TOURING THE MODERN MAGNA GRECIA

TOURING THE MODERN MAGNA GRECIA

ETWINNING 2018-2019

This tourist guide is the product of the etwinning project “Touring the Modern Magna Grecia “ year 2018-2019 .

What you see is the result of the combined and hard work of the students and the teachers participating in this project .

Liceo scientifico statale "G. Berto" Vibo Valentia, ITALY

Experimen tal High School of University of Patras, GREECE

6th Junior High School of Larisa (6o Gymnasio Larisas), GREECE

B' Arsakeio Tositseio Junior High School in Ekali , GREECE

ISISS G.B.Novelli Marcianise (Caserta), ITALY

OUR ETWINNING CERTIFICATE

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Greeks began to settle in Southern Italy in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, exporting their culture, which would later influence the Roman world. They colonized the coastal areas of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily.

The Romans called the area “Magna Grecia� - Great Greece.

The reasons for colonization : The reasons for colonisation had to do with the demographic explosion of this period, the development of the emporium, the need for a secure supply of raw materials, but also with the emerging politics of the period which drove sections of the population into exile.

CONTENTS CAMPANIA……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………6 Colony of Pithacusae…………………………………………………………………………………………………….……….7 Colony of Cumae………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..9

Colony of Neapolis ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...11 Colony of Velia …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13 Colony of Paestum……………………………………………………………………………………………………….……….15 APULIA…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..17 Colony of Tarentum……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….18 Colony of Heraclea ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...21 CALABRIA………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..22 Colony of Locri …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...23 Colony of Hipponion………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….24

Colony of Rhegium …………………………..……………………………………………………………………………..….28 Colony of Croton ……………………..……………………………………………………………………………………...…33 Colony of Thurii …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...36 BASILICATA ……………………..………………………………………………………………………………………………...37

Colony of Metapontum ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..38 SICILY ……………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…39 Colony of Syracuses ……………………..…………………………………………………………………...………………40 Colony of Selinus ……………………..……………………………………………………………..…………………………45 Colony of Himera ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...49 Colony of Naxus ……………………..…………………………………………………………………………………...………50 Colony of Agrigento ……………………..………………………………………………………………………………....…51 Colony of Gela ……………………..…………………………………………………………………………………………...55 Colony of Sybaris ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..57 City of Taormina ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..58 GRECO AND GRIKO……………………..………………………………………………………………………………………..60 GRIKO DISHES……………………..………………………………………………………………………………………………..61 GRIKO MODERN WRITERS…………………..………………………………………………………………………………..62

CAMPANIA

COLONY OF PITHACUSAE

The first Greek colony in Italy was Pithecusae (current Ischia). It was founded by Euboean Greeks at the beginning of the eight century. Pithecusae was one of few examples of Greek emporium colony, but the colonisation of South Italy — particularly the shores of Campania — started from Pithecusae.

Around 770BC, the island that we know today as Ischia was settled by colonisers from the Greek island of Euboea. The Euboeans used the island for trade with the Etruscans on today's Italian mainland.

The first name given to the island was Pithecusae and there are several theories as to why this name was chosen. Folklore suggests that the island was named after the ancient Greek word "Pithekos", meaning "Monkey", due to a belief that the island was inhabited by the animals at the time. However, most modern theologians will attest that the name of the island in fact derives from the ancient Greek word "Pithos", which is a type of terracotta jug that the Euboeans produced and traded with the Etruscans.

Greek artefacts at Villa

The acropolis of Monte Vico on the North-Western part of the island was the place that the Euboean's chose to make their first settlement, probably due to the natural harbour which allowed for successful trading and offered security from would-be invaders. Archeological digs around the area have recovered artefacts from the Bronze, Mycenaean and Iron ages and it is estimated that at its peak, Pithecusae was home to around 10,000 inhabitants.

Of all the artefacts found on the island, there is no doubt that the most important was "Nestor's Cup". The cup, made of clay was found during an excavation of a tomb on the island in 1954. The cup is inscribed with the Euboean alphabet and is one of the most important archeological finds that attests to poetry of the time with its reference to "The Iliad". The inscription on the cup reads - "This is Nestor's cup from which it is pleasant to drink, but the one who drinks form this cup will suddenly fall in love with Aphrodite and her beautiful crown".

Archaeologists have found a great variety of pottery imported from different regions of Greece: Corinth, Euboea, Athens, Rhodes and others yet to be identified. Importantly, Pithecusan pottery is found elsewhere in the Mediterranean, including North Africa, Spain, southern France and the middle east, as well as in many Italian regions: Apulia, Calabria, Sardinia, Etruria, and Latium. Workshops for the working of iron have also been found. Also, the Pithecusans worked gold and silver and minted coins.

Nestor’s cup

ISLAND OF ISCHIA The volcanic island of Ischia is located about 17 miles to the southwest of Naples, Italy, on the western edge of the Gulf of Naples.

Its volcanic soils are fertile, and the wine, called Epomeo, that is produced on Ischia is famous. Wheat, olive oil, and citrus fruits are also economically important. The clay of Ischia is believed to have been used by the ancient potteries of Cumae and Puteoli (Pozzuoli).

Well known for its mild climate, picturesque scenery, and numerous thermal mineral springs, Ischia is much frequented as a health and vacation resort.

Ischia Prehistory Ischia is of volcanic origin and linked in classical mythology to Typhon, (Tifeo or Tifone), the monstrous son of Gaea and Tartarus. As the husband of Echidna, Typhon fathered many monsters, including the dog Cerberus, Hydra, Chimaera, Orthus, Sphinx, the Nemean lion and vultures. He was one of several personifications of volcanism since flame gushed from his mouth (in addition to having a hundred dragon heads under his arms and coils of vipers under his thighs etc). This giant rebelled against Zeus and came close to winning. At one point, Typhon managed to cut through the sinews of Zeus' hands and feet so that Zeus couldn't use his thunderbolts. Zeus' son Hermes helped him out on this occasion and Typhon was finally killed by Zeus and buried under what is now Mount Etna in Sicily. Another version has him buried at the foot of the island of Pithecusae (Greek Pithekoussai), today's Ischia, erupting flames and boiling water, and causing earthquakes by his movements.

Neolithic materials are sporadic and isolated on Ischia. The most important archaeological finds come from the locality of Cilento. Together with some ceramic fragments, archaeologists have found terracotta weights for fishing nets and a few stone tools, in particular flint and obsidian knife blades and residual tool-making flakes. During the first half of 8th century B.C. and after an eruption, the village that existed from the Bronze Age until the First Iron Age on the Hill of Castiglione, between Porto d'Ischia and Casamicciola was completely abandoned.

COLONY OF CUMAE

Cumae is the oldest and most distant Greek colony from the motherland. It is estimated that the date of its foundation is 740 BC. at the hands of settlers from Chalcis. In a short time the center expanded into neighboring territories, imposing its dominance on almost the entire Campania coast and also culturally influencing neighboring peoples.

The ancient Greek city of Cumae is the oldest colony throughout the West. It was settled after the occupation of Ischia island. Closely linked to the myth of the Sibylla Cumana, it was a rich and prestigious center in the ancient world: Greek culture spread throughout the Italian peninsula from here carrying calciter alphabet which therefore was taken in by Etruscans and Latins.

Relatively little is known about ancient Cuma, the first Greek western colony founded in the second half of the 8th century B.C., apart from what can be learned from the Greek vases removed from its necropolises in the 19th century.

In the 20th century excavations centered mainly on the Acropolis, where it is possible to visit two large Greek temples, which were converted into churches in the Middle Ages.

The Acropolis is also home to the so-called ‘Cave of the Sibyl’, the most famous monument in Cuma.

According to Virgil, it was here that the Sibyl had given the prophecy to Aeneas, the Trojan hero, son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphroditis, that in Roman mythology is considered the ancestor of Romulus and Remus.

The Sibylline Books, containing the prophecies that the highest magistrates of the Roman state would consult in the most difficult days of the Republic, are said to have come from Cuma, and the priestesses of the cult of Demeter/Ceres, who followed ancient rituals, were also said to have come from here.

THE CAVE OF THE SIBYL The Cave of the Sibyl is a long tunnel dug into the rock, which runs straight until it reaches a space that acts as a vestibule to room with three niches.

The cave has many corridors of what once was a sophisticated circuitry of stairs and passageways. Now they are no longer connected, but instead end in dirt or water.

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COLONY OF CUMAE Going back down the main tunnel, at the very end a vast staircase leads to another cavern. This may have been a Roman restaurant, bathhouse. A body of water has a wooden plank where visitors cross to see the caverns in which the Sibyl bathed.

THE SIBYL OF CUMAE Both the Greek and the Romans have their own ways of telling the future. The Greeks have oracles and the Romans have sibyls. The most famous oracle was the Oracle of Delphi, and the most famous sibyl was the Sibyl of Cumae both of which demonstrate similarities and differences.

The main similarity between the Sibyl of Cumae and the Oracle of Delphi is the fact that women were chosen by gods to be blessed with prophetic abilities.

