How the Greeks gave Italy its name

The name “Italy” stems from the Greek Italos, a legendary king of the Oenotrians and leader of Greeks who inhabited a territory from Paestum in Campania to southern Calabria, among the earliest inhabitants of the peninsula.

Italus was supposedly the son of Penelope and Telegonus, a son of Odysseus. Aristotle and Thucydides first told of Italus, after whom Italy was named.

The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region covering most of Southern Italy, but it was during the 1st century BC that Augustus expanded the name to cover the entire peninsula, including the Alps.

The Greeks referred to these people as Italoi. Under Emperor Diocletian, the Roman region called Italia was further expanded to include the islands of Sicily (including the Maltese archipelago), Sardinia and Corsica.

Another reason for the name might be the Greek word Aethalia, which means “land of fog and smoke” and refers to its many volcanoes. Mount Etna gets its name from the same etymological root.

The article first appeared on Leonidas of Sparta Original. 

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