as a Greek city-state. Around 400 [BC] the native Samnites, whose local name was “Lucanian”, seized control of Poseidonia. Except for a brief interlude, when Alexander I (the Molossian), king of Epirus, accepted an invitation from the city of Tarentum (Taranto) to relieve the Greek colonies of their Italic oppressors and captured Poseidonia in 335, the town remained in Lucanian hands during the fourth century. ... In 273, the encroaching Roman army established at Poseidonia a Latin colony composed of Roman and other Latin peoples, and renamed the city Paestum. Whereas the Lucanians had comfortably amalgamated Greek traditions with their own, the Roman conquest of Poseidonia heralded a more complete, deliberate break with the past. Religious, political, social, and architectural conventions all took on a Roman character.”

(Source: Southern Europe: International Dictionary of Historic Places, vol. 3, 2013, p. 512)

VIII. Herakleia (Heraclea)

“Starting from the second century after Christ, a period of decline takes place: the city becomes a village of secondary importance and follows the political-economic turmoil of Southern Italy. The demographic and agricultural decline reaches extreme peaks precisely in this territory: the port of Heraclea, the ancient Siris, disappears for centuries; the pastures, marshes and malaria extend up to the walls of the town. From this time until the 11th century there is no more news of the ancient city.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Enrico L. de Capua, Programma di Gestione della Riserva Naturale Regionale Bosco Pantano di Policoro, 2017, p. 22)

“Heraclea used to stand where the Monastery of Policoro is today... The city was founded by the Tarentines only in 432 BC... The Romans treated the city — which quickly became Latinized — with special kindness; Strabo knows it as a Latin city; Pliny also calls it an important city, but from the end of the second century AD onward it went into decline and the Saracens completely destroyed it.”

(Source: Translated from the German Globus: illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde, 1884, p. 232)

“Heraclea perished with the decline of the Roman Empire and disappeared from the map. Even the geographer Ptolemy, who lived under Hadrian, no longer mentions it. Under Byzantine rule, the area where Heraclea once stood is believed to have been called 'Polychorion' (vast land); for centuries this whole area was desolate and deserted as a result of malaria. Even in our day official guides strongly warned against staying in these valleys after sunset, because the modern tyrant was the intermittent gnat.”

(Source: Translated from the German of Hans von Hülsen, Funde in Der Magna Graecia, 1962, p. 156)

“Already in the second century Heraclea was in full decline; Ptolemy doesn't even remember it and the last inhabitants abandoned it at the first appearance of the Saracens. ... At Policoro, still deserted in the 12th century, the Jesuits founded a large convent now in ruins...”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Attilio Brunialti and Stefano Grande, Il Mediterraneo: nella natura, nella storia, nell'arte e nella vita dei popoli, vol. 2, 1922, p. 390)

“Since there is no other memory of the city after Pliny, either it went into rapid decline from the first century of the Christian era, or it was abandoned in subsequent centuries due to the unhealthy air of the nearby places: otherwise it would have been the site of a bishopric by the 4th century. And even if it still existed then, we must assume that it would have been reduced to a village. ... It is true that [Heraclea] is named by the anonymous geographer of Ravenna [in the 7th century], but it is known that in his simple geographical account he also mentioned other cities which had already been destroyed before his lifetime...”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Nicola Corcia, Storia delle due Sicilie dall'antichità piu remota al 1789, vol. 3, 1847, p. 319)

“It is certain that Heraclea held the status of confederated city of Rome, which it retained until the year 89 BC... Thus we enter the darkest period of its history. Indeed, we do not know how long the city survived as a Roman municipium. In the age of Pliny the Elder it was still an important city and is listed in the Itineraries. By the second century AD it must have been a village of secondary importance, since the geographer Ptolemy, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, neglected to mention Heraclea. It does not appear in the lists of Bishoprics in the early centuries of Christianity either. ... In the 12th century, perhaps following the destruction wrought by the Saracens, the area must have been deserted, given that a diploma [issued by Bohemond II] speaks simply of Fons Policorii.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian Bollettino d'arte, vol. 46, 1961, p. 133)

IX. Terina, Sambiase and Sant'Eufemia Vetere

“All writers agree in representing it as a Greek city and a colony of Crotona... Almost the first notice of Terina is that of its conquest by the Bruttians, an event which appears to have taken place soon after the rise of that people in B.C. 356, as, according to Diodorus, it was the first Greek city which fell into their hands. (Diod. 16.15.) It was recovered from them by Alexander, king of Epirus, about 327 B.C. (Liv. 8.24), but probably fell again under their [Bruttian] yoke after the death of that monarch. ... before the close of the [Second Punic War] that general [Hannibal] ... destroyed Terina... The site of Terina cannot be determined with any certainty. ... The most probable conjecture is, that it occupied nearly, if not exactly, the same site as the old town of Sta Eufemia (which was destroyed by a great earthquake in 1638)...”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 2, 1857, p. 1131)

“...the Greek city Terina, founded by Kroton at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. ... Diodoros (16.15.1-2 ) recorded the revolt of the Bruttioi from the Lucanians under the archon year 356/5 B.C. According to his account, following a period of looting the Bruttioi attacked Terina which they took by siege... Apart from a brief period of independence ca. 333 B.C. resulting from the efforts of Alexander of Molossia, Terina remained under the control of the Bruttioi until it was destroyed during the second Punic war.”

(Source: Paula Jean Perlman, City and Sanctuary in Ancient Greece: The Theorodokia in the Peloponnese, 2000, p. 71)

“Around the middle of the fourth century BC, following the Bruttian conquest, the city must have entered its period of decline. Strabo reminds us of how Hannibal, unable to defend the city properly, destroyed it in 203 BC.”

(Source: Claudio Donzelli, Magna Grecia of Calabria: A Guide to the Archeological Sites and Museums of Calabria, p. 14)

“Terina is at modern Santa Vetera... It was founded by the Krotonians (Pseudo-Skymnos 306-7; Pliny, Natural History 3.72) and seems to have been of little importance after Hannibal destroyed it.”

