An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic civilisations. With this colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. The ancient geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia and Calabria - Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of Italy Magna Graecia (Latin, “Great Greece”), since it was so densely inhabited by the Greeks. They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. Also during this period, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea, Eastern Libya and Massalia (Marseille). In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, for various reasons, including demographic crises (famine, overcrowding, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in southern Italy (Cerchiai, pp. 14–18).

Main article: Greek colonies ('apoikiai')

Magna graecia shipwrecks