However, the Oracle of Delphi and the Sibyl of Cumae share a couple of differences. The former spoke prophecies out loud, whereas the latter wrote hers in books.

Most people could not interpret the prophecies spoken by the oracle, which were often incorrect, but they could interpret those in riddles, which were more accurate.

The Cumaean Sibyl was located in a Greek colony near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess.

There were many sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world, however, the cave of Sybil in Naples was the most famous among the Romans.

COLONY OF NEAPOLIS

The Greek settlement of Partenope was just part of the broader colonization of Southern Italy by the Greeks during the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. Driven from their own lands by overcrowding and famine, the harshness of their own terrain, and the desire to create new trade routes, the Greeks set out in search of better shores. Heading east into the Ionian Sea and across the Straits of Messina into the Thyrrenian Sea, they founded colonies all over the area that roughly corresponds to the boot of Italy.

From as far north as Cumae to as far south as Sicily and the Aeolian Islands, and around the boot to Bari, these colonies became known as Magna Graecia – the Latin for Greater Greece.

With its mild climate, natural beauty, excellent sea ports, and abundance of fertile volcanic soil in the Campanian fields, the Greeks found the area around the Bay of Naples particularly suited to their needs. The perfect location to establish military and commercial trade ports like the settlement of Partenope.

At the same time however, these blessings would also be the region’s curse and would put Naples directly at the center of competing interests for nearly 3000 years. The first battles for control of Partenope would foretell the future, one of colonizers and conquerors who would vie for control of Naples and the fertile Campanian fields well into the 19th century CE. The early battles pitted the Greeks from Cumae against the Etruscans. An indigenous civilization, the Etruscans had major strongholds in the Po Valley and Tuscany, Latium – the area around Rome, and in the “hinterlands” of Campania where their Campanian capital was at Capua. Both seeking to expand their territories around the Bay of Naples, the Etruscans would defeat the Cumaens in a battle for the terriroty in 525 BCE. But with the aid of the Syracusians, the Cumeans defeated the Etruscans in 474 BCE and regained control of the region. Free to continue their expansion, the Cumeans quickly established a new city just east of Partenope in 470 BCE. They called it Neapolis from the Greek “Nea” for new and “polis” for “city-state” or the New City. Partenope thus became the “old city” or Paleopolis.

COLONY OF NEAPOLIS

Thanks to an influx of Greeks from Athens, Pithecusa and Chalcis, Neapolis grew quickly and by 450 BCE it had well surpassed Partenope, which was eventually abandoned. A major maritime center between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Neapolis became one of the richest in the Mediterranean and an important center of the Hellenistic culture that was spreading throughout Magna Graecia. Modernizing the entire region, the Greeks introduced new technologies, literacy, art, architecture, philosophy, and urban planning principles that were much more advanced than those of the Etruscans and Italic peoples.

Their legacy included two schools of philosophy in Magna Graecia, the Heliatic – medicine and the Pythagorean – mathematics. They introduced their alphabet to the Etruscans and Italic peoples. They imported grapes and olives. And, they built some of the most monumental structures in history. Though not as plentiful as the remains from the Roman period that would follow, traces of these can be found all over the Campania region today.

In Naples, the most important example of Magna Graecia by far is the urban layout of the city, which still exists today. Owed to the Greek Hippodamus of Miletos, the father of urban planning, the city was laid out in a grid pattern, with east-west oriented streets intersected at right angles by north-south oriented streets .

One of the best preserved examples of a Hippodamus plan in the Mediterranean, it is the foundation upon which all other Neapolitan civilizations have developed. But unlike in Rome where the remains of its ancient civilizations are cordoned off, in Naples they have been incorporated into the fabric of the city, something that makes Naples highly unique. And it is due in part to this stratification and in part to the Hippodamus Plan, that in 1995 the Historic Center of Naples became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

HIPPODAMUS OF MILETUS Hippodamus of Miletus (498 – 408 BC) was an ancient Greek architect, urban planner, physician, mathematician, meteorologist and philosopher, who is considered to be "the father of European urban planning", the namesake of the "Hippodamian Plan" (grid plan) of city layout.

Hippodamus was born in Miletus and lived during the 5th century BC, on the spring of the Ancient Greece classical epoch.

COLONY OF ELEA Elea or Velia was the Roman name of an ancient city of Magna Graecia on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was founded by Greeks from Phocaea as Hyele around 538–535 BC. The name later changed to Ele and then Elea before it became known by its current Latin and Italian name during the Roman era. Its ruins are located in the Cilento region near the modern village Velia, which was named after the ancient city. The village is a frazione of the comune Ascea in the Province of Salerno, Campania, Italy.

Velia was an ancient city of the so-called Magna Graecia (the part of Southern with Greek colonies such Syracuse), on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was founded by Greeks from Phocaea around 538–535 BC. The modern village of Velia, named after the ancient city, is part of the town of Ascea in the Province of Salerno.

THE ACROPLIS OF ELEA The site of the acropolis of ancient Elea was once a promontory called Castello a Mare, meaning "castle on the sea" in Italian. It now lies inland and was renamed to Castellammare della Bruca in the Middle Ages.

The Acropolis of Elea has a variety of buildings on it. One of them is this medieval tower, built over a Greek church. It was part of a castle, but only short sections of walls remain. There is also a small theater that dates back to the 3rd century BC. and just down the spur there’s another little museum. Just below the acropolis are the remains of the site’s oldest houses. A bit down the hill are the thermal baths and some frescoed buildings.

The Porta Rosa road was the main street of Elea

The city was known for being the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, as well as the Eleatic school of which they were a part.

PARMENIDES OF ELEA Parmenides (c. 485 BCE) of Elea was a Greek philosopher from the colony of Elea in southern Italy. He is known as the founder of the Eleatic School of philosophy which taught a strict Monistic view of reality. Philosophical Monism is the belief that all of the sensible world is of one, basic, substance and being, un-created and indestructible.

ZENO OF ELEA Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) was an important PreSocratic Greek philosopher from the Greek colony of Eleain southern Italy. He was a prominent member of the Eleatic School of anParmenid cient Greek philosophy, which had been founded by Parmenides, es of Elea and he subscribed to and defended the Monist beliefs of Parmenides.

Arguably he did not really attempt to add anything positive to the teachings of his master, Parmenides, and he is best known today for his paradoxes of motion.

But Aristotlehas called him the inventor of the dialectic, and no less a logician and historian who has laid the foundations of modern Logic.

COLONY OF PAESTUM Paestum is home to three magnificent Doric temples, which are thought to be dedicated to the city's namesake Poseidon (known to the Romans as Neptune), Hera and Ceres. The temples of Neptune and Hera are located next to each other at the southern end of the site, while the smaller Temple of Ceres is at the northern end.

THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON The Temple of Poseidon is the biggest in the ancient Polis built around the middle of the fifth century B.C., a period in which there was an increased flowering of the centre. The temple, belonging to the so-called strict Greek art, stands out for the great imposingness of the architectonic elements that give a majestic aspect.

The massive shape of the external columns , about nine metres high, dominate in the front view and strikes the attention of the observer. Today, it shows up with an extraordinarily whole architecture, that makes it absolutely one of the best preserved Greek temples. The temple is an imposing hexastyle peripteral (with six columns on the two fronts) of Doric order that rises on a three steps crepidine (crepidoma). The building is turned towards East, in a perfect parallel position to the other two Greek temples of Paestum.

The interior consists of a naos (cell), with Views of the Basilica and of the Temple to Neptune symmetrical pronaos and opisthodomos, both framed by two columns, aligned with the two central of the fronts, to which match two colonnades that cross the cell, dividing it into three naves. These colonnades are composed of seven Doric columns each, positioned on two overlapping orders, featured by an uninterrupted thinning of the stem from the bottom to the top. Immediately after the hall of the cell, there were two rooms on the side.

Temple to Ceres

COLONY OF PAESTUM

TEMPLE OF HERA

The temple of Hera

at the bottom.

The temple of Hera dates to 550 BC, measuring 24.5m x 53.5m and it is built of local limestone It is a typical peripteral temple with two long sides of 18 columns each and two narrow sides of 9 columns each. Amazingly enough all 50 columns have survived.

Their characteristic is the optical illusion called entasis which means the columns curve in slightly at the top and lean in slightly

The temple is divided in a pronaos, the naos (cella) and an opisthodomos. Although the outer columns are of the Doric order those of the inner pronaos are of the Ionic.

Nothing of the original roof made with wood and tiles remains nowadays while numerous fragments of terracotta decorations from nearby tombs are exhibited in the local archaeological museum. In front of the temple there was an altar where people left their offerings for the goddess of fertility and childbirth.

TEMPLE OF ATHINA The Temple of Ceres (or Athena) was built in c.500 BC in a transitional style between Ionic and early Doric. It was later used as a Christian church, as indicated by three Christian tombs discovered in the floor. (There was also a new Christian church built in Paestum in the 5th century, which still stands today.)