(Source: Duane W. Roller, A Historical and Topographical Guide to the Geography of Strabo, 2018, p. 292)

“For the Italiot centres of Hipponium, Terina and Temesa in particular their occupation by the Bruttii is confirmed by several pieces of evidence. ... The crab [Bruttian federal symbol] and the [Bruttian-Italic] goddess Pandina also appear on the bronze coins of Terina (mod. S. Eufemia Vetere), and the presence of a Bruttian elite in the city is further attested to there by funerary evidence, among which are the rich grave goods of a chamber tomb from the beginning of the third century BC....”

(Source: Gary D. Farney and ‎Guy Bradley, The Peoples of Ancient Italy, 2017, pp. 326-327)

“In the middle of the Byzantine era, between the 9th and 11th centuries, Nicastro and Sambiase first arose. Sant'Eufemia was born later.”

(Source: lameziastorica.it, La nascita di Nicastro e Sambiase)

“Sambiase originated from a settlement that gradually arose around a church dedicated to St. Biagio... whose cult was introduced to the region in the Byzantine era... Sant'Eufemia is a small rural agglomeration first built around the ruins of the homonymous abbey (formerly Byzantine and then Norman, destroyed by the earthquake of 1638)...”

(Source: Fulvio Mazza, Lamezia Terme: storia, cultura, economia, 2001, p. 50)

X. Metauros (Metaurum)

“At the necropolis at Gioia Tauro for instance, the earliest phases of burials have been interpreted as indicating a mixed [Italic-Greek] population, a reflection of both the heterogeneity of some of the early assemblages of grave goods (coarse-ware vases and sub-Geometric pottery) and the fact that “natives” and “Greeks” were apparently buried side by side.”

(Source: Joseph E. Skinner, The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus, 2012, pp. 182-183)

“Archaeological findings show that Metaurus had a mixed population of Greeks with ties to Zancle, Rhegium, and Mylae, but also with indigenous [Italian] people, which suggests a high level of cultural interaction between Greeks and non-Greeks (...see De Angelis 2016: 162 for evidence of mixed population in Metaurus).”

(Source: Sofia Carvalho, Mythical Narratives in Stesichorus: Greek Heroes on the Move, 2021, p. XVI)

“Around 445-400 BC Metauros was invaded by the Bruttians (or Brettians, a group which separated itself from the Lucanians) and, being a border town between the city-states of Locri and that of Rhegium, it was continuously attacked. ... In 219 BC the Second Punic War for Bruttium and for Metauros was Hannibal's last attempt to remove the Italic population from the Roman orbit. The Romans began the reconquest in 209 BC and in 207 BC the battle of Metauro resulted in the death of Hasdrubal, thus depriving Hannibal of any chance of recovery. ... Romanization was not only a political fact but rather a cultural fact of great importance. Metauria (no longer 'Metauros'), Medma (Rosarno), Locri Epizephiri (Locri) and Rhegium (Reggio Calabria), as allies of Rome, submitted to the military and foreign policy obligations imposed by the Romans... Metauria was considered a land of conquest and therefore, as “ager publicus populi romani”, could be sold or leased or assigned to colonists, or donated to veterans of the Roman army. ... The city of Metauria, during the reign of the conservative Tiberius (14-37 AD), became “a simple naval station with the name of the nearby Metaurus River.” ... In 69 AD Metauria, Taurianum (today's Taureana, founded in that period) and Rhegium were merged with adjacent villages and experienced a brief revival until 166 AD, the year in which the plague arrived. The citizens of Metauria took shelter in Taurianum, located on a small hill and quite far from the marshy areas. Subsequently, in 189 AD, another plague caused the definitive retreat of the population. ... In the spring of 568 AD Metauria was invaded by the Longobards who devastated and destroyed it, forcing the inhabitants to take refuge in the plain. The conditions of this land were unhappy, and serious threats from the Saracens loomed over it. ... Therefore, from the end of the 6th century until the beginning of the 1000's, the population stayed away from the ruins of Metauria due to the continuous raids by Saracen pirates which reached their peak in 883 AD; the survivors had headed inland, right where the Marro river branches out in the mountain. Here they had founded the settlement of Metaurianova which, over time, became Terranova Sappo Minulio. ... In the period of 1100-1271 there is no trace of any city with the name 'Metauria'. It reappears in 1271 in a register of Charles I of Anjou in which it is noted that the bishop of Mileto owned the estates of 'Vita e chala' in Johe (the new name given to Metauria)...”

(Source: Translated from the Italian La Storia di Gioia Tauro - Dalle origini al '700, taken from Gioja Tauro: Vicende storiche cittadine da Metauros ad oggi by Pietro Vissicchio, Edizioni Club Ausonia, 1995)

“The city was called Metauria (of clear Latin idiom) during the Roman domination and kept this denomination until its destruction, which probably took place around 1000 AD, and there is no trace of it until 1271. In fact, it reappears with the name Johe (apparently a Spanish name) in an Angevin register. ... Over time the appellation changed into the Italian Gioja and remained so until 26 March 1863, the day in which, on the proposal of the then Mayor Luigi Baldari, the word 'Tauro' was added.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Pietro Vissicchio, Gioja Tauro: vicende storiche cittadine da Metauros ad oggi, 1995)

XI. Pyxous and Buxentum

“Strabo was...discussing a town from the latter's era that had long been abandoned (as a Greek town) in his own day: a Roman settlement, Buxentum, was founded on the site in 194 BC (Livy 32.29.4), and seems to have had little continuity with Pyxous.”

(Source: Duane W. Roller, A Historical and Topographical Guide to the Geography of Strabo, 2018, p. 287)

“Pyxous was founded by Mikythos, ruler of Rhegion and Zancle, in 471 BC according to Diodorus (XI.59.4). Strabo (6.1.1), too, maintains that it was founded by Mikythos ... but he suggests that it was an apparently short-lived attempt to settle on the Tyrrhenian as the majority of the settlers soon left.”

