Project Ancient ItalyLanguagesGreek in ancient Italy

Greek in ancient Italy

Greek is an Indo-European language pertaining to an independent branch of the family. It is uninterruptedly attested from the 2nd millennium BC until today. Several Greek dialects are attested before the creation and spread of the koine: they have been formerly classified in three groups connected to the Greek original tribes (Ionic-Attic, Aeolic, Doric), whereas more recent studies have proposed a classification in four groups, namely Arcado-Cypriot, Ionic-Attic, Aeolic and North-West dialects.

The Greek colonization of South Italy started in the 8th cent. BC and lasted until the half of the 6th cent. BC. Groups of Euboean-Chalcidian, Doric, Ionic and Attic origin occupied Sicily and the South of Italy (the Magna Grecia, ‘Great Greece’). The most ancient Greek colonies in the West were Pithekoussai (either a colony or an emporion) and Cumae (757 BC) in Italy, and in Sicily Naxos (734 BC) and Syracusae (733 BC). The settlers were more or less hostile to the conquered communities, the latter becoming more or less Hellenised.

The inscriptions attesting the presence of Greeks in Italy are written in two dialects, namely Ionic-Attic and Doric, which show archaic features compared to the varieties of the motherland. The Greek of Italy survived for a long time, even under the Roman control, and the Greek colonies of Italy always kept contacts with their homeland. The historical and political relations between the colonies were multifaceted: Ionic colonies were subject to the power of the Doric ones, in Italy as much as in Sicily, and, in some cases, they replaced their dialect (Rhegion switched from the Ionic to the Doric dialect, Siris from the Ionic to the Achean, Locris from the Doris mitior to the Doris severior). Syracusae and Taranto, Doric colonies, played the role of centres of linguistic standardization. Moreover, the epigraphic evidence shows that sometimes a spoken variety of the Ionic-Attic koine was employed.

Two epichoric alphabets are employed in the inscriptions, traditionally called ‘red’ (Western variety) and ‘blue’ (Eastern variety). The former served as a model for the creation of the Etruscan and the Latin alphabets.

Greek inscriptions of Italy are diverse as for support, typology (i.e., funerary, votive, juridical, property inscriptions or defixionum tabellae) and length. Very ancient inscriptions are uncommon; the documentation dates up to the imperial period. Among the most famous inscriptions are the so-called “Nestor’s cup” and the Heraclean Tablets. The former is an inscription on a Rhodian kotyle found in Pithekoussai, probably the most ancient Greek document. It can be dated to the 8th cent. BC and contains a Ionic metrical inscription of three verses. The latter are two bronze tables dated to the 4th cent. BC containing on one side two decrees concerning the sanctuaries of Dionysus and Athena Polias near Heraklea (Policoro) and on the other side a more recent text in Latin, the lex Iulia Municipalis (I cent. BC).

Bibliography

Outlines and introductions:

- Adrados, F. R. 2005. A History of the Greek Language: From Its Origins to the Present. Brill.

- Consani, C. 2016. «The Greek of Italy between Archaism, Internal Evolution and Contact Phenomena» 21 (2): 99–115.

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