Italiotes

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ethnic composition of Italy (as defined by today's borders) in 400 BC.
Messapii
  Greeks

The Italiotes (Greek: Ἰταλιῶται, Italiōtai) were the pre-Roman Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula, between Naples and Calabria.[citation needed]

Greek colonisation of the coastal areas of southern Italy and Sicily started in the 8th century BC and, by the time of the Roman ascendance, the area was so extensively hellenized that Romans called it Magna Graecia, that is "Greater Greece".

The

Western Greek alphabet used by these settlers, and was picked up and adopted and modified first by the Etruscans and then by the Romans.[citation needed
]

See also

Notes

References

  • A history of earliest Italy By Massimo Pallottino, 15 April 1991, Page 118
  • The Cambridge ancient history By John Boardman Page 709
  • Rome and the Western Greeks, 350 BC-AD 200 Page 103
  • Gender and ethnicity in ancient Italy By Tim Cornell, Kathryn Lomas Page 40
  • Calabria, the first Italy By Gertrude Elizabeth Taylor Slaughter Page 107