(Source: Helle W. Horsnaes, The Cultural Development in North Western Lucania C. 600-273 BC, 2002, p. 157)

“The colony...according to Strabo did not last long: and we hear no more of Pyxus until after the conquest of Lucania by the Romans, who in B.C. 197 selected it as the site of one of the colonies which they determined to establish in Southern Italy. ...in B.C. 186 it was already reported to be deserted, and a fresh body of [Latin] colonists was sent there.”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 1, 1857, p. 460)

XII. Rhegion (Reggio Calabria)

“I maintain that alongside the Romanization of the environment, the Romanization of the language was underway in Reggio ever since the city passed to the Romans. While admitting that this change occurred more slowly than elsewhere, given that Reggio is a sea port which communicates with the East, it is likely that it began to occur mainly among the upper classes, and then penetrated the people themselves... This is also the opinion of the illustrious Hellenist Prof. Domenico Comparetti...”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Nicola Putortì, “Ancora sulla romanizzazione di Regium e del resto dei Bruttii”, in Atti del IV Congresso nazionale di studi romani, 1938, pp. 18-19)

“It is natural that a city in such conditions under Rome would be Latinized eventually. The contrary however has been affirmed in the past, based on the already discussed deficient argument over the Roman titles or on the aforementioned passage of Strabo referring to the Greek character of the three southern cities [Neapolis, Regium, Tarentum]. Whoever gives an absolute meaning to Strabo's words must be he who continues to limit his investigation only to items collected in works that are by now outdated, in which the Greek inscriptions in Regium (too few, moreover, to definitively conclude anything) appear as more numerous than the Latin ones, thus showing himself to be uninformed about the numerous recent epigraphic discoveries [in Latin] which have taken place in the city itself, as well as the historical and linguistic significance of these discoveries, and, moreover, neglects to consider the state of affairs in which the city must have found itself over time, being as it was under the dominion of Rome, just like all the other neighboring cities of Bruttium and the former Magna Graecia. I therefore am of the opinion that Strabo's passage should be understood only in a relative sense, and, if anything, it applies only to the time in which the esteemed geographer was writing: never, in my opinion, should his words be extended to the period after his death. We can admit, obviously, that the change of language occurred more slowly in Regium than elsewhere... In support of my thesis, I recall that, in addition to the political work of Rome aimed at assimilating everything to itself, there was the later work of Christianity, it too a great advocate of Romanity. And in light of what is affirmed by Procopius in general about Magna Graecia in Justinian's day — which he calls a Latin country, just like the region of Samnium —, and by Cassiodorus in particular who, living in Bruttium, calls the Latin language “patrius sermo” (mother tongue), without delimitation or exclusion of any kind, while he defines Regium as a flourishing Roman municipality —, I compared the titles of Regium during the period of the Late Empire and, far from being Greek, they are all written in the Latin language. If it were enough to cite titles — if this alone were enough to reach a conclusion — it ought to be considered valid confirmation of the city's general passage from the Greek language to Latin, which had already taken place in Regium by the Late Imperial age. After mentioning the Latinization of Tarentum and Neapolis, the other two cities named by Strabo, which also must have taken place at an earlier date, I concluded the linguistic part of my work on Regium by saying that it was only [following the conquest of the Byzantines, after the end of the 7th century AD] that the Greek language and Greek liturgical rite was reintroduced in Bruttium... What I expounded upon in this memorandum... does not seem to have sufficiently attracted the attention of scholars specializing in the field of linguistics, namely the learned and acute author Rohlfs...”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Nicola Putorti, “I romani in Regium Julium”, in Atti del Congresso nazionale studi romani, 1929, pp. 297-299)

XIII. Neapolis (Naples)

“In what transpired during the conflict with Marius in 82 B.C., Sulla took Neapolis and his partisans slaughtered nearly all the inhabitants absconding also with the city's fleet. By this act Neapolis not only lost the ancient ruling class, but the very foundations of its economic power, its ships, were also destroyed.”

(Source: Apolline Project Vol. 1, 2009, p. 28)

“Though a deeper focus on Strabo's famous passage lies beyond our investigation, it may be useful to add a comment on Naples' ethnic diversity, an important aspect of the city under the Flavians. Following the initial fusion of several Greek elements (Cumaean, Chalcidian, Athenian), from the fourth century BC the city had gradually incorporated Italic elements as well, until it became a municipium in the first century, after the so-called Social War or Bellum Italicum (91-88 BC). However, an authentic re-mixing, if not a forced re-stocking, took place in Naples after 82 BC, as a consequence of Sulla's ruthless retaliation against the cities which had been hostile to him during his fight against Marius. The year 82 [BC] marks almost a refoundation, or at least an epochal turning point in [Naples'] ethnic and social configuration, which now becomes much more Italic and Roman...”

(Source: Claudio Buongiovanni, “Literary Representations of Naples in Flavian Poetry”, in Campania in the Flavian Poetic Imagination, pp. 16-17)

“It seems all too clear to me, in light of these considerations, why our dear master Roland Martin... in his celebrated work 'Urbanisme', published in 1956 when the debate on Palaeopolis and Neapolis was still underway, judging only by the outline, proposed a chronology for Naples starting at the end of the 6th century BC. Today we know very well that the foundation of Neapolis cannot be dated before 470 BC. ...”

(Source: Emanuele Greco, “L'impianto urbano di Neapolis greca: aspetti e problemi”, in Neapolis: atti del venticinquesimo Convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia: Taranto, 3-7 ottobre 1985, pp. 203-206)

“Most previous studies—driven by assumptions about Naples’ identity as a ‘Greek city’—have stressed the conservative nature of the city’s constitution in Roman times, as well as its continuity with earlier Greek institutions. These seemingly sound assumptions have often taken on a life of their own within the scholarly debate. Nevertheless, a partially different picture seems to emerge when we approach the ancient source material in a new and possibly provocative way, drawing on some of the theories and methodologies of reception studies. ... It will then move on to reconsider the traditional interpretations of this evidence, showing that some of the Greek magistracies in Naples were in fact substantially ‘reinvented’ at the time of the institution of the Sebasta games.”

