Italy wrote Greek.[1] Strabo († c. A.D. 24) says that the people of Calabria are Greek in language, but in other things Roman.[2] Yet, from the time of Augustus and so during the first six Christian centuries, there was undoubtedly a considerable Latin element in Southern Italy and Sicily and growing latinization. Morisani says that he has found many Latin, but no Greek Christian inscriptions in Bruttii (Calabria).[3] The Latin element was advancing; but the Greek element never died out. It was reinforced by later events.
When the centre of the Empire was moved to Constantinople this made no change to the Greeks of Lower Italy, or, rather, it confirmed their hellenism. These people looked to Constantinople as easily as to Rome for the centre of government. Only the change was the beginning of a gradual hellenization of the Roman Government itself, so that when that change had taken place the Greeks of Lower Italy found themselves under the rule of men of their own language. Now the governors sent to rule them from the capital were Greeks like themselves. The transfer of the seat of government to Constantinople did not mean to the people of Lower Italy any of that loss of influence, that sense of being subject to a foreign power that in time it meant to those of the North and of Rome. The Italian and Sicilian Greeks were zealously loyal to the Byzantine Government, more so than they had been to the rule of Latins in Rome; they felt themselves of one race with their rulers, all the more when barbarians, neither Greeks nor Romans in any sense, began to invade and plunder their land.
The first of these invasions was that of the Goths.[4] Theodoric brought his East Goths into Italy in 489; in 493 he defeated and slew Odouaker, and became the supreme authority over the whole peninsula and Sicily. But this did
- ↑ There are some of less importance who wrote Latin, such as Julius Firmicus Maternus (fourth century in Sicily). John di Giovanni, Canon of Palermo (see p. 73, n. 1), is anxious to make out that all Sicily was Latin till the eighth century, though he admits that Greek was used also, in private life. See his work, "De diuinis Siculorum Officiis" (Palermo, 1736), cap. iv, pp. 23-33.
- ↑ Strabonis "Geographica," L. vi, cap. i, § 2 (ed. Teubner, vol. i, p. 348).
- ↑ Morisani, "De Protopapis" (Naples, 1768), p. 158, n. 42.
- ↑ The Vandals plundered Sicily in 439-440, and again in 455 and 461. They devastated the country and persecuted the Catholics; but they made no permanent occupation. B. Pace, "I Barbari e i Bizantini in Sicilia" (Rome, 1911), pp. 5-16. Lancia di Brolo, "Storia della Chiesa in Sicilia" (Palermo, 2 vols., 1880-1884), i, cap. xii, pp. 257-287.