The temple of Athina

ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF PAESTUM The museum of Paestum is one of Italy's most important archeological museums. It contains one of the most valuable collections of sculptures of southern Italy, along with the amazing funerary paintings of the Lucano period (4th century B.C.). Among these there is the so-called "Tomba del Tuffatore" (Tomb of the Diver), an exceptional example of early Greek painting tradition, and the only one of its kind. It depicts a man in mid-air as he dives into the waves below, symbolic of man's passage from life to death. It is astoundingly well-preserved and beautifully painted.

Tomb of the diver

PUGLIA

COLONY OF TARENTUM

Tarentum (Sparta, 706 BCE) blessed with the best harbour on the southern coast, the presence of Tarentine coins and goods across southern Italy are testimony to the city’s prosperity and trade network.

Tarentum (Taras, modern Taranto), located on the southern coast of Apulia, Italy, was a Greek and then Roman city. Controlling a large area of Magna Graecia and heading the Italiote League, Tarentum, with its excellent harbour, was a strategically significant city throughout antiquity. Thus, it would play a pivotal role in the wars between Pyrrhus and Rome in the 3rd century BCE and again during the Second Punic War when Hannibal occupied southern Italy.

The city of Taranto sits on the sea and retains relics of its rich and glorious past as a maritime power. Founded by Greeks from Sparta in the 8th century BC, it was the richest colony of Magna Grecia, its prosperity owing to its far-reaching trade market. Its ships sailed the seven seas and transported the areas prized fabrics such as linen and purple to the entire known world. It also exported its ideas, propogated by the school of philosophy from Pythagoras.

During the time of the Greeks, the ancient city was situated on a peninsula, where the acropolis and civic buildings were constructed.

Since then the sea rose and the historic center now rests on an island, connected to the main city by a bridge .While little remains today of ancient Tarentum's buildings, the city’s museum boasts one of the largest collections of Greek pottery in the world and has many fine bronzes, gold jewellery and floor mosaics.

DORIC TEMPLE OF POSEIDON IN PIAZZA CASTELLO

Doric columns of the Temple of Poseidon

The Temple of Poseidon (or the Doric Temple) is a peripteral Doric temple located in the modern piazza Castello in the historic centre of Taranto, Italy. It is the oldest temple in Magna Graecia and the only Greek religious structure still visible in the old town of Taranto. The temple dates to the first quarter of the sixth century BC. It fell into ruin in the Middle Ages and parts of it were reused in the construction of other buildings.

MarTA – NATIONALARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF TARENTUM One of the most important museums in Magna Grecia territory is the National Archeological Museum of Taranto.

Known as “MarTA,” the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, boasts one of Italy's most important archeological collections. Housing the museum is the former Convent of San Pasquale di Babylon, near the Public Garden on Piazza Garibaldi.

The rooms on the mezzanine floor are dedicated to archaeology, with over two hundred thousand artefacts, dating from Prehistoric times to the Middle Ages - the visitors' route follows the collection's chronological order, starting from the 5th millennium B.C. The first meeting between the indigenous Iapygian population and the Aegean world predates Sparta’s colonization of the Gulf of Taranto, and visitors can admire everyday objects relating to worship and funerary rituals in Greek Taranto.

The changes brought about by the arrival of the Romans reveal themselves in a series of sculptures and terracotta figurines, as well as utensils and gold objects of every type. Don’t miss the incredible Ori di Taranto (Golden Treasure of Taranto), a stunning collection of Hellenicera gold artwork, with many grave goods.

COINAGE IN TARENTUM The various historical phases of the city, which had played a remarkable role in Magna Graecia, are evidenced by ancient coins.

Among the towns of Puglia that minted coins in ancient times, Tarentum (the presentday Taranto) is certainly the first and the most important one.

Its coinage started later than in other cities of Magna Graecia. It is characterized by a conspicuous silver production (from about 510 to 209 BC), followed by minting in gold (during the period of the military leaders: second half of the 4th / beginning of the 3rd century BC) and in bronze (3rd century BC). The most ancient phase, with the incuse technique (on the obverse the effigy is in relief, on the reverse engraved), has two coinage types: a kneeling male figure with lyre and a flower (perhaps Apollo Hayakinthios); or a youth astride a dolphin (interpreted as either the oikistes Phalantus – the founder of Tarentum –, the eponymous hero Taras, or the river divinity with the same name).

Archytas of Tarentum

Archytas of Tarentum lived in the first half of the fourth century BCE. He was a mathematician and a philosopher in the Pythagorean tradition. He is famous for having sent a ship in 361 BCE to rescue Plato from Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse. Archytas is unique among ancient philosophers for his success in the political sphere as he was elected general seven consecutive times in a democratically governed Tarentum.

Archytas may have drowned in a shipwreck in the sea of Mattinata, where his body lay unburied on the shore until a sailor humanely cast a handful of sand on it. Otherwise, he would have had to wander on this side of the Styx for a hundred years, such the virtue of a little dust, munera pulveris, as Horace calls it in Ode 1.28 on which this information on his death is based. The poem, however, is difficult to interpret and it is not certain that the shipwrecked and Archytas are in fact the same person.

He was allegedly undefeated as a general, in Tarentine campaigns against their southern Italian neighbors. The Seventh Letter of Plato asserts that Archytas attempted to rescue Plato during his difficulties with Dionysius II of Syracuse. In his public career, Archytas had a reputation for virtue as well as efficacy. Some scholars have argued that Archytas may have served as one model for Plato's philosopher king, and that he influenced Plato's political philosophy as expressed in The Republic.

Archytas solved for the first time one of the most celebrated problems in ancient mathematics: the duplication of the cube.

One version of the problem reports that the habitants of the island of Delos were commanded by the god to build an altar double the size of the current altar, that had a cube shape.

The problem was to determine the length of the side on which to build a cube of double the volume. Archytas's solution requires one to envision the intersection of two lines drawn on the surface of a semicylinder one by a rotating semicircle and one by a rotating triangle.

COLONY OF HERACLEA

Greek colony of Heraclea was founded by Tarentum and Thourioi in the 433 BC on the remains of a previous Greek colony called Siris. City's political status increased so much that in the 44 BC it even hosted an important meeting of Southern populations league.

At the beginning of the war between Rome and Tarentum in the 280 BC Heraclea had a popular victory, the so called Battle of Heraclea, when Pyrrhus took down Romans using geared elephants.

The city joined Roman Republic confederation in the 272 BC. Heraclea tables, one of the main evidence of Magna Graecia (Greater Greece), date back to this very year. Then the city was plundered by popular leaders as Hannibal and Spartacus loosing its role of importance.

THE TABLETS OF HERACLEA The Heraclean Tablets were bronze tablets found a short distance from the site of Heraclea Lucania, which was an ancient city of Magna Graecia. They are significant for the study of Roman Law. The Heraclean Tablets are one of the major documents for the knowledge of Magna Graecia. In them we find two Greek inscriptions from the 4th century BC engraved talking about the delimitation and location of land in the sanctuaries of Dionysus and Athena. On the other side of the plates was engraved a long Latin inscription relating to the basic municipal regulations of Heraclea which is part of the Lex lulia Municipalis, which is an ancient Roman law that was introduced by Julius Caesar.

According to historians and archeologists the tablets of Heraclea are because we are able to learn, from them, some characteristics of the Roman civilization and Head of Athena with inscription how the ancient ΗΡΑΚΛΗΙΩΝ colonies were organized.

The flourishing state of the arts in the Lucanian Heraclea (in common with most of the neighbouring cities of Magna Graecia) is attested by the beauty and variety of its coins, some of which may deservedly be reckoned among the choicest specimens of Greek art; while their number sufficiently proves the opulence and commercial activity of the city to which they belong.

CALABRIA

COLONY OF LOCRI

The city is renowned for the important archaeological area of Epizephyrian Locris, located near the new town and defined as the pillar of Calabrian archaeology. Zaleucus, the first lawgiver in the Western world, and Nossi, the poet known for her pleasing love poems, were both born in Lokroi. The town was a Greek colony founded at the end of the 8th century by a group of Greek refugees who settled on the coast. It was one of the most important Magna Graecia cities in Calabria. The splendid colony of Epizephyrian Locris was founded by Greek colonists between the 8th-and 7th century on a flatland along the Ionian coast. It was among the main towns that actively participated in the troubled political and artistic life of the Magna Graecia, and it survived during the Roman and Late Ancient periods, until Arab raids and malaria forced the population to leave.

NOSSIDE Nosside or Nossis was a Hellenistic Greek poet from Epizephyrian Locris in southern Italy. She seems to have been active in the early third century B.C.E. as she wrote an epitaph for the Hellenistic dramatist Rhinthon. She primarily wrote epigrams for religious dedications and epitaphs.

She has been put amongst the nine earthly Muses (as opposed to the nine celestial Muses) and she is considered the most famous and respected poetess of the Greek antiquity .

