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Faculty of Classics

 

Greek in Italy is an AHRC-funded research project based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. The project will run from January 2014 – December 2017.

 

The Project

In the course of the first millennium BC Greek sailors, traders and colonists visited and settled in the Italian peninsula in increasing numbers. The southern half of Italy became known as ‘Big Greece’, both by Romans (Magna Graecia) and Greeks (Megalē Hellas). Greek settlements in Italy are attested from the 8th century BC onwards, and there is evidence for Greek trade from even earlier. Greeks brought with them urban living, religion and wine drinking, the alphabet and its associated uses. Some cities of Italy, including Naples, Rhegium and Tarentum, remained Greek speaking even under Roman rule.

Substantial archaeological and textual discoveries in the last three decades have opened up our knowledge of the Greeks in Italy and the native societies they encountered, but there has been no complete study of the impact made by Greek on indigenous languages - this project aims to fill this gap. We will consider the nature and outcomes of contact between Greeks and speakers of the various native languages of ancient Italy, investigating the changes on the languages themselves, and relating linguistic interactions to social and political factors.

 

Our Aims

  • To understand the nature and long-term effects of language contact between Greek and other languages of Ancient Italy.
  • To understand the spread of the Greek alphabet among non-Greek speaking communities.
  • To investigate the nature of the Greek spoken in towns in Southern Italy, and compare this with developments in the rest of the Greek world.
  • To integrate issues of linguistic contact and linguistic borrowing into the discourse of archaeologists, historians and other scholars working on Greek colonization in Italy, and to promote dialogue between linguists and other scholars.

 

Find Out More

You can find out more about the members of the project on the “Members” page.

You can also follow our blog to find out more about our work and hear about upcoming talks and events: www.greekinitaly.wordpress.com.

Or follow us on Twitter: @GreekInItaly

Latest news

Classical Equalities Lecture 25 April 2024 at 17.00 in G19

4 March 2024

Jane Draycott will be giving this year’s Classical Equalities lecture, on ‘ Prostheses in Classical Antiquity: Everything You Never Knew You Wanted To Know’. Jane Draycott is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow. Her research investigates science, technology, and medicine in the ancient world. She has...

Soundmarks Project

12 February 2024

Soundmarks, an art/archaeology collaboration between Rose Ferraby, Cambridge Archaeologist, and Rob St John using sound and visual art launches at DIG in York. In 2019 the pair created work exploring and animating the sub-surface landscape of Aldborough Roman Town in North Yorkshire, UK. Soundmarks Aldborough was re-shown...

Vacancy: Assistant Professor in Latin literature

8 February 2024

The Faculty of Classics is seeking to appoint an Assistant Professor in Classics (Latin literature) from 01 September 2024. The role is open to those, at any stage in their career, with a primary research interest in Latin literature. The successful candidates will have, or be expected to develop, a record of world-class...

Publication: The New Documents in Mycenaean Greek

24 January 2024

The Faculty of Classics is proud to announce the publication of The New Documents in Mycenaean Greek , edited by John Killen FBA, the Emeritus Professor of Mycenaean Greek. More than a dozen leading Mycenologists have contributed chapters and sections to this seminal work in two volumes, comprised of more than 1100 pages...