Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • The ancient Greek seaport colonies of southern Italy and Sicily from the eighth to the fourth century BC. Cumae and Tarantum (modern Taranto) remained significant after the decline of the other colonies.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun The coastal parts of Sicily and southern Italy once colonized by Greek settlers

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Meanwhile other Greek cities had established colonies around the western shores of the Mediterranean, the densest region of settlement being in southern Italy and Sicily, which became known as Magna Graecia, or Great Greece.

    'Aladdin's Lamp' 2009

  • He would appear to have been active in Magna Graecia, that is, the Greek-speaking regions of southern Italy, during the mid-fifth century B.C.

    Zeno of Elea Palmer, John 2008

  • And this is the country called Magna Graecia in former times.

    Procopius History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. Procopius

  • Their colonies here came to be known as Magna Graecia, or Great Greece.

    Early European History Hutton Webster

  • Not only did the Tarentines revolt from us and the whole of that coastal district of Italy called Magna Graecia, which you would naturally suppose would follow a leader of the same language and nationality as themselves, but the Lucanians, the Bruttians and the Samnites did the same.

    The History of Rome, Vol. IV 1905

  • [45] He appears to have spent the latter half of his life in that part of Italy, called Magna Graecia, so denominated in some degree from the numerous colonies of Grecians by whom it was planted, and partly perhaps from the memory of the illustrious things which

    Lives of the Necromancers William Godwin 1796

  • What, in particular, with Smyrna, the second city of the Ottoman Empire and the first of 'Magna Graecia'?

    The Balkans A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey Nevill Forbes 1906

  • At the sign of "Magna Graecia" one is willing to accept "hydroelectropathic" as a late echo of Hellenic speech.

    By the Ionian Sea George Gissing 1880

  • The rape of the Sabine women may reflect a common practice on the part of migratory males; the Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean was almost all male, so the subsequent generations were biologically the products of Greek men and native women (though culturally they were fully Greek, as evidenced by the term "Magna Graecia" to refer to Sicily and southern Italy).

    Discover Blogs 2010

  • A team of researchers, at The Babraham Institute, United Kingdom, and the University of Catanzaro "Magna Graecia", Italy, has now provided insight into this issue by studying both human metastatic melanomas (aggressive forms of skin cancer that have spread to other sites) and spontaneous mouse melanomas.

    unknown title 2009

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