Nossis is one of the best preserved Greek women poets, with twelve epigrams attributed to her preserved as part of the Greek Anthology, the majority of which are about women. “Such women with divine tongue raised with hymns the Helicon and (so did) the peak of the Macedonian Pieria, Praxilla, Moero, the mouth of Anyte, the female Homer, Sappho jewel of Lesbos' women by the beautiful hair, Erinna, the famous Telesilla and you, Corinna, who sang the fearsome shield of Athena, Nossis by the soothing female voice and the sweet song of Myrtis, all authors of immortal texts.

Nine Muses (generated) the great Uranus, and also nine

by Gaia generated, everlasting joy of mortals. �

(Antipater of Thessalonica, Palatine Anthology IX, 26)

COLONY OF HIPPONION

THE ORIGINS OF THE NAME Over the course of its thousand-year history, Vibo Valentia has had different names, which correspond to the evolution of the city in historical times: -Veip or Veipone, pre-Hellenic settlement;

-Hipponion, name of the Greek colony; -Vibo Valentia in the Roman period; -Monteleone from the Swabian period to the Unification of Italy -Monteleone di Calabria until 1928 It originated as the ancient Greek town of Hipponion and was praised in the 2nd century BC by the Roman statesman and author Cicero. There is a museum of Greek antiquities, and ruined Greek walls can be seen outside the town. Rebuilt in the 13th century after the destruction by the Arabs, Vibo Valentia was damaged by earthquakes in 1783 and 1905.

Notable ancient palaces and churches include San Michele's church, the Baroque church Collegiata di San Leone Luca, and a 13th-century Norman castle used by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II. Monteleone was an earlier name of the town .

Scrimbia is an area of the city of Vibo Valentia, near the Duomo, where many archaeological finds have been found. A nice legend, tells the story of the nymph "Scrimbia�, who was a young girl unable to settle in peace because of the death of the young lover. She cried him uninterruptedly. The gods, saddened and moved by the continuous crying, turned it into a source of fresh and abundant water to water the whole city ".

A fountain was built in his honor, of which only a few pieces remain, badly placed in an arid concrete wall located in Via A. De Gasperi.

The colony of Hoppinion is a city of Magna Greece.

Four kilometers from the coast, near Vibo Valentia, are the remains of the ancient Locrian colony of Hipponion, built near a former indigenous center called Veipo.

Hipponion was a colony of Locri Epizefiri founded at the end of the 7th century BC together with Medma, to acquire new arable land and secure a commercial outlet on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The survey of the Hipponion necropolis was carried out in several stages because it took place in an unscheduled but occasional manner, in relation to the enormous building expansion that affected those years. The western sector of the modern settlement where the Greek necropolis was found is located inside the walls surrounding Hipponion for defensive reasons; this position of the necropolis (inside the city wall) for a Greek polis is an exception that contrasts with the use in the Greek world of burying the dead outside the walls. The study of chronological data led to the following reconstruction: up to the 4th century A.C. the necropolis was located outside the walls, but from the fourth century onwards the necropolis moved to the locality Piercastello -acquari, the walls were enlarged and the old necropolis, now out of use, was incorporated into the walls. The burials investigated are about a thousand among which a very important is the number 19 in which was found on the chest of the deceased a thin sheet of gold folded on itself on which there is engraved a text on sixteen lines, which from a series of instructions to the deceased, regarding the behavior to be held once in the afterlife.

These were very thin Golden pieces of foil either folder or rolled and placed in the mouth or in the hands of a dead person. Their purpose was to confirm the identity and the purity of the person allowing him to move easily on his way to paradise. These Golden tablets were engraved with ritual texts and their purpose was to protect with ritual texts from any evils that might haunt them along the way .

These tablets date from the fourth and third centuries BC and have most often been discovered in gravesites. Approximately 40 of them have been unearthed across the Greek speaking Mediterranean, from the island of Crete to the mainland of Thessaly, in Northern Greece and ‘’MAGNA GRECIA’’, a coastal area in the Southern Italy which was colonized by the ancient Greek.

COLONY OF RHEGIUM

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Born: c. 575 B.C.E. Samos, Greece (SAMIAN)

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Died: c. 495 B.C.E. Metapontum

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Studied in Greece

 He was philosopher, scientist, mathematician, religious teacher and of course an innovative sculptor-PANEPISTIMONAS ( Greek word which means that a person knows has a great grasp of many scientific fields) 

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 Pythagoras and his followers became politically powerful in Croton and had rivals. There is a claim that he was exiled by them!  Non-conformist philosopher; he was not searching for truth as his contemporaries did, but deemed that the main point was the relationship of all life something that is known as Pythagoreanism  Another philosophical attribution is the dualism (that life is controlled by opposite forces)-good and bad+ darkness and light. This was connected with the creation of the world.  His cosmology is that the Earth is a sphere which circles the center of the universe  Most known for Pythagorean theorem. Other extensions to mathematical knowledge are "Tetractys of the Decad" and Hypotenuse

 Pythagoras developed a school of thought that accepted the passage of the soul into another body and was proponent of metempsychosis which claims that the soul never dies and is destined to a cycle of rebirths until it is able to free itself from the cycle through the purity of its life.

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They statues were mainly of athletes who have won in Olympic running contest

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He was trained in Rhegium by Klearchos of Rhegium

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Characterized as bronze sculptor due to the fact that many of his statues are made of bronze

 Pythagoras was not only an innovative philosopher but also an unconventional sculptor as he made the transition between the archaic and the classical styles  His greatest innovation was the representation of hair, veins, nerves and muscles at his artefacts 

Amazing is the fact that he was able to represent the pain in a statue

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The first who aimed at rhythm and symmetry in sculpture

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Many people have doubted his work because there is no verification of it

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Most known artifact is Apollo killing the Python at Delphi

Rhegium is an ancient city, identified in the location of modern-day Reggio Calabria,located in southern Italy located opposite of the city of Messina on the island of Sicily. Rhegium is also named by the early Christian Paul on one of his travelling journeys. Today, the modern-day city of Reggio has over 10,000 inhabitants.

The origins of the name Rhegium is in question, as two of our ancient sources contradict each other on this issue. According to Aeschylus, the name Rhegium derives from the Greek word meaning “to rend, split, break,” however, Strabo claims that the term derives from the Latin word 'royal' (regium).

The spelling is disrupted and complicated by naive ancient ideas of etymology.

The Greeks, thinking of Sicily as “broken” from Italy by the seven-mile-wide Messina strait, derived the word from rhegnumi—to break. Italians favored the root “reg-” meaning “royal.” Hence the “h” or the absence of it. The name is prob. pre-Greek, and if one derivation is to be preferred to the other the Latin or Italian origin of the word is the more likely.

The town, at any rate, was a Greek colony on the toe of the Italian peninsula opposite Messana, and was founded in 720 b.c.by Chalcis with a strong infusion of citizens from Messenia, a colony itself only a few years older.

COINS OF RHEGIUM

The monetary issues of Rhegion have not been continuous during the course of its long history. The city has beaten money at the end of the archaic period, for almost the whole classical age.

•Then entered in the Roman empire, after the defeat of Hannibal, Rhegion ceases to produce money.

•During the Byzantine period, reopened the mint and and coins gold and bronze coins but after a short time, disastrous events make the mint of Rhegium closed.

Anassila, tyrant of Rhegium, to celebrate his victory at the Olympics in 480 BC coins the “Anaxilas”.

•The first monetary series of Rhegium is an engraved one: they represent a bull with a human face kneeling and over it a larva of cicada. It is called “Bull Androprosopus”.

HISTORY OF RHEGIUM

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 The colony of Rhegium was founded by the Greek inhabitants of Chalkis in the 8th century B.C. 

It is one of the oldest Greek colonies in Italy

 At first, it was an ally of Athens, but after their loss in the Peloponnesian War, Rhegium was under the control of the Syracusans.

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 After 271 BC Rhegium established itself as an independent city and a strong ally of Rome.

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In the 18th century, Regium was incorporated in the kingdom of Italy

This area had always had lots of seismic activity , so Rhegium suffered from lots of earthquakes, the most destructive in 1908 with numerous human casualties.

During World War, Rhegium was captured by the British Reggio Calabria recovered after the war, suffered various political riots (some had to do with the mafia)

NECROPOLIS OF RHEGIUM

In archeology, the necropolis is a collection of tombs, arranged in a disorderly way:  The first to be explored was the necropolis of “St. Caterina”.  This necropolis continued to be buried up to the Roman imperial age but probably also beyond.  Another necropolis came to the light at Pentimeli; at that time it was a small town but today is com incorporated in the city.   A frescoed chamber tomb was found inside the necropolis and a Terracotta urn with the shape of foil tubs used for domestic bathrooms.

The term “Necropolis” represents “the city of the dead” where the burials of the members of a community are located.

The necropolis are the cemeteries of antiquity and constitute for the archaeologist one of the main sources of information to rec the social composition in a given territory.

COINS OF RHEGIUM The temple of Concordia is located in Agrigento known as the “Valley of Temples”. Concordia is considered to be the best-preserved temple of the valley and the most magnificent piece of Greek Doric style after the famous monument of Parthenon in Athens. It has a unique structure as it has six columns at the back and the frond and thirteen in the sides. Moreover, the temple includes Greek architecture such as the central room is preceded by a porch.