(Source: Claudio Buongiovanni and Jessica Hughes, Remembering Parthenope: The Reception of Classical Naples from Antiquity to the Present, 2015, pp. 85-86)

“...much modern discussion of the supposed adjustments and changes in Neapolis’ constitution and administrative system after the Social War is dominated by presuppositions about the enduring Greek culture and heritage of this city.”

(Source: Idem, p. 88)

“In his famous excursus on Neapolis (on which see Lorenzo Miletti, Chapter 2 of this volume), Strabo emphasizes that the earliest names of their demarchs ‘are Greek only, whereas the later are Greek mixed with Campanian. And very many traces of Greek culture are preserved there—gymnasia, ephebeia, phratriae, and Greek names [...], although the people are Romans’. It is worth noting that Strabo clearly recognizes as the most distinctive Greek features its gymnasia, its clubs of ephebes (young men), and its phratries: apart from the demarchs, there is no reference to any other Greek civic magistrature or office in this passage. Moreover, according to Strabo, besides Neapolis only Tarentum and Rhegium survived a complete ‘barbarization’. Guy Bradley has rightly pointed out that ‘these are surprising choices to pick as standard-bearers of Greek culture in Italy, since Tarentum had received a Roman colony in the late second century [BC] and Rhegium was not only seized by the Roman legion which had been sent to garrison it in the early second century [BC] (and which killed most of the population in the process, according to Strabo) but had also been colonised by [Roman] veterans in the late Republic’. Strabo is one of the most significant of all our sources and his description of Neapolis has generated the idea that this city was a distinguished but fairly typical example of ‘Greek tradition’ in Italy, whose Greek language, culture, and institutions resembled those of other Greek democratic communities... Instead, such a peculiar articulation of Roman Neapolis’ political structure may well be seen as a reflection of what Kathryn Lomas has appropriately called ‘the revival of Hellenism’ during the first and early second centuries AD, that is, ‘a cultural construct, not something which is consequent on ethnicity’. It is therefore worth considering whether we should interpret Neapolis’ municipal structures in the first and second centuries AD in terms of a deliberate ‘revival of Hellenism’ through a process of manipulation of Greek heritage by the local elite, fostered by the central government.”

(Source: Idem, pp. 91-92)

“We might remember that Strabo's description of Naples identified the demarchs, its gymnasia, its associations of ephebes, and its phratries as the most distinctive Greek features of this city: these elements seem to have been sufficient to allow Naples to represent itself as a real Greek polis well into the Principate. ... Hopefully, though, it is now clear that any further investigation into city magistrates holding offices at Neapolis between the Social War and late antiquity has to start not from the oversimplistic concept that Neapolis was a ‘Greek city’ but rather from an examination of the hitherto untapped evidence of the Latin inscriptions from Naples that relate or allude to local municipal offices...”

(Source: Idem, pp. 102-104)

“The majority of funerary inscriptions from Naples is, in contrast, written in Latin, and commemorates people with Latin (or Latinized) names. Some of those which are in Greek are literal translations of the Latin D(is) M(anibus) type of epitaph, which suggests a high degree of Latinization of the epigraphic culture. ... It may also reflect socioeconomic status, as they commemorate people beyond the elite. Nevertheless, they reveal a division between the public culture of Naples, with its emphasis on Hellenism, and the increasingly Roman culture of the mass of the population. Onomastic practices are also revealing. From the Augustan period onwards, Greek names, where they occur, were mainly of a type which suggests slave origin. Most Neapolitans had adopted Roman names. Even the members of the elite who were commissioning public inscriptions in Greek, and of Greek type, had all adopted Roman names, expressed in Roman form. Much of the population, therefore, had adopted Roman naming practices – an important element in assessing cultural change (Leiwo, 1994; Lomas, 2003). This raises some important questions about demographic continuity. Studies of the onomastic history of Naples suggest that there was a fair amount of continuity until the first century AD, indicated by the survival of Greek and Campanian names. From the second century AD, Latin names became more predominant, which may point to the arrival of significant numbers of [Italic] people from other areas of Campania, perhaps migrating following the eruption of Vesuvius (Leiwo, 1994: 171–72). ... Latin was widely adopted, as were many features of Roman administrative organization, and the urban landscape appears to have changed to embrace the building types and architectural styles of contemporary Italy. ... The scarcity of evidence from the first century BC means that it is impossible to ascertain whether the Hellenism of the early empire was a direct development from the culture of pre‐Roman Naples or a revival of specific aspects of this. The fact that Hellenism appears to be confined to elite culture and to certain aspects of civic culture suggests that it may have become a restricted area of high culture, mainly used for the more ceremonial and public aspects of civic life such as exchanges of honors and benefactions.”

(Alison E. Cooley, A Companion to Roman Italy, 2016, pp. 248-249)

XIV. Dikaiarcheia (Pozzuoli)

“There are, in fact, coins of Puteoli [Pozzuoli] of the fourth century B.C. with words on them in the Oscan language, a first cousin of Latin. ... Puteoli, a diminutive of puteus, may be a Latin transcription of the Oscan word. Pozzuoli became a Roman colony at the beginning of the second century B.C.”

