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Of southern Italy and Sicily and cultural ties with the Hellenic mainland Once Constantinople had replaced RomeĪs the centre of government, Greek was restored as the official language Vernacular itself might have given way to early Romance had it not beenįor the Byzantine (= Eastern Roman Empire) conquest of 535. Upon literary Greek in Magna Graecia, and it is possible that the Greek In the last centuries of the Empire Latin began to encroach Lower Calabria and eastern Sicily remained for the time being strongholds The river Crati in Bruttium (present-day Calabria), the Salentine peninsula, Only as far south as the Apulian towns of Tarentum and Brundisium, and Height of the Empire Vulgar Latin had inplanted itself as the vernacular Literary medium and the speech of the common people in many areas. Of the South as an administrative language but Greek held its own as a

In Rome itself Greek was employedĪs a second language and in the first Christian centuries the city hadĪ large Greek-speaking minority. Here and there, on the whole they treated the Italian Greeks as confederates, Graecia and Sicily by 241 B.C., and while the Romans planted Latin colonies The expanding Roman Empire had annexed the whole of Magna These autochthonous tribes maintained their own languages for a time,īut at the dawning of the Christian age they were largely hellenized. Messapians, an Indoeuropean people from Illyria. Mainly Italici (in eastern Sicily, Calabria and Lucania) and in Apulia,

They left the less attractive inland regions to the indigenous peoples On or near the coasts, where they established their city-states and emporia. In both Sicily and Italy the Greeks preferred to live Several attempts by the Sicilian Greeks (Siceliots) to gain control of In North Africa, and the western districts remained in their hands. Sicily had already been settled by Phoenician colonists from Carthage Such celebratedįigures as Empedocles, Theocritus and Archimedes were natives of 'Great Of Apulia, Lucania, Campania, Calabria and eastern Sicily were first colonizedīy mainland Greeks in the eighth century before Christ. Of the number and importance of the Greek settlements there. Of Naples were known collectively as Magna Graecia - 'Great Greece' because In ancient times Sicily and the Italian Peninsula south