The building, like the others, faces east and has incredible and brilliant dimensions. Furthermore, the temple dates back to 450-440 B. C. The temple itself was constructed as a symbol of the political harmony of Rome’s citizenry.

Concordia, who was worshipped in the temple, was presented differently, when the temple of Opimius from the late Republic was torn down under Augustus and replaced with a new structure. Again the temple of Concordia became a hopeful vision of the calm in the political domain among the Romans under the reign of the king Augustus and his great family.

Unfortunately, in the wake of the 5th it was believed the temple of Concordia was rebuilt.

Milo of Croton was a 6th-century BC wrestler from Magna Graecian city of Croton. Milo was six-time Olympic victor. He won the boys’ wrestling and thereafter after men’s wrestling titles between 536 and 520 BCE. He also won seven crowns at the Pythian Games at Delphi, ten at the Isthmian Games and nine at the at the Nemean Games. In addition to his athletic victories, Milo is credited by the ancient commentator Diodorus Siculus with leading his fellow citizens to military triumph over neighboring Sybaris in 510 BC . The date of Milo’s death is unknown but according to Strabo and Pausanias, Milo was walking in a forest when he came upon a tree-trunk split with wedges. In what was probably intended as a display of strength, Milo inserted his hands into the cleft rend the tree. The wedges fell from the cleft and the tree closed upon his hands, trapping him. Unable to free himself, wrestler was devoured by wolves.

Pythagoras lived on the Earth about 570-500 B.C. He is known as a Greek philosopher and mathematician.

In the town of Croton in southern Italy, he founded the theological brotherhood, which became widespread with time. The purpose of the Pythagorean school was the ethical renovation of society, purification of religious views, and imparting confidential methods of spiritual development to deserving students. The brotherhood was a monastic community consisting of both men and women, who regarded Pythagoras as an Incarnation of God. The activity of that great School ended due to a massacre perpetrated by primitive people…Politically, it aimed at imposing its exclusive rule upon the entire community.

Religiously, it took over most of the Orphic tenets and practices and combined them with the veneration of the teacher as the prophet of truth and a semi divine being.

THE WAR OF CROTON In the middle of the sixth century B.C. between the"polis"there was a series of

wars to establish the supremancy of Kroton in the Ionian area.In the 525 B.C. there was the first conflict between the confederation of Achaean cities of Kroton,Sybaris and Metaponto against Siri,colony of Calabria.The Sirites then asked for help to the cities of Locri,Tempsa and Cleta.According to Justinus,Epitome of Pompey Trogo's author,Kroton's intent was to expel nonAchaeans from Magna Graecia and reduce them into slaves.The Crotonians followed the Syrians up to their city to sack and destroy it.The booty was divided between Kroton,Metaponto and Sybaris,but the last broke the alliance enriching the wealth of the others.

Kroton wanted to punish the cities that had helped Siri.Therefore it declared war to Locri,who asked for help to Sparta,but was already in other wars and couldn't help them.Locri turned to Castor and Pollux and had another encouragement from Persephone,who urged them to fight.Even Kroton consulted the Oracle of Delphi,but it announced their defeat by divine.So during the battle of Sagra,despite the Kroton's twelve thousand soldiers,Then Kroton decided to punish the city of Tempsa,the siege lasted four months to the end of which it was sacked,destroyed and all its citizens were reduced into slaves.After Tempsa the Kroton's revent broke out against Cleta,but it wasn't destroyed.

Siro and Tempsa had been destroyed,Cleta punished,Locri had won only for the behest of the gods.Now It was Sybaris.

After thirty crotonese anbassadors were frustrated and killed,Kroton sent his soldiers under the guidance of Milone,dressed in the skin of lion and a mace in hand.According to the legend the sybarites used the battle of the trained horses to perform dance moves to the flute,so the crotonates played flutes disorienting the horses.The siege ended with Sybaris at the flames that disappear forever and with the Kroton's definitive victory.

Locri won.

HERA LACINIA SANCTUARY

Along the beautiful coastline, overlooking the sea in the heart of Mediterranean, on the Lacinio promontory, we find the remains of the Hera Lacinia sanctuary. Surrounded by a garden “where everything blooms”, the sanctuary is situated in the archaeological site of Capo Colonna and it is one of the most important symbols of Magna Grecia. Here it stands the last survivor of the 48 columns which supported the roof of the beautiful temple of the goddess Hera Lacinia: the Colonna of Capocolonna. The sanctuary and the temple have been built between the centuries VII-V BCE. Related to the constructions they exist two myths: the first attributes the building to Hercules, son of Zeus and stepson of Hera; instead, as the second myth says, the temple was a gift from Teti to the goddess. The sanctuary has been one of the most important religious places of the colony, infact many pilgrims came from miles around to offer presents to Hera. The sanctuary’s area stretched on the sides of the Sacred Way which leads to the temple, where probabily there was the altar. The temple was composed of four buildings: building A (the temple), building K, building H, building B. The building A is considered the most im-

GOLDEN DIADEM OF HERA LACINIA (protector of herds, health and fertility) from the temple called by the Greeks Heraion Lakinion.

COLONY OF THURII Thurii was a city in Magna Grecia, but now is a city situated in Calabria, on the west coast of Gulf of Taranto.

•Thurii was built in 444 B.C. with Athens’ aid following a project of the architect Ippodamo from Mileto and it’s the only foundation created by Athens in the western Mediterranean.

•The sector called “Parco del Cavallo” is the best evidence of the superimposition of the three cities. Some close diggings found remains of Copia’s houses (a domus with mosaic and triclinium rooms), two wide roads crossing in a right angle (the northsouth one is 13 metres wide, while the east-west one is about 7 metres wide), and house walls from the Thurii Age.

•In the eastern side of the trunk road we find the socalled “Prolungamento Strada” sector, a route system made of perpendicular roads, also used in the Roman city.

•In the most recent Roman period a rich house is immediatly appreciable. It was built on a plan that was realized to stand-

BASILICATA

COLONY OF METAPONTUM

Once, a few kilometers from Matera, the Greeks founded Metaponto, the city where today stands the Temple of Hera and the tavole palatine. The remains of the 6thcentury temple are Metaponto’s most impressive sight. They’re known as the Tavole Palatine (Palatine Tables),since knights, or paladins, are said to have gathered there before heading to the crusades.

This hexastyle peripteral Greek temple was dedicated by the Acheans to Hera because they were devoted to the goddess, being the wife of Zeus. The building was part of an extra-urban sacred aerial connected to the cult of the goddess. The temple, restored in 1961, was initially attributed to the cult of the goddess Athena, but a fragment of a vase found in the course of the 1926 archaeological excavations turned out to be a votive dedicated to the goddess Hera, showing that she was the actual patron of the sanctuary.

When it comes to its architecture, the temple was composed of a central naos, proceded by a pronaos and with an adyton at the rear. Fifteen columns with twenty flutes and doric columns survive. Of these fifteen columns, ten are on the north side and five on the southern side. Originally, there were thirty-two columns. The building has decayed significantly because it was built with local limestone. In the fifth century BC, it had a tiled roof with multi-coloured decoration in the Ionic tradition, with leonine protomes and gargoyles. In fact, remains of the fragments were found near the temple during the 1926 excavations and are now kept at the Museo archeologico nazionale di Metaponto.

SICILY

COLONY OF SYRACUSES

The temple of Apollo (Apollรณnion) is one of the most important monuments of Ortigia, the first that was erected in Syracuse. It was built in the sixth century a. C. and is the oldest Doric temple in Sicily. It was initially a Byzantine church, and then became an Islamic mosque. The remains allow us to understand how the temple was at the beginning.The original structure is a very elongated building surrounded by magnificent columns. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century and especially since the forties the area was excavated to bring to light the remains of the temple. The most important part is at the back of the Greek temples because they were oriented towards the east.

There are testimonies that refer

The end of the tyrants came when the Corithian Timoleon established an oligarchy in 344BC, followed by Agathocles in 317BC who reigned until 288BC. After Agathocles, a period of instability ensued and Syracuse stopped playing an important role in the Mediterranean world, essentially becoming a Roman province.

THE ROMAN AND LATER AGES

In about 200BC, Syracuse became a Roman province ruled by a supreme magistrate.

The Syracusians started talking Latin During 440-535AC, Sicily and Syracuse were captured by Vandals and Ostrogoths

In 535AC, Syracuse became part of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek lan-

COLONY OF SYRACUSES

THE ARCHAIC AGE Archias, a Corinthian aristocrat, founded Syracuse in 734BC. The oldest building from that era in Syracuse is the Temple of Apollo.

The elite of the original settlers was initially ruling the city. They were called “the gamoroi”.

The colony soon expanded in the nearby areas of Acrae (653BC), Casmenae (643BC), Camarina (598BC) and Morgantina (560BC).

The gamoroi were expelled from the city by the tyrants Hippocrates and Gelon (485BC).