(Source: Charles Singer, The Earliest Chemical Industry: An Essay in the Historical Relations of Economics and Technology Illustrated from the Alum Trade, 1948, p. 28)

“The name of Dicaearchia continued to be applied to it by Greek writers long after it had assumed the new [Italic] appellation of Puteoli. (Diod. 4.22, 5.13, &c.) The period of this change is uncertain. It is generally said that the Romans bestowed on it the new name when they established their colony there; but there seems good reason to believe that it was considerably more ancient. ... there is much probability that the coins with the Oscan inscription “Phistlus”, sometimes Graecised into Phistelia, belong to Puteoli during the period previous to the Roman colony. ... Puteoli certainly continued to enjoy under the Empire the rank of a colony. (Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 9; Orell, Inscr. 1694, 3697, &c.) In addition to the original “colonia civium” settled there ... in B.C. 194, it appears to have received a fresh colony under Sulla ... and certainly was again colonised by Augustus. (Lib. Col. p. 236.) ... But it shared to the full extent in the calamities of the declining empire: it was taken and plundered by Alaric in A.D. 410, and again by Genseric in 455, and by Totila in 545. ... After having for some time been almost deserted, it partially revived in the Middle Ages; but again suffered severely both from the ravages of war and from the volcanic eruptions ... in 1198, and ... in 1538.”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 2, 1857, p. 680)

 XV. Kroton (Crotone)

“About the same time an army of Bruttians invested the Greek city of Croton. At one time this city had been a military power, but it had been overtaken by so many and such serious reverses that its whole population was now reduced to less than 2000 souls. The enemy found no difficulty in gaining possession of a city so denuded of defenders...”

(Source: Livy, The History of Rome, Book 23, Ch. 30)

“The city of Croton had a wall with a circuit of twelve miles before the coming of Pyrrhus to Italy. Since the desolation caused by that war scarcely half of the city was inhabited.”

(Source: Livy, The History of Rome, Book 24, Ch. 3)

“...Livy states that the entire citizenry of Crotone was reduced to less than 2,000 citizens. The report seems to be consistent with the results of recent archaeological excavations, which have brought to light part of the ancient town of Crotone and the necropolis: all signs of life generally cease in the 3rd century BC, while the testimonies from the 2nd century BC pertain to the Latin colony.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Felice Costabile, Istituzioni e forme costituzionali nelle città del Bruzio in età romana, 1984, p. 78)

“...it suffered severely from the growing power of the Lucanians and Bruttians... as well as from domestic dissensions.... So reduced was the city after all these disasters, that little more than half [of the city] continued to be inhabited. (Liv. 24.3.) In the Second Punic War... a body of Bruttians [was] introduced into the city to fill up the vacancy of its inhabitants. (Liv. 24.2, 3.) ... The ravages of this war appear to have completed the decay of Crotona; so that a few years afterwards, in B.C. 194, a colony of Roman citizens was sent thither to recruit its exhausted population. (Liv. 34.45.) From this period Crotona sank into the condition of an obscure provincial town, and is not again mentioned in history until after the fall of the Roman Empire..”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 2, 1857, p. 711)

XVI. Hipponion (Vibo Valentia), Temesa and the Bruttians

“Other Bruttian centres, or centres which became Bruttian, are mentioned by the ancient authors – e.g. Aufugo, Berga, Besidia, Ocricoli, Linfeo, Argentano, Clampetia, Caulonia, Pandosia, Tisia, Mystia, Hyporon, Terina, Hipponium, Temesa... For the Italiot centres of Hipponium, Terina and Temesa in particular their occupation by the Bruttii is confirmed by several pieces of evidence. After 356 BC Hipponium (mod. Vibo Valentia) minted bronze coins with Greek and Oscan-Greek ethnic names; on several examples the crab appears, the Bruttian federal symbol, as well as the Bruttian-Italic goddess Pandina; the first letters of the Oscan name Niumsis also appear, belonging therefore to an Italic magistrate (Rutter 2001, nos. 2243‒2261; Taliercio Mensitieri 1993). The presence in Hipponium of a Bruttian elite, completely Hellenized [sic!] and participating in civic government, is further attested by the richness of grave goods and numerous brick stamps with the Oscan names of the producers; important above all others is the Oscan stamp ϝερεκο on a fragment of tile from the end of the third century BC (Imagines, Vibo 3), which indicates production precisely of the vereiia, a typically Italic political-military institution administered by one or more meddices (Poccetti 2000). The crab and the goddess Pandina also appear on the bronze coins of Terina (mod. S. Eufemia Vetere), and the presence of a Bruttian elite in the city is further attested to there by funerary evidence, among which are the rich grave goods of a chamber tomb from the beginning of the third century BC... In the third century BC the centre [of Temesa] minted bronze coins with ... the new name given to the city by the Bruttian conquerors; apart from the symbol of the crab, a number of other examples have the Oscan name ΣΤΑΤΙΟΥ, apparently belonging to a Bruttian magistrate (Rutter 2001, nos. 2437‒2448).”

(Source: Gary D. Farney and ‎Guy Bradley, The Peoples of Ancient Italy, 2017, pp. 326-327)

“No mention of it is found in history ... till B.C. 389, when it was taken by Dionysius of Syracuse, who destroyed the city [and] removed the inhabitants... But 10 years afterwards (B.C. 379) the city was restored... and the exiled inhabitants re-established there. It did not [last] long, however... having fallen into the hands of the Bruttians, apparently soon after B.C. 356... It was wrested from the latter nation for a time by Agathocles, in B.C. 294... but after the departure of Agathocles himself... the city [was] recovered by the Bruttians. It now continued in their hands until it fell with the rest of the Bruttian peninsula under the yoke of Rome; but no mention of it is again found... until after the close of the Second Punic War... But shortly after the close of the war (in B.C. 192) a Roman colony was established there, consisting of not less than 4000 settlers, including 300 knights, which was thenceforth known by the name of Vibo Valentia. ... The Roman colony seems to have rapidly risen into importance, and became one of the most considerable towns in this part of Italy. ...the modern town dates only from the 13th century.”

(Source: William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. 2, 1857, pp. 1070-1071)

“Monteleone, today's Vibo Valentia, had Greek origins, but was then transformed into a Roman municipality, and maintained a certain continuity until the Byzantine age, when it disappeared due to a Saracen invasion in 983 AD. In the 11th century it became a castrum under Count Roger I. Between 1233 and 1237 Frederick II entrusted the expansion of the castrum and ordered the repopulation of the town.”

