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e trusted. 41 Their legends explain that they are erudite topographical reconstructions of
Magna Graecia 42 based on the texts of ancient writers and, therefore, do not represent
contemporary reality. Thus after the 16 th century, no there are no more known accounts
or depictions that can be considered reliable.
Archaeological Data
Underwater surveys and archaeological excavations have shown that both
the ancient account of Pliny and popular legends are true. Thanks to the joint
efforts of a team of Italian and American researchers, a rich set of data is now
available to reconstruct the natural environment that characterized the Ionian coast
of Calabria during the Classical Age. 43 Modern nautical charts show a series of
41 A collection of these maps can be found in Riillo, Villirillo, and Berardi 2002, 22-45.
42 The expression Magna Graecia identifies that cultural area of southern Italy ideally encompassed
inside a large triangle with the cities of Cumae, Tarentum, and Rhegium representing its three vertices.
The Latin expression Magna Graecia, which is probably better known and more widespread than the
original Greek Mega®lh èElla®v, is commonly translated in English as Great Greece. The form Greater
Greece, sometimes found in late Roman sources as Maior Graecia (Just. Epit. 20.2.2; Val. Max. 8.7.2;
Ov. Fast. 4.64), should be rejected as misleading; both of the earlier versions did not have -grammatically
speaking- a comparative but a positive value. Compared to the word ‘Italiva, which covers the entire
Italian peninsula including the areas where local indigenous inhabitants lived, Mega®lh èElla®v or Magna
Graecia refers only to the regions fully colonized by Greeks, which shared the same language, culture,
and political institutions with the rest of the Greek world (Musti 1994, 85). Consequently, large areas of
the mountainous inner country where colonies were never founded remained in the hands of the native
Italic populations, at the fringes of the Mediterranean world.
It must also be remarked that Sicily was perceived, even though almost entirely Greek
(Carthaginians were present on the western third of the island) and deeply involved in crucial events of
Greek history, as a separate region which followed in many ways its own historical path. Along with the
simple fact that Sicily is an island, both ancient and modern scholars did not include it within Magna
Graecia’s limits, and, with the exception of a controversial passage from Strabo (6.2), it is common place
to talk of Great Greece and Sicily.
43 Joseph Carter, Jonathan Morter, Roberto Spadea, Domenico Marino, and Luigi Cantafora have been
particularly active in Croton; Maria Teresa Iannelli, Stefano Mariottini, and Jean-Daniel Stanley in
Caulonia.
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