During Gelon’s reign, the Carthaginians of West Sicily invaded, but they were defeated at Himera (480BC).

Gelon was succeeded by Hiero (478BC), who defeated an Etruscan invention at Cumae.

Hiero made Syracuse a center of Greek culture, visited by poets like Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides and Aeschylus.

THE DEMOCRATIC AGE After Hiero’s death and the expulsion of his successor, Thrasybulus, (467BC), Syracuse became a democracy.

From 427 to 413BC the Athenians attacked Sicily twice, but the Sicilians, organized by the Syracusan democratic leader Hermocrates, made peace with each other to defend the island.

The Athenians were finally defeated in 413BC, with thousands of soldiers being killed and the generals Nicias and Demosthenes being executed.

In 408BC, a large Carthaginian army led by Hannibal moved against Syracuse and the Greeks appointed Dionysius as the sole tyrant.

THE TYRANNY AND OLIGARCHY AGES Dionysius I, fortified the city and staged four wars against Carthage, being in the end successful.

ARCHIMEDES Archimedes was born in 287 B.C in Syracuse, Sicily. He was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. He was one of the greatest scientists of the ancient world. His inventions have changed the world .

The famous sentence of Archimedes is "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world�.

One day Archimedes while he was having a bath, he opened his legs and arms. They were floating. Because of that, he discovered that "an absorbed body in a liquid receives a push, from the lower part upward, equal to the weight of the liquid�. This discovery was called the Principle of Archimedes., After this experience he ran around the whole city shouting: EUREKA!! (I have found it) During the Roman conquest of Sicily in 214 BC Archimedes worked for the state, and several of his mechanical devices were employed in the defence of Syracuse. Among the war machines attributed to him are the catapult and perhaps legendary - a mirror system for focusing the sun's rays on the invaders' boats and igniting them. After Syracuse was captured, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier. It is said that he was so absorbed in his calculations he told his killer not to disturb him.

Archimedes and the burning mirrors

COLONY OF SYRACUSES

Set on the slopes above Syracuse, the Greek Theatre forms part of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built in the fifth century BC by Damokopos, the Greek Theatre is one of the largest in the world, reaching a diameter of just under 140m and the likely setting for the works of Aeschylus and other Ancient Greek tragedies.

This impressive ancient monument has seen several modifications over the course of two millennia, and has survived numerous spoliations. The design of the amphitheatre owes influence mostly to Hellenic and Roman modifications, although over the centuries the theatre also saw numerous periods of complete disrepair.

For example, after remaining abandoned for centuries, it underwent progressive spoliation at the hands of the Spanish under Charles V, who used the stone blocks to construct new fortifications on Ortygia. This process led to the destruction of the scene building and the upper part of the seating.

Fortunately, the Greek Theatre of today is restored to its impressive majesty, and opens on many nights throughout the year to stage dramatic plays and live music events.

COLONY OF SELINUNTE On the southwest coast of Sicily, not far from Mazara del Vallo, lies the largest archaeological site in Europe.

Selinunte has lain abandoned for nearly 2,500 years, its numerous temples, its acropolis and its agora in dignified ruins.

HISTORY 1.BIRTH OF SELINUNTE 650-628 B.C. The colonists of Megara Hyblea (now Augusta), guided by the ecistas Pammilo, seek new markets in western Sicily: they found the colony of Selinunte, as rich emporium. The name would stem from "Selinon", which refers to the leaves of "apio", a wild parsley that grows abundantly along the banks and in the valley of river Modione.

2. TWO CENTURIES OF PROSPERITY AND GROWTH 628 - 420 B.C. Selinunte grows establishing itself as Apoikia and weaving political and commercial relationships with the Carthaginians, the Greeks, it builds the Acropolis, the Sanctuary of Malophoros, founds the sub-colony of Eraclea Minoa. It is the dawn of one of the most flourishing Greek colonies.

3. THE CONFLICT WITH SEGESTA 413 B.C. The expansionist ambitions of Selinunte come to undermine the territory of Segesta.

After several battles, ended without serious consequences, it came to a confrontation between mighty alliances: Segesta, supported by Carthage and Athens, and Selinunte, supported by Syracuse, Agrigento and Gela.

4. THE DECISIVE BATTLE AND THE DEFEAT OF SELINUNTE

409 B.C. The battle marks the decisive victory of the Carthaginian Hannibal Magone, thanks to the non arrival of the auxiliary troops from Agrigento and Syracuse. Hannibal crushes and plunders Selinunte, saving only women and children. Thus this is the end of one of the West's most glorious Greek colonies.

5. THE TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN SYRACUSE AND CARTHAGE III CENT. B.C. Selinunte attempts a revival, relying on the alliance with Syracuse still on. The tyrant Dionysius becomes the protagonist of several attempts to storm the promontory of Lilybaeum (now Marsala territory) and drive the Carthaginians out, but the failure of the military campaign leads to a peace agreement, and Selinunte ended up in the hands of Carthage.

6. THE PUNIC AGE III CENT. B.C. Selinunte is rebuilt by the Carthaginians, but only in the area of the acropolis. They settle elements of Punic civilization, spread new cults, and the old city center of Manuzza becomes necropolis.

7.THE END OF SELINUNTE III-II CENT. A.C. During the First Punic War, Selinunte hopes in vain to break free from the yoke of Carthage with the help of the Romans. But the Carthaginians prefer to move their resources to Lilibeo, leaving Selinunte at the mercy of the Romans. Selinunte was never rebuilt and inhabited again. Thus this marks the end of one of the most glorious and important Greek colonies in Sicily.

The name Selinunte is derived from Ancient Greek selinon – wild parsley that grew on the spot. For the same reason, they adopted the parsley leaf as the symbol on their coins.

THE CAVE DI CUSA The Cave Di Cusa or Rocche Di Cusa is an ancient quarry located about 10 km west of Selinunte, Italy.

Cave di Cusa was the source of stone used to build the town of Selinunte's sacred temple. Selinunte was a Greek temple that was located 13 km southwest from the quarry. That area of Sicily was inhabited mainly be the ancient Greeks. The stone found at Cave di Cusa site was very suitable for building and therefore a material of choice. Its texture and tufa resistant limestone material made it ideal and perfect for the construction of the sacred Greek temple. This quarry was mined for many years, 150 to be exact.

In 409 BC Cave di Cusa was suddenly abandoned. This was due to the unexpected and unwanted arrival of Carthaginian invader Hannibal Mago. This visit broke out into a war between the opposing forces, and ultimately Selinunte was defeated. The town was destroyed after the defeat, and no work ever occurred at the quarry again. The slaves and laborers fled the scene and escaped to safety. The blocks of stone that were currently being worked on were completely left alone and have formed the geography of the site today

COLONY OF HIMERA Himera was founded in 648 BC by the Greeks.

Its excellent natural position allowed it easy and fast trade, becoming an important link between central Sicily.

Himera commanded the sea-lanes along the north coast of Sicily as well as a major land route leading south across the island.

In the first decades of the 5th century B.C., Gelon of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas, rulers of Greek colonies on the island, formed an alliance to gain control of and to counter the power of the Carthaginians, who had arrived from North Africa to rule Sicily. They soon achieved their goal and exiled the city's Greek ruler, who then went to Carthage for help.

The Carthaginians saw an opportunity to seize the upper hand in the struggle for Sicily and mobilized their forces.Their leader, Hamilcar, built up a large army and navy in the far west of Sicily and started to attack Himera. Theron fought him off, and in Syracuse, Gelon prepared the army. The battle had started.

480 BC is a year widely-celebrated in Greek history – when Leonidas and his core of 300 Spartans heroically defended against a powerful Persian army at Thermopylae and an outnumbered, Athenian-led navy defeated a mighty Persian armada at Salamis.

Yet it was not just off the coast of Athens that one of antiquity’s most determining battles was fought that year. 600 miles to the west of Salamis, supposedly on the same day the decisive naval engagement occurred, another battle was fought: the Battle of Himera.

Gelon of Syracuse

Theron of Akragas

COLONY OF NAXOS Throughout antiquity the rich island of Sicily witnessed waves of people arriving on its shores from distant lands and settling – one of the earliest of which were the Greeks.

In 735 BC a group of colonists from Chalcis established the first Hellenic colony on the island.

They called it Naxos.

“The first of the Greeks to organize an overseas expedition to Sicily were the Chalcidians of Euboea. Led by the founder Thoukles, they founded Naxos and erected the altar to Apollo Archeghetes, which can still be seen outside the walls of the city”. Apollo Archegetes is the divine patron of the colony.

The Greek historian Thucydides, described the foundation of Naxos in 734 BC and confirmed that it was the first of the Greek colonies to be established in Sicily.

Since it derives its name from the island of Naxos, it seems likely that settlers from that island (Hellanikos), the largest of the Cyclades, also took part in the expedition, alongside Euboeans from Chalcis.

The relationship of Naxos with the navigation routes seems clear if we consider that the altar of Apollo Archegetes became the point of departure and arrival of the sacred ambassadors (theoroi) leaving Sicily for the sanctuaries and festivals of Greece.