(Source: Cristina Andenna, "De mandato Frederici Imperatoris", in Federico II nel Regno di Sicilia: realtà locali e aspirazioni universali, 2008, p. 154)

XVII. Latin Colonization in Southern Italy

“Between 200 and 177 [BC] around twenty new Latin and Roman colonies were founded, located mostly in the northern and southern extremes of the Italian peninsula. Five citizen colonies of 300 settlers each were founded along the western coast of Italy in 194 [BC]: Puteoli, Liternum and Volturnum in Campania (the latter two on land confiscated from Capua); Salernum on the southern edge of Campania, south of the Sorrentine peninsula; and Buxentum in Lucania. In the same year citizen colonies were also placed in Sipontum on the coast of Apulia, and in Croton and Tempsa on the coast of Bruttium. Two large Latin colonies were also founded in Bruttium: Copia (at the site of Thurii) in 193 [BC] and Vibo Valentia in 192 [BC].”

(Source: Michael P. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage: Southern Italy during the Second Punic War, 2010, p. 309)

“The Greek cities which received [Roman] colonies included Tarentum (123 BC), Croton (194 BC), Scolacium (123 BC), Vibo (192 BC), Buxentum (194 BC), Tempsa (194 BC) and Thurii (193 BC). Colonies were also founded at Volturnum, Liternum, Salernum, Puteoli and Sipontum.  Part of the Ager Campanus was divided up, and in Apulia 40,000 veterans were allotted land immediately after the war, with further allotments around Beneventum to 47,000 Ligurians in 180 BC. ... The colonies of Valentia, founded at Vibo, and Copia, founded near Thurii, were somewhat larger, with 4,000 and 3,300 colonists respectively. ... The final phase of colonisation before 90 BC occurred in 123-122 BC, as a result of G. Gracchus' programme of colonisation and distribution of ager publicus. Two colonies were founded in Magna Graecia, namely Minervia at Scolacium and Neptunia in the territory of Tarentum, almost certainly occupying land confiscated from the Tarentines after 209 BC. These ensured that Tarentum came into closer contact with Roman culture than had hitherto been the case... [Roman] Colonisation in Magna Graecia continued intermittently throughout the first century AD. ... There was clearly a high level of [Roman] immigration and colonisation in Magna Graecia during the Late Republic and Early Empire, which undoubtedly had a profound impact on the region. ... In some areas, the gradual influx of individual Romans and Italians may have been an influential factor, but this is less likely to leave physical traces than a full-scale colony. There was extensive viritane land allotment in the South [to Roman veterans], and also a large-scale seasonal migration of wealthy Romans and their households to certain areas of Campania. This principally affected the area around the Bay of Naples... the same phenomenon can be observed, although to a lesser extent, in other areas.”

(Source: Kathryn Lomas, “Decline and Recovery: Magna Graecia 200 BC - AD 14”, in Alternatives to Athens. Varieties of Political Organization and Community in Ancient Greece, 2002, pp. 81-83)

“As a result of occupation by Lucanians, Bruttians, and Campanians, the main cities of Magna Graecia underwent a phenomenon of barbarization (Asheri 1999), and then of Romanization... After the conquest of Neapolis, Rome set its sights on Apulia and Lucania. ... in 299 BCE the Lucanians asked Rome for aid, which sent 20,000 Latin colonists to Venusia... In 273 BCE, a colony under Roman law was established at Poseidonia, now renamed Paestum (Poseidonia 1992; Torelli 1992), and in 272 BCE Taras was also forced to capitulate and become a socia of the Romans (Lippolis 1997). After the Apulians and the Lucanians, the Messapians and Salentinians also became socii populi Romani, and in 244 BCE the Latin colony of Brundisium was founded. Rome thus came to dominate southern Italy in a single century (Paoletti 1994). Over the course of the second century BCE, Roman control of the entire area became nearly complete... Emblematic of the conclusion of Rome's colonizing efforts and the new politico‐diplomatic era in southern Italy was the establishment of two colonies under Roman law imposed on Greek cities: Thurii (194 BCE) and Hipponion (192 BCE). Roman names (and concepts) were imposed, creating the cities of Copiae and Valentia.”

(Source: Franco De Angelis, A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World, 2020, pp. 285-286)

XVIII. The Decline of the Hellenic Colonies

“Conflict between the Greek cities of Italy and their non-Greek neighbors was not new, of course. In the fifth century, Taras, Thurii, and Rhegium all fought non-Greek neighbors, with mixed success. But the frequency of conflict escalated in the fourth century, especially following the emergence of first the Lucanians and then the Bruttians as formidable new opponents who drastically increased the pressure on Greek communities. This led to a qualitative change as well. Until the end of the fifth century [BC], no Greek polis in Italy had been captured and held by non-Greeks. But from that point forward, Poseidonia was not alone in suffering this fate; most of Campania, including Cumae, soon followed. Farther down the Tyrrhenian coast, the small poleis of Laus, Terina, Temesa, and Hipponion all fell during the fourth century; so did the final incarnation of Sybaris, which had been refounded on the Traeis River. The larger cities of Thurii and Heraclea were both captured but later regained their independence, while Croton and Metapontion were repeatedly threatened. By the late fourth century, wide swaths of formerly Greek southern Italy were in non-Greek hands. Strabo later summarized this situation with the same word, ekbarbarōsthai, used by Aristoxenus: 'Today all parts of [Magna Graecia], except Taras, Rhegium and Neapolis, have become completely barbarized'.”

