The general testimony of antiquity points to Cumae as the most ancient of all the Greek settlements in Italy and though we may reasonably refuse to admit the precise date assigned for its foundation (B.C. The geographical description of the country known as Magna Graecia is given under the article ITALIA and in more detail in those of BRUTTII, LUCANIA, and CALABRIA but as the history of these Greek colonies is to a great extent separate from that of the mother country, while it is equally distinct from that of the Italian nations which came early in contact with Rome, it will be convenient here to give a brief summary of the history of Magna Graecia, bringing together under one head the leading facts which are given in the articles of the several cities. 4.15, &c.) Polybius, however, as well as later writers, sometimes loses sight of this distinction. There could obviously be no ethnic appellation which corresponded to such a term but it is important to observe that the name of Ἰταλιῶται is universally used by the best writers to designate the Greeks in Italy, or as equivalent to the phrase οἱ κατὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν Ἕλληνες, and is never confounded with that of Ἴταλοι, or the Italians in general. 4.64) but the common form of expression was certainly Graecia Magna (Cic. Mull.), and employed by Justin and Ovid (Justin, l.c. The same author in one passage (31.7) uses the phrase “Graecia Major,” which is found also in Festus (p. It must be added that the name was never understood (except perhaps by late geographers) as a territorial one, including the whole of Southern Italy, but applied merely to the Greek cities on the coasts, so as to correspond with the expression “Graecorum omnis ora,” employed by Livy ( 22.61). Indeed, the name itself sufficiently implies (what is expressly stated by many ancient writers) that it was derived from the number and importance of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy, and must, therefore, naturally have been extended to them all.

3.1.10) but it is probable that this distinction was introduced only by the later geographers, and did not correspond to the original meaning of the term. Sometimes, indeed, the name is confined within still narrower limits, as applying only to the cities on the Tarentine gulf, from Locri to Tarentum ( Plin. Strabo seems to imply that the Greek cities of Sicily were included under the appellation but this is certainly opposed to the more general usage, which confined the term to the colonies in Italy Even of these, it is not clear whether Cumae and its colonies in Campania were regarded as belonging to it: it is certain at least that the name is more generally used with reference only to the Greek cities in the south of Italy, including those on the shores of the Tarentine gulf and the Bruttian peninsula, together with Velia, Posidonia, and Laüs, on the W. Nor is the use of the term, even at a later period, very fixed or definite.

It is perhaps still more significant, that the name is not found in Scylax, though that author attaches particular importance to the enumeration of the Greek cities in Italy as distinguished from those of the barbarians. 2.39) and it appears certain that the name must have arisen at an early period, while the Greek colonies in Italy were at the height of their power and prosperity, and before the states of Greece proper had attained to their fullest greatness.īut the omission of the name in Herodotus and Thucydides, even in passages where it would have been convenient as a geographical designation, seems to show that it was not in their time generally recognised as a distinctive appellation, and was probably first adopted as such by the historians and geographers of later times, though its origin must have been derived from a much earlier age. The name is not found in any extant author earlier than Polybius: but the latter, in speaking of the cities of Magna Graecia in the time of Pythagoras, uses the expression, “the country that was then called Magna Graecia” (Pol. MAGNA GRAE´CIA MAGNA GRAE´ CIA ( ἡ μεγάλη Ἑλλάς), was the name given in ancient times by the Greeks themselves to the assemblage of Greek colonies which encircled the shores of Southern Italy.

Magna graecia roman republic