Fra presenza e progetto: le subcolonie del versante tirrenico dell’Italìa

The paper examines the Greek secondary colonial foundations on the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy, from southern Campania to Calabria (ancient Italy), with the aim of identifying the specificity of the settlement processes and valorising their exemplarity in relation to the different historical contexts. The focus is on the different settlements created by the Locrians in extreme Calabria and by the Achaean cities, Sybaris and Croton. In the first group, the methods of settlement and organisation show rel- evant links with the experience of the Locrian ethnos in the motherland. They realised a model of cooperation that was to be maintained for a long time, but without, at least in the first phases, paying particular at- tention to the ‘form’ of the city. On the other hand, as far as the Achaeans were concerned, Sybaris founded its first secondary apoikìai, Metapontum and Poseidonia, promoting real projects of autonomous political communities capable of supporting, on territorial and mythical-genealogical grounds, the creation of the identity of ‘Achaean’ Italìa. However, this is not a unique and always recurring model, as is shown by the fact that the Achaean colonial metropolises, both Sybaris and Croton, at different times and in different historical circumstances, founded secondary colonies with very different settlement patterns, with less territorial impact and urbanistic commitment, and even almost mimetic with the settlements of the local populations.