The Italiotes ( grc-gre, Ἰταλιῶται, ') were the pre-

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

-speaking inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula, between

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

and

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

Greek colonization Greek colonization was an organised colonial expansion by the Archaic Greeks into the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea in the period of the 8th–6th centuries BC. This colonization differed from the migrations of the Greek Dark Ages in that i ...

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

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

is a derivative of the

Western Greek alphabet Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms ...

used by these settlers, and was picked up and adopted and modified first by the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, rou ...

and then by the

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

Italiote League

Tarentum Tarentum may refer to: * Taranto, Apulia, Italy, on the site of the ancient Roman city of Tarentum (formerly the Greek colony of Taras) **See also History of Taranto * Tarentum (Campus Martius), also Terentum, an area in or on the edge of the Camp ...

controlled the Italiote League from about the end of the 5th century BC and levied troops from the Greek cities.

Dionysius I of Syracuse Dionysius I or Dionysius the Elder ( 432 – 367 BC) was a Greek tyrant of Syracuse, in Sicily. He conquered several cities in Sicily and southern Italy, opposed Carthage's influence in Sicily and made Syracuse the most powerful of the Western Gre ...

conquered southern Italy (Magna Graecia), crushing the Italiote (Greek) League at the

Battle of the Elleporus The Battle of the Elleporus was fought in 389 BC between the forces of Dionysius I of Syracuse and the armies of the Italiote League. The armies of Syracuse triumphed, and Dionysius' control was extended into Southern Italy. After arriving in It ...

and destroying

Rhegium Reggio di Calabria ( scn, label= Southern Calabrian, Riggiu; el, label= Calabrian Greek, Ρήγι, Rìji), usually referred to as Reggio Calabria, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, is the largest city in Calabria. It has an estimated pop ...

.''The Encyclopedia of World History'' by Peter N. Stearns, William Leonard Langer Page 68

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 {{Ancient Greece topics