page_title: Southern Italy
section_title: Prehistory and antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Southern Italy / History / Prehistory and antiquity
caption_attribution_description: English: Temple E - Selinunte, Italy
context_page_description: Southern Italy or Mezzogiorno is a macroregion of Italy meant to broadly denote the southern half of the Italian state.
  Southern Italy covers in both historic and cultural terms the land once under the administration of the former Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, which shared a common organization into Italy's largest pre-unitarian state, the Kingdom of the two Sicilies. The island of Sardinia had a different history from the aforementioned regions, but is nonetheless often grouped together with the Mezzogiorno.
  The Italian National Institute of Statistics employs the term "South Italy" to identify one of the five statistical regions in its reportings without Sicily and Sardinia, which form a distinct statistical region denominated "Insular Italy". These same subdivisions are at the bottom of the Italian First level NUTS of the European Union and the Italian constituencies for the European Parliament.
context_section_description: .
  In the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in Southern Italy. Also during this period, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea, Eastern Libya and Massalia (Marseille). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. The first Greek settlers found Italy inhabited by three major populations: Ausones, Oenotrians and Iapyges (these last ones were subdivided into three tribes: Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians). The relationships between the Greek settlers and the native peoples were initially hostile (especially with the Iapygian tribes), but finally the hellenic influence definitely shaped their culture and way of life. 
  The Romans used to call the area of Sicily and coastal Southern Italy Magna Graecia ("Great Greece"), since it was so densely inhabited by the Greeks; the ancient geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia and Calabria—Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions.
  With this colonisation, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic and Latin civilisations.  The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean/Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet, which was adopted by the Etruscans; the Old Italic alphabet subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world.
  Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Neapolis (Νεάπολις, Naples, "New City"), Syrakousai (Συράκουσαι, Syracuse), Akragas (Ἀκράγας, Agrigento), and Sybaris  (Σύβαρις, Sibari). Other cities in Magna Graecia included Tarentum (Τάρας), Epizephyrian Locri (Λοκροὶ Ἐπιζεφύριοι), Rhegium (Ῥήγιον), Croton (Κρότων), Thurii (Θούριοι), Elea (Ἐλέα), Nola (Νῶλα), Syessa (Σύεσσα), Bari (Βάριον), and others.
  After Pyrrhus of Epirus failed in his attempt to stop the spread of Roman hegemony in 282 BCE, the south fell under Roman domination and remained in such a position throughout the barbarian invasions (the Gladiator War is a notable suspension of imperial control). It was restored to Eastern Roman control in the 530s after the fall of Rome in the West in 476, and some form of imperial authority survived until the 1070s. Total East Roman rule was ended by the Lombards by Zotto's conquest in the final quarter of the 6th century.
caption: Greek temple of Hera, Selinunte, Sicily.
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