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Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by Greeks beginning in the 8th century BC. Initially founded by their ''metropoleis'' (mother cities), the settlements evolved into independent and powerful Greek city-states (''poleis''). The settlers brought with them Ancient Greece, Hellenic civilization, which over time developed distinct local forms due to both their distance from Greece and the influence of the indigenous peoples of southern Italy. This interaction left a lasting imprint on Italy, including on Ancient Rome, Roman culture. The Greek settlers also influenced native groups such as the Sicels and the Oenotrians, many of whom adopted Greek culture and became Hellenization, Hellenized. In areas like architecture and urban planning, the colonies sometimes surpassed the achievem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Temple Of Hera (Paestum)
The Temple of Hera II (also erroneously called the Temple of Neptune or of Poseidon), is a Greek temple of Magna Graecia in Paestum, Campania, Italy. It was built in the Doric order around 460–450 BC, just north of the First Temple of Hera (Paestum), first Hera Temple of around 550–525 BC. The name "Temple of Neptune" is a misnomer from the 18th century, it is now thought it was actually dedicated to the goddess Hera, although it is possible that Poseidon (Neptune to the Romans) was also a dedicatee. A. W. Lawrence described it as "the best preserved of all Greek temples". It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. Description The temple measures 24.46 by 59.98 metres, with six external columns along its shorter sides and fourteen columns along its longer sides (counting the corner columns twice). These are 8.88 metres high (29 feet), and the columns at the ends taper from a diameter of nearly 7 feet at the bottom to about 5 feet at the top; the columns on the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sybaris
Sybaris (; ) was an important ancient Greek city situated on the coast of the Gulf of Taranto in modern Calabria, Italy. The city was founded around 720 BC by Achaeans (tribe), Achaean and Troezenian settlers and the Achaeans also went on to found the nearby great city of Crotone, Kroton 10 years later. Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port so that it was known as the wealthiest colony of the Greek Archaic world. Its inhabitants became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts, and excesses, to the extent that "sybarite" and "sybaritic" have become bywords for opulence, luxury, and outrageous pleasure-seeking. Sybaris also ruled over smaller colonies throughout the area, and had an ''acropolis'' at Timpone della Motta near Francavilla Marittima about 10 km distant. The city of Sybaris was destroyed in about 510 BC by its neighbour Kroton and its population driven out, but its colonies in the area continued to exist. It was replaced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sicels
The Sicels ( ; or ''Siculī'') were an Indo-European tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily, their namesake, during the Iron Age. They spoke the Siculian language. After the defeat of the Sicels at the Battle of Nomae in 450 BC and the death of Sicel leader Ducetius in 440 BC, the Sicel state broke down and the Sicel culture merged into Magna Graecia. History Archaeological excavation has shown some Mycenean influence on Bronze Age Sicily. The earliest literary mention of Sicels is in the '' Odyssey''. Homer also mentions Sicania, but makes no distinctions: "they were (from) a faraway place and a faraway people and apparently they were one and the same" for Homer, Robin Lane Fox notes. It is possible that the Sicels and the Sicani of the Iron Age had consisted of an Illyrian population who (as with the Messapians) had imposed themselves on a native, Pre-Indo-European ("Mediterranean") population. Thucydides and other classical writers were aware of the traditions accordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (50927 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic peoples, Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually controlled the Italian Peninsula, assimilating the Greece, Greek culture of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and the Etruscans, Etruscan culture, and then became the dominant power in the Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. At its hei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treccani
Institute Giovanni Treccani for the publication of the Italian Encyclopedia (), also known as Treccani Institute or simply Treccani, is a cultural institution of national interest, active in the publishing field, founded by Giovanni Treccani and Giovanni Gentile in 1925. It is known for publishing the first edition and the subsequent ten supplements of the ''Italian Encyclopaedia of Science, Literature and Arts'' (). History The Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia was founded in Rome in 1925 by Giovanni Treccani, with the philosopher Giovanni Gentile as editor-in-chief. The first publication by the Institute was the ''Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti'' (). This encyclopaedia, best known as ''Enciclopedia Italiana'' or the ''Great Encyclopaedia'', is an Italian-language encyclopaedia and is regarded as one of the great encyclopaedias, being international in scope, alongside ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and others. Since the 1990s, Treccani has been playing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War. The u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poleis
Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατρίδα (patrida) or "native land" for its citizens. In ancient Greece, the polis was the native land; there was no other. It had a constitution and demanded the supreme loyalty of its citizens. χώρα was only the countryside, not a country. Ancient Greece was not a sovereign country, but was territory occupied by Hellenes, people who claimed as their native language some dialect of Ancient Greek. Poleis did not only exist within the area of the modern Republic of Greece. A collaborative study carried by the Copenhagen Polis Centre from 1993 to 2003 classified about 1,500 settlements of the Archaic and Classical ancient-Greek-speaking population as poleis. These ranged from the Caucasus to Southern Spain, and from Southern Russia to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Colonisation
Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks, particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC, across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. The Archaic expansion differed from the Iron Age migrations of the Greek Dark Ages, in that it consisted of organised direction (see ) away from the originating ''metropolis'' rather than the simplistic movement of tribes, which characterised the aforementioned earlier migrations. Many colonies, or (, ), that were founded during this period eventually evolved into strong Greek city-states, functioning independently of their ''metropolis''. Motives Greek colonisation was typically motivated by a combination of factors, depending on the context. Many Greek city-states experienced strong economic growth with consequent overpopulation of the motherland, such that the existing territory of these Greek city-states could no longer support a growing polity. The areas where the Greeks would try to colonise were hospitabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basilicata
Basilicata (, ; ), also known by its ancient name Lucania (, , ), is an administrative region in Southern Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia to the north and east, and Calabria to the south. It has two coastlines: a 30-kilometre stretch on the Gulf of Policastro (Tyrrhenian Sea) between Campania and Calabria, and a longer coastline along the Gulf of Taranto (Ionian Sea) between Calabria and Apulia. The region can be thought of as "the arch" of "the boot" of Italy, with Calabria functioning as "the toe" and Apulia "the heel". The region covers about . In 2021, the population was slightly over 540,000. The regional capital is Potenza. The region comprises two provinces: Potenza and Matera. Its inhabitants are generally known as Lucanians (), and to a lesser extent as or by other very rare terms. In ancient times, part of its territory belonged to Magna Graecia, subject to coastal Greek colonies (including Sybaris). Later the region was conquered by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apulia
Apulia ( ), also known by its Italian language, Italian name Puglia (), is a Regions of Italy, region of Italy, located in the Southern Italy, southern peninsular section of the country, bordering the Adriatic Sea to the east, the Strait of Otranto and Ionian Sea to the southeast and the Gulf of Taranto to the south. The region comprises , and has 3,874,166 inhabitants as of 2025. It is bordered by the other Italian regions of Molise to the north, Campania to the west, and Basilicata to the southwest. The regional capital is Bari. In ancient times, more precisely at the beginning of the first millennium BC, the region of Apulia was inhabited by the Iapygians, while during the 8th century BC its coastal areas were populated by Magna Graecia, ancient Greeks. Later, the region was conquered by the ancient Romans. It was then conquered by the Byzantine Empire, Byzantines, followed by the Normans, the Kingdom of Aragon, Aragonese and the Spanish Empire, Spanish. Subsequently, it bec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calabria
Calabria is a Regions of Italy, region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. It has 1,832,147 residents as of 2025 across a total area of . Catanzaro is the region's capital. Calabria is the birthplace of the name of Italy, given to it by the Ancient Greeks who settled in this land starting from the 8th century BC. They established the first cities, mainly on the coast, as Greek colonisation, Greek colonies. During this period Calabria was the heart of Magna Graecia, home of key figures in history such as Pythagoras, Herodotus and Milo of Croton, Milo. In Roman times, it was part of the ''Regio III Lucania et Bruttii'', a region of Roman Italy, Augustan Italy. After the Gothic War (535–554), Gothic War, it became and remained for five centuries a Byzantine empire, Byzantine dominion, fully recove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regions Of Italy
The regions of Italy () are the first-level administrative divisions of the Italy, Italian Republic, constituting its second Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, NUTS administrative level. There are twenty regions, #Autonomous regions with special statute, five of which are autonomous regions with special status. Under the Constitution of Italy, each region is an autonomous entity with defined powers. With the exception of the Aosta Valley (since 1945), each region is divided into a number of provinces of Italy, provinces. History During the Kingdom of Italy, regions were mere statistical districts of the central state. Under the Republic, they were granted a measure of political autonomy by the 1948 Italian Constitution. The original draft list comprised the Salento region (which was eventually included in Apulia); ''Friuli'' and ''Venezia Giulia'' were separate regions, and Basilicata was named ''Lucania''. Abruzzo and Molise were identified as separate regions in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
