![]() In a bid to immerse myself in the moment, I closed my eyes and tried to understand what the town would have been like with Greko speakers in abundance.įor those who have yet to visit, imagine a place where time stands still where a true living connection with an ancient and Byzantine past abounds. When I visited in 2002, with my then girlfriend, accompanied by Carmelo, no one lived here and the town was essentially abandoned. ![]() Our first stop on the Calabrian Greko journey was an abandoned town, which was ironically under a dark cloud with rain threatening to spoil summer when we arrived.ĭriving through the countryside off Via Nazionale about 35 minutes from Reggio, I could feel the sense of history. The last Greek monasteries closed in the 18th century, while the last Greek Byzantine stronghold fell in 1071 in Apulia, ending direct Greek speaking rule from Constantinople in the region.ĭark clouds have existed around the Greko since this act of betrayal by the Catholic Church and by the 1900s according to the older members of the community we met on our travels, it had become somewhat embarrassing for some to openly speak their dialect. This lasted until just a few hundred years ago, when in the 1500s the Catholic Church took over Constantinople’s aligned churches. And to this day, there are remnants of an ancient Greek minority who continue to speak and live like a Greek in what is a foreign, and at times hostile, environment.įor any visitor to Calabria, Sicily or Apulia today, it is hard to fathom that the region had the Greek language at its core, yet in ancient and Byzantine times, Magna Graecia was as Greek as Athens, Constantinople, Cyprus, and Macedonia. ![]() The Greeks of the area once dominated the economy, social and political life through their overwhelming numbers, commercial dominance and achievements in mathematics, science and philosophy. ![]() The city of Neapolis, straits of Syracuse, the shores of Brindisi, and the harbour of Otranto were all part of Magna Graecia, which was made up of hundreds of cities, towns, villages and settlements established by Hellenes from Ionia, Athens, and Corinth to name a few. Meaning ‘Greater Greece’ in Latin, it was arguably the first use of the term ‘Greece’ anywhere in the world – even in modern day Greece itself – for a large collection of Greek speaking cities. The lake is perhaps greatly reduced in size, but the history and Greek soul have had a significant ripple effect across southern Italy, a region once known as Magna Graecia. When I met up with him again in Reggio di Calabria recently, Pasquale made a similar comment to me.Ĭalabria, being the home of the onetime formidable ‘Greek lake’, is a place with a Hellenic heartbeat and soul with almost 3,000 years of Greek history. ![]() This was a comment made to me by Calabrian doctor and one time Canadian resident, Dr Pasquale Poriglia in 2002 as he translated on behalf of his friend and Greko speaker, Carmelo Nucera. Calabria was once a Greek lake, where one could not move around, nor through the entire south of Italy, without being able to speak the Greko language. ![]()
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