The coins of Naxos, which are of fine workmanship, may almost all be referred to the period from B.C. 460 to B.C. 403, which was probably the most flourishing in the history of the city.

Sicily, Naxos, Drachm,

COLONY OF AKRAGAS

TEMPLE OF HERA

More known as Basilica, from the name given to it by the eighteenth-century scholars for the almost total disappearance of the walls of the cell, the pediment and the trabeation.

It is actually dedicated to Hera, wife of Zeus and principal deity of Poseidonia.

It is a Periptero with nine columns on the front and eighteen on the sides (24.35x54 m), the cell has well preserved the pronaos, corresponding to the odd number of columns on the front and departs from a central colonnade, partly preserved and intended to support the peak of the roof. On the back of the cell is the adyton, an environment inaccessible to the faithful at the site of the temple treasure.

Singular peculiarity, among all the monuments of Doric architecture, offers here and in the temple of Cerere the collar of the capital decorated with baccellato leaves and sometimes surrounded on the curve of the echinus by a band of lotus flowers and rosettes. In the excavations of 1912 many elements of the clay decoration were collected.

The crowning of the temple was in terracotta painted with fake lion head gutters and ended with antefixes in the shape of a palmette.

HISTORY OF AGRIGENTO Agrigento was founded on a plateau overlooking the sea, with two nearby rivers, the Hypsas and the Akragas, and a ridge to the north offering a degree of natural fortification.

Its establishment took place around 582–580 BC and is attributed to Greek colonists from Gela, who named it "Akragas".

•Akragas grew rapidly, becoming one of the richest and most famous of the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia.[citation needed] It came to prominence under the 6th-century tyrants Phalaris and Theron, and became a democracy after the overthrow of Theron's son Thrasydaeus. At this point the city could have been as large as 100,000 to 200,000 people. Although the city remained neutral in the conflict between Athens and Syracuse, its democracy was overthrown when the city was sacked by the Carthaginians in 406 BC. Akragas never fully recovered its former status, though it revived to some extent under Timoleon in the latter part of the 4th century. Following the Norman conquest of Sicily, the city changed its name to the Norman version Girgenti. In 1087, Norman Count Roger I established a Latin bishopric in the city. Normans built the Castello di Agrigento to control the area. The population declined during much of the medieval period but revived somewhat after the 18th century.

•In 1860, as in the rest of Sicily, the inhabitants supported the arrival of Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Expedition of the Thousand (one of the most dramatic events of the Unification of Italy) which marked the end of Bourbon rule. In 1927, Benito Mussolini through the "Decree Law n. 159, July 12, 1927" introduced the current Italianized version of the Latin name. The decision remains controversial as a symbol of Fascism and the eradication of local history. Following the suggestion of Andrea Camilleri, a Sicilian writer of Agrigentine origin, the historic city centre was renamed to the Sicilian name "Girgenti" in 2016. The city suffered a number of destructive bombing raids during World War II. HISTORY OF TAORMINA •The area around Taormina was inhabited by the Siculi even before the Greeks arrived on the Sicilian coast in 734 BC to found a town called Naxos. The theory that Tauromenion was fouThe new settlement seems to have risen rapidly to prosperity, and was apparently already a considerable town at the time of Timoleon's expedition in 345 BC. It was the first place in Sicily where that leader landed, having eluded the vigilance of the Carthaginians, who were guarding the Straits of Messina, and crossed direct from Rhegium (modern Reggio di Calabria) to Tauromenium. The city was at that time still under the government of Andromachus, whose mild and equitable administration is said to have presented a strong contrast with that of the despots and tyrants of the other Sicilian cities. He welcomed Timoleon with open arms, and afforded him a secure resting place until he was enabled to carry out his plans in other parts of Sicily. Andromachus was not deprived of his position of power when all the other tyrants were expelled by Timoleon, but was permitted to retain it undisturbed till his death. Little is recorded about Tauromenium for some time after this. It is probable that it passed under the authority of Agathocles, who drove the historian Timaeus into exile; and some time after this it was subject to a domestic despot of the name of Tyndarion, who was contemporary with Hicetas of Syracuse and Phintias of Agrigentum.

Tyndarion was one of those who concurred in inviting Pyrrhus into Sicily (278 BC), and when that monarch landed with his army at Tauromenium, joined him with all his forces, and supported him in his march upon Syracuse. A few years later we find that Tauromenium had fallen into the power of Hieron II of Syracuse, and was employed by him as a stronghold in the war against the Mamertines. (Id. p. 497.) It was also one of the cities which was left under his dominion by the treaty concluded with him by the Romans in 263 BCnded by colo-

AGRIGENTO TEMPLES The temple of Heracles (Hercules) is an old temple comparing to others. Inside it kept a bronze statue of Hercules himself, which the Akragantines loved very much.

The temple, destroyed by war and natural disasters, today has only eight columns left The Temples of Herakles, one of the most beautiful temples of antiquity , is now reduced in poor ruins. But even so, the building, still visible from far away, is imposing and rises in the Valley of the Temples just like the symbol of the power and strength of Herakles, the national hero of Sicily and, in particular, Agrigento.

The Temple of Heracles or Temple of Hercules is a greek temple in the ancient city of Akragas, located in the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento The name Temple of Heracles is an attribution of modern scholarship, based on Cicero's mention of a temple dedicated to the hero non longe a foro"not far from the agora" (Verrine II 4.94), containing a famous statue of Heracles. That the agora of Akragas was in this area has not yet been demonstrated, but the identification is generally accepted.[2] The remaining columns of the Temple of Hercules, was built in the 6th century BCE. The temple originally had 6 columns on each facade and 15 along the sides.

 The Temple of Olympian Zeus (or Olympeion) in Agrigento, Sicily was the largest Doric temple ever constructed. It stands in the Valle dei Templi with a number of other major Greek temples and was probably founded to commemorate the Battle of Himera (480 BC),  During the battle the Greek cities of Akragas and Syracuse defeated the Carthaginians under Hamilcar. It was built as a thanksgiving offering to Zeus and according to the historian Diodorus Siculus, the temple was built using Carthaginian slave labour, presumably defeated soldiers captured after the battle. The Temple was never completed and according to Diodorus it remained unfinished due to the Carthaginian conquest of the city in 406 BC.

 The Temple of Hera Lacinia, or Juno Lacinia, otherwise known as Temple D, is a Greek temple in the Valle dei Templi, a section of the ancient city of Agrigentum (ancient Greek Akragas, modern Agrigento) in Sicily. It was built in the middle of the fifth century BC, about the year 450 BC, and in period and in style belonging to the Archaic Doric period.  Signs of a fire which followed the Siege of Akragas of 406 BC have been detected, and long

after that the temple was restored at the time of the Roman province of Sicily, with the original terracotta roof being replaced by one of marble.

 The temple was originally dedicated to the Greek god Hera, Roman Juno.

If still in use by the 4th-and 5th century, it would have been closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire.  The building is a peripterotic Doric temple, with six columns on the short sides (hexastyle) and thirteen

COLONY OF GELA Gela ( Greek : GhĂŠlas), in southern Sicily, was a Greek colony founded c. 689 BCE and it remained an important cultural centre throughout antiquity. Prospering on trade and expanding its territory, the city-state founded Agrigento. In the 5th century BCE the tyrant Gelon reigned with success but the end of that century brought attacks and destruction by Carthage.The city revived thanks to the Corinthian general Timoleon but was destroyed in 282 BCE by Phintias, ironically the tyrant of Agrigento.

Gela is located on a long and low hill running parallel to the Mediterranean sea on the southern coast of Sicily. The first settlements in the area date back to the copper age (2800-2170 BCE) with the town of Gela being founded c. 689 BCE by Greek colonists from Rhodes and Crete, amongst whom were Antifemo of Rhodes and Entimo of Crete. The town was initially called Lindioi and then changed to Gela shortly afterwards after the nearby river.

The foundation of Gela was one of the most daring enterprises of Greek colonization in Sicily because it took possession of the island's southern coast, dangerous for the presence of the important indigenous Sicanian and Siculis centres. When the RhodiumCretans landed they reduced the local people to the servile state (except perhaps the women they took as wives in the first two generations), occupied the plains and the surrounding hills, and merged the indigenous culture with their own.

EARLY GOVERNMENT It is documented that the new community followed the Greek social model but with their own independent government. From the start, power was concentrated in the hands of a few families, gathered in clans, who they awarded themselves political, judiciary and religious control. Around 600 BCE, this led to the first incident of stasis or civil war in Western history. In this case it was limited to the mutiny of the poor who had no political rights. This marginalised group, surely the majority, at some point abandoned the polis or city-state and took refuge in Maktorion, a few kilometres north of Gela. It was then that Teline, the ancestor of the tyrant Gelon, went to the rebels and persuaded them to return to Gela. Teline, as a reward for saving the city, was awarded the priesthood of Demeter and Kore who, he said, had suggested to him the best way to prevent a civil war. The two goddesses' cult spread like wildfire throughout Sicily, and Gela became the centre of the religious initiatives undertaken by Teline and his descendants (including the tyrant Gelon).