(Source: Mark R. Thatcher, The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy, 2021, pp. 215-216)

“All these [Greek] communities together must have numbered 80-90,000 citizens, about as many as the Greek cities of Sicily. ... But already in the period of the Peloponnesian War [431–404 BC] the decline began. Kyme was lost to the Campanians around 420 BC; a little later (around 400 BC) the Lucanians conquered Poseidonia, Pyxus and Laos, and then penetrated further into what later became known as the Bruttian Peninsula [Calabria], the northern half of which they took possession of for the most part. Then, when the Empire of Syracuse collapsed after Dion's campaign, the cities of Sybaris on the Traeis, Terina, Hipponion and other places were also lost. Thus Greek culture in Italy was only concentrated in a few towns, and most of them, moreover, had difficulty defending their independence against barbarian attacks [by Italian tribes]. Only Taras was an exception to the general decline. ... But Taras too was forced to fight a constant struggle for survival with the Italians, and in the end its own strength was not sufficient to resist them.”

(Source: Translated from the German of Julius Beloch, Griechische geschichte, ed. 2, 1922, pp. 307-308)

“Accordingly, the number of citizens of the Italian-Greek cities in the 5th and at the beginning of the 4th century would have been approximately the same as that of the Greek cities in Sicily, i.e. about 80,000. In the course of the 4th and 3rd centuries centuries BC, most of those [Greek] cities fell into the hands of the Lucanians and Bruttians, so that at the beginning of the war with Hannibal [Second Punic War, 218 BC] only Neapolis, Elea, Rhegion, Lokroi, Kaulonia, Croton, Thurioi, Herakleia, Metapont and Taras retained their Hellenic population, mostly as small and insignificant towns. At that time Italy may have had scarcely more than 100,000 Greek inhabitants (excluding the enslaved population), a number which was perhaps reduced by half [50,000] as a result of the war with Hannibal. Since then, the demise of the Greeks in Italy was only a matter of time.”

(Source: Translated from the German of Julius Beloch, Die bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen welt, 1886, p. 305)

“The cities of Magna Graecia rapidly declined in power after the commencement of the fifth century before the Christian era. This was mainly owing to two causes. First, the destruction of Sybaris deprived the Greeks of one of their most powerful cities, and of a territory and an influence over the native [Italic] population, to which no other Greek town could succeed; and, secondly, they were now for the first time brought into contact with the warlike Samnites and Lucanians, who began to spread from Middle Italy towards the south. Cuma was taken by the Samnites, and Posidonia (Paestum) by the Lucanians; and the latter people in course of time deprived the Greek cities of the whole of their inland territory.”

(Source: William Smith, A History of Greece: From the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest, 1890, p. 123)

“...their movement to Sicily about 340 [BC] must have meant a noticeable reduction in the Greek population of Italy. When Dionysius II left Locri for Syracuse at the end of Dion's period of government, Syracusan influence in Italy collapsed. ... Dionysius ... had not strengthened the Greeks enough to deter the Italic peoples from maintaining their pressure. And the vulnerability of the Italiot cities was obvious. ...most were near the coast, and most were towards the south-east... and most of them had Italic neighbours. The larger cities are the only ones whose fortunes are even outlined in the extant historical record... the Lucanians in the middle of the fourth century [BC] took Heraclea, and the Bruttians [took] Terina, Hipponium, Thurii and Sybaris. Sybaris ... was not refounded. According to Diodorus, its inhabitants were driven out by the Bruttians and killed. ... Terina, also captured by the Bruttians c. 350 [BC], is described by Livy as a Bruttian city (in the same breath as Consentia, the Bruttian capital)... it may be right to infer from his description of Terina that in the years since its capture it had begun to be de-Hellenised. ... Roman influence in Magna Graecia shows in the alliance the Thurians made with Rome... Neither Alexander of Epirus nor Archidamus... was able to produce a Greek renascence... The west Greek generals, from Cleonymus back via Agathocles, Timoleon and Dion to Dionysius I himself, all used armies of outsiders in areas where there was not a general surplus of Greeks... The growth in numbers of outsiders reflected (most of the time) the general decline...”

(Source: Paul Mckechnie, Outsiders in the Greek Cities in the Fourth Century BC, 2014, pp. 42-45)

“By the third century, the Greeks of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and Sicily were long in political decline. ...the western Greeks found themselves caught between the hammer of their traditional enemy, Carthage, and the anvil of the new power of Rome. ... Some cities had already succumbed to their Italic neighbors in Lucania and Bruttium. As a result of their weakness, the Greeks succumbed to Rome... Pressure on many Greek cities from the Lucanians and Bruttians was proving irresistible by the 280s [BC]. ... From the Po River to the Straits of Messana, the Italian peninsula was under the control of Rome by 264 [BC].”

(Source: Mark Luttenberger, The Mediterranean Sea from Alexander to the Rise of Rome, 2022)

XIX. Roman Latinization and Disappearance of Greek

“The Greeks, however, succeeded in depriving the ancient inhabitants of a great portion of the midland country... to such a degree, that they called this region and Sicily, the Magna Grœcia. But now the whole region, except Tarentum, Rhegium and Neapolis, has become barbarian [non-Greek], and belongs partly to the Leucani and Bruttii, partly to the Campani; to these, however, only in name, but truly to the Romans; for these people have become Roman.”

(Source: Strabo, Geography, Book VI, Ch. I)

“In his time, however, he [Strabo] says, all these cities, excepting only Naples, Reggio and Tarentum (modern Taranto), had become ‘utterly un-Greek’. They were occupied by Italic peoples – Campanians, Lucanians and Bruttians.”

(Source: David Potter, The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian, 2019, p. 36)

“By the time of Cassiodorus in the first half of the sixth century even Reggio Calabria, Naples and Taranto, which had been reported by Strabo as strongholds of Greek culture, had been Latinized. Although the conquests of Justinian brought part of the peninsula within the Greek administrative sphere once more, the language of the south remained Latin for the most part, and so did the bishops, who retained their allegiance to the patriarchate of Rome.”

(Source: Paul Hostetler Mosher, The Abbey of Cava in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, 1969, p. 148)

“Except in Naples, Velia and Rhegium, there are remarkably few Greek names preserved in the epigraphic record, other than those which are obviously slave names, or those of Greeks [immigrants] from outside Italy. Even the Greek inscriptions which record the activities of the élite—decrees of the boule, religious texts, victory lists of the Sebasta and honorific inscriptions—include very few non-Latin names. Most of these élite names are of Roman or Campanian origin, rather than being specifically local to Bruttium or Lucania. This apparent lack of an indigenous Greek élite has mystified scholars considerably, and has lent credence to the idea that the Punic Wars were a watershed, after which Magna Graecia was too impoverished and too Romanised to maintain a significant Greek identity.”

