This is an Italian story of European resonance, which transforms our understanding of the transition from antiquarianism to archaeology, of the relationship between nation-making and institution-building in the study of the ancient past, and of the reconstruction of classical Greece in the modern world. 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. Drawing on antiquarian and archaeological writings, histories and travelogues about Magna Graecia, and recent rewritings of the history and imagining of the South, Italy's Lost Greece sheds new light on well known figures in the history of archaeology while recovering forgotten ones. MAGNA GRAE ´ CIA ( ), was the name given in ancient times by the Greeks themselves to the assemblage of Greek colonies which encircled the shores of Southern Italy. The unfolding of this process provides a unique insight into three developments: the humanist investment in the ancient past, the evolution of modern Hellenism, and the making of classical archaeology. It was here that the Renaissance first encountered an ancient Greek landscape, and during the "Hellenic turn" of eighteenth-century Europe the temples of Paestum and the painted vases of South Italy played major roles, but since then, Magna Graecia-lying outside the national boundaries of modern Greece, and sharing in the complicated regional dynamic of the Italian Mezzogiorno-has fitted awkwardly into the commonly accepted paradigms of Hellenism. Giovanna Ceserani's evocative and nuanced analysis recovers its significance within the history of classical archaeology. This "Greater Greece," at once Greek and Italian, has continuously been perceived as a region in decline since its archaic golden age, and has long been relegated to the margins of classical studies. Fausto Longo is a specialist in classical archaeology at the University of Lecce and doctor of research in archaeology at the University of Naples.Italy's Lost Greece is the untold story of the modern engagement with the ancient Greek settlements of South Italy-an area known since antiquity as Magna Graecia. Lorena Jannelli is archaeological inspector at the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Liguria. Luca Cerchiai is professor of Italian archaeology and Etruscology at the University of Salerno. This comprehensive survey is followed by a review of the major archaeological sites in the region. The Greek Cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily presents an overview of Greek colonization in Italy and the principal historical events that took place in this area from the Archaic period until the ascendancy of the Romans. Such forefathers of Western philosophy as Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Archimedes lived and worked within this civilization. In Italy they created an autonomous political community that eventually surpassed the cities of Greece in wealth, military power, and architectural and cultural splendor. The new arrivals brought with them their language, their cultural and religious traditions, and the institution of the polis. Luca Cerchiai, Lorena Janelli, and Fausto LongoĪfter colonizing the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor, the ancient Greeks turned toward southern Italy and Sicily, driven by the unrest that troubled their homeland in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.
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