EMPEDOCLES Empedocles is a pre-socratic greek philosopher. He was born at Akragas, in Sicily around 495 BC.

Empedocles was a vegetarian who supported the doctrine of “reincarnation”. He was strongly and deeply influenced by Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans Basically, he is thought to be the last Greek philosopher who has recorded his ideas in verse.

Some of his work has survived through the ages. The surviving fragments of his teaching are from two poems, “Purifications“ and “On Nature”.

Aristotle called him “the father of rhetoric” Although he was influenced by Pythagoras, Empedocles belongs to no definite school.

He has combined many suggestions, mostly by Pythagoras, Parmenides and the Ionian schools, creating his “unique style of teaching”

Diogenes Laërtius records the legend that Empedocles died by throwing himself into Mount Etna in Sicily, so that the people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god; the volcano, however, threw back one of his bronze sandals, revealing the deceit.

Another legend maintains that he threw himself into the volcano to prove to his disciples that he was immortal; he believed he would come back as a god after being consumed by the fire.

Empedocles, like the Ionian philosophers and the atomists, continued the tradition of tragic thought which tried to find the basis of the relationship of the “one” and the “many”.

Each of the various philosophers, following Parmenides, derived from the Eleatics, the conviction that an existence could not pass into non-existence, and vice versa.

Yet, each one had his peculiar way of describing this relation of Divine and mortal thought and thus of the relation of the “One” and the “Many”.

In order to account for change in the world, in accordance with the ontological requirements of the Eleatics, they viewed changes as the result of mixture and separation of unalterable fundamental realities.

Empedocles held that the four elements (Water, Air, Earth, and Fire) were those unchangeable fundamental realities, which were themselves transfigured into successive worlds by the powers of Love and Strife (Heraclitus had explicated the Logos or the "unity of opposites")

COLONY OF SYBARIS

In ancient times Sybaris was connected to wealth and this reputation has been preserved in the modern words 'sybaritic' and 'sybarite'. Sybaritic means “loving or involving expensive things and pleasure” while sybarite is “A person who is selfindulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury".

Sybarites were renowned for their luxurious and excessive way of life. Wealth held such a significance for them that even their coins represented the two rivers Krathis and Sybaris to which the region owed its fertility.

However what are the origins of this robust colony?

According to resources, this wasn’t only owing to the fertility of the land, but the result of a really clever move by the Sybarites: they offered anyone who wished to settle in Sybaris citizenship. Furthermore not only agriculture but also traffic had a significant impact on Sybaris’ wealth. Around 500 BC the city had 300,000 inhabitants and over four tribes and 25 subject cities were regulated by Sybarites!

However Sybarites decided to banish the 500 richest citizens so they could take their fortune. When those citizens fled to Crotone, the Sybarites demanded their return. But the Crotones maintained to protect the refugees. It led to a battle.

Sybaris was defeated.

Sybarite was first recorded in the 1600s, meaning a “person devoted to pleasure.”

The literal translation of this noun is “inhabitant of Sybaris,” which was an an-

GREEK THEATER IN TAORMINA The Greek theater in Taormina is the largest in Sicily after that of Syracuse, but it is also the best known in the world and the most admired. Probably, the origin of the Greek theatre is Hellenistic and dates back to the Third century B.C. one proof of this is for example the presence of some sections of masonry in squared block and some Greek inscriptions on the limestone seats. The theatre was literally carved out of the rock on Mount Tauro and had a capacity of 5,000 spectators. According to many scholars the first order was also built by nine columns arranged in a row of three.

The theatre is well known as “Teatro Greco” because it has Greek origins. However it is also called Greco-Roman Theatre because Romans, in the second century A.C., restructured the plant and extended it by inserting statues and ingenious covers. Therefore, the theater that was born to host dramatic or musical representations, became an amphitheater used for

Griko is the dialect of the Italiot Greek spoken by Griko people in Salento and Calabria.

Some Greek linguists consider it to be a Modern Greek dialect and often call it Grekanika, whereas its own speakers call it Greko or Griko. Griko and Standard Modern Greek are partially mutually intelligible.

Two small Italiot-speaking communities survive today in the Italian regions of Calabria (Province of Reggio Calabria) and Apulia (peninsula of Salento). The Italiot-speaking area of Salento comprises nine small towns in the Grecìa Salentina region (Calimera, Martano, Castrignano de' Greci, Corigliano d'Otranto, Melpignano, Soleto, Sternatia, Zollino, Martignano), with a total of 40,000 inhabitants.

The Calabrian Greek region also consists of nine villages in Bovesia, (including Bova Superiore, Roghudi, Gallicianò, Chorìo di Roghudi and Bova Marina) and four districts in the city of Reggio Calabria, but its population is significantly smaller, with around only 2000 inhabitants.

Griko folklore and oral tradition is culturally rich, though limited now to around 30,000 people. Some scholars, like the linguists Gerhard Rohlfs and G. Hatzidakis, believe that the origins of the Griko language may ultimately be traced to the colonies of Magna Graecia, present in Italy from the 8th and 7th century BC. The Italian researchers O. Parlangeli and G. Morosi, however, believe that the origin is more recent and linked to the hellenic immigration of the Middle Ages.

Among the "Most Beautiful Villages in Italy", Bova is a center of ancient origins, located within the National Park of Aspromonte. Bova is the capital of Calabrian Grecanic Area (Bovesìa) in Reggio Calabria district.

The medieval village of Bova develops around the big Rock with the Norman Castle on the top. It is characterised by a series of stone streets, in which it is possible to meet many ancient architectural buildings, such as the Bishop’s Palace, several palaces and many c Churches in which there are sculptures of relief (such as the Madonna and the Child attributed to Rinaldo Bonanno, 1584, in the Cathedral Santa Maria dell’Isodia). The surrounding and wonderful landscape accompanies visitors all the time: you can enjoy of it from the alleys or on the top of remains of the castle. Along the road to the castle there are several terraces from which you can enjoy the whole landscape.

GRIKO DISHES

During many centuries of cohabitation there was an exchange of knowledge between Griko and Southern Italians in the art of cooking. The Griko are traditionally producers of cereals, vegetables, olives and legumes. Local Griko cuisine does not differ greatly from the local Italian population, however there local regional variations. Many typical Griko dishes are still in use among them. Some of them are: Mendulata te cranu A delicious dessert similar to Pastiera, filled with cream cheese, honey, sugar and vanilla.

Pita The classic bread that is served for lunch and dinner; in short, whenever possible. It is a typical bread of the countries that overlook the Mediterranean Sea and in fact finds itself, declined in its small differences, also in North Africa and in the Middle East. The most famous recipe, internationally, is the Pita gyros, a dish made of pork strips inundated with the traditional tzatziki sauce, salad, tomato, onion and fries.

Few fresh and tasty ingredients. Accompanied by the renowned tzatziki sauce, we find the meatballs composed of feta cheese and zucchini, with the addition of parsley, mint and dill, which are fried to give that pleasant crunchiness on the palate. Excellent both as an appetizer and as a main course. You will not be disappointed.

MODERN WRITERS

Salvino Nucera was born in Chorio di Roghudi (near Reggio Calabria) in 1952. His first poetic encounters dates back to the time when he began to look inside his Grecian soul and to reinvigorate the mother tongue that was previously faint in him. Teacher in a secondary schools, he held positions of considerable responsibility by participating in cultural associations with frequent exchanges between Greeks of Hellas and Greeks of Calabria, Thessalonica, Athens, Rhodes, Crete, Reggio Calabria, but also in Lombardy. Nucera published “Agapào na graspo” ("I Love Writing") in 1987. "Greek Dialogues of Calabria" was instead an idea realized through the volume of Pietro Zavattieri who also checked the fidelity of the phonetic transcription; the most burdensome task has been reached

by Salvino who has transcribed the dialogues. The publication of the book was made possible thanks also to the intervention of domenico minute which took care of the printing presses and drew up this premise.

Gioacchino Criaco was born in 1965 in Africo, a small and welcoming town on the Ionian coast of Calabria. Son of shepherds, at a young age, he began to meditate on a new literary treatise on the Aspromonte and the nearby places, because Aspromonte was not well known. The writer graduated from the Scientific High School "Zaleuco“ of Locri and graduated in law in Bologna. After years of experimentation, in 2008 he published "Anime Nere", his first novel of great socio-cultural impact which, in 2011 in Paris, was translated into French and therefore took the title "Les ames noires".

Criaco tells and describes those minor realities on the brink of civilization that seems to continue to live according to their own laws and traditions, demonstrating a physical and political distance that is perhaps irreducible. The novel deals with the events of three Aspromonte boys not affiliated with the 'Ndrangheta, but involved in a myriad of situations typical of the underworld. In addition the three protagonists will find themselves traveling far and wide to Europe because of their traffic. Black Souls is the first book of a trilogy that, together with Zefira and American taste, traces the infernal traces followed by the boys who live in particular realities.