(Kathryn Lomas, Rome and the Western Greeks, 350 BC - AD 200, 2005, p. 171)

“It is possible that the magistrates of the municipium were allowed to continue to use Greek titles as a special concession for the fidelity of Rhegium, but this would scarcely last beyond the middle of the first century... In any case by the second century [AD] Rhegium had become a normal municipium with quattuorviri and had begun to use Latin for inscriptions.”

(Source: B. F. Cook, “The Lost Greek Inscriptions”, in The Antiquaries Journal, vol. 51, 1971, p. 263)

“Tarentum soon became so depopulated that it almost ceased to exist; under Nero Italian veterans moved there to obliterate its Hellenistic character more and more, and the city became thoroughly Latin. There are only a few meagre inscriptions in Greek. ... As late as the first century [AD] there were still archontic and demarchic inscriptions ... in Rhegium and Naples. By the second century, however, Latin had precedence in Rhegium. ...southern Italy was Latinized...”

(Source: A History of Rome under the Emperors, translated from the German Römische Kaisergeschichte: Nach den Vorlesungsmitschriften von Sebastian und Paul Hensel 1882/86, 2005)

“In southern Italy, Greek material culture — ceramics and metallurgy — was already in decline by the fall of the Roman Republic. ... But by the third century [AD], Greek inscriptions have disappeared from Naples and Rhegium. In the West, some of the Greek cities had lost their Hellenic character by the end of the Republic, but others kept Greek institutions into the empire... But those vigorous cities needed Roman government far more than they needed their ancestral Greek culture. ... The loss of Greek identity in the cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily and the virtual loss of the Greek language — at least until reintroduced by Byzantine Greeks fleeing iconoclasts or Slavic invaders — certainly needs further exploration...”

(Source: Ronald Mellor, “Graecia Capta: The Confrontation Between Greek and Roman Identity”, in Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity, 2016, pp. 123-124)

“Strabo tells us that in his time the whole of that country [south of Italy], with the exception of the cities of Tarentum, Rhegium, and Naples, had been completely barbarised, i.e. that it had ceased to use the Greek tongue; and from the absence of Greek inscriptions of the imperial period in that district — as far as the present state of our knowledge justifies us in speaking on the subject — we may conclude that that language became extinct there within the first, or at the utmost the second, century after Christ. From that period onward no considerable influx of Greeks into Italy took place until the outbreak of iconoclasm in the Eastern empire in the eighth century [AD].”

(Source: H. F. Tozer, “The Greek-Speaking Population of Southern Italy”, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 10, 1889, p. 38)

“In the time of Cassiodorus, just as in the time of St. Gregory [the Great], Bruttium is a purely Latin country, and there is no evidence to suggest the continued use of Greek at a time in which it could still be observed in Sicily. Since the end of the Roman Empire, only Latin inscriptions can be found in Taranto; and it is now a generally recognized fact that in ancient Magna Graecia, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, not a single trace of the Hellenic language and culture remained. If Hellenism later regained a foothold in this ancient region, it is solely due to Byzantine influence...”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Giulio Gay, L'Italia meridionale e l'impero bizantino, p. 10)

“Historically, the unanimous agreement of all texts and all inscriptions establishes — leaving no room for doubt — that in that part [of Southern Italy] which was formerly called Magna Graecia the tradition of Hellenism had been absolutely interrupted in the first centuries of the Christian era. Already Strabo, who had traveled through this district, attests that in his time Neapolis, Rhegion and Taranto were the only cities that still resisted Latinization, or, to repeat his term, ‘barbarization'; everywhere then Greek had given way to Latin, as Roman customs had replaced Hellenic ones. The only three ramparts of Hellenism which he still pointed to were all extinguished during the Empire; for each of these cities the date in which they were definitively Latinized can be fixed. When the Christian Church was established in Southern Italy, it occurred under the direct action and supremacy of the Holy See and therefore, like it, the Church was Latin. In order for the Greek language and culture to reestablish itself again, it had to make a new conquest [under the Byzantines]... and this took place after an interval of at least five hundred years, during which the country had been wholly and exclusively Latin.”

(Source: Translated from the Italian of François Lenormant, La Magna Grecia, paesaggi e storia, vol. 2, 1976, pp. 367-368)

“It is natural that a city in such conditions under Rome would be Latinized eventually. ... And in light of what is affirmed by Procopius in general about Magna Graecia in Justinian's day — which he calls a Latin country, just like the region of Samnium —, and by Cassiodorus in particular who, living in Bruttium, calls the Latin language “patrius sermo” (mother tongue), without delimitation or exclusion of any kind, while he defines Regium as a flourishing Roman municipality —, I compared the titles of Regium during the period of the Late Empire and, far from being Greek, they are all written in the Latin language. ...it ought to be considered valid confirmation of the city's general passage from the Greek language to Latin, which had already taken place in Regium by the Late Imperial age. ...it was only [following the conquest of the Byzantines, after the end of the 7th century AD] that the Greek language and Greek liturgical rite was reintroduced in Bruttium... What I expounded upon... does not seem to have sufficiently attracted the attention of scholars specializing in the field of linguistics, namely the learned and acute author Rohlfs...” 

(Source: Translated from the Italian of Nicola Putorti, “I romani in Regium Julium”, in Atti del Congresso nazionale studi romani, 1929, pp. 297-299)

See also:

• Demographics of Pre-Roman Southern Italy
• Demographics of Pre-Roman Sicily
• The Myth of Hellenic Continuity in Southern Italy
• New study on the impact of ancient Hellenic colonization in Southern Italy: Rathmann et al. (2019)