Competing Narratives of Identity in Central and Southern Italy, 750 BCE - 300 BCE

Abstract

This study aims to understand holistically the emergence and articulation of civic identity in southern and south-central Italy (roughly the modern regions of Campania, Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia) from the 8th – 3rd centuries BCE. The emergence of cities in this large part of Italy has recently been reconsidered based on a mass of new evidence that points to a concurrent development and integration of groups traditionally referred to as “native Italians” and “Greek colonists.” New archaeological evidence, especially from the Iron Age, helps shed light on the creation of a cultural koine in the area in which figures from Greek mythology were used by both Greek settlements and native communities (in combination and separately) to articulate local civic and ethnic identities. I argue that these origin stories were constructed at particular moments in a community’s socio-economic history, often developed for the purpose of creating linkages in networks of kinship diplomacy. Using the examples of Locri, Croton, the native peoples of Calabria, Daunia and the Serdaioi, I show how mythology functions to underpin both collective identity and diplomatic relationships. Kinship diplomacy, where alliances and other forms of interstate relationships are supported by claims of relatedness, was a frequent occurrence in the Greek world. The Greek (and non-Greek) inhabitants of Italy were deeply immersed in this political world, and this is demonstrated through the ways they develop, change, and promote their mythological credentials. The goals of this dissertation are to demonstrate how this process worked on the peninsula, give more agency to the indigenous Italians who bought into this system of belief and diplomacy, and finally better integrate the history of Greek and native Italic peoples into broader trends and the larger narrative of the history of the ancient Mediterranean.