COMENIUS

«GREEK AND ITALIAN CIVILIZATIONS:

RUINS, MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS»

PART A

This year the 2nd Gymnasium of Heraklion is having an educational journey of knowledge, cogitation and entertainment. It ambitiously intends to travel to places where the Greek element has been surviving since the 8th century BC, succeeding to keep the memories of a great nation alive; a nation which carried the torch of Greek spirit all over the world.

We will also step on the footprints in the sands of time of the Italian civilization. Italy is the wellspring of Western civilization and has been a world crossroads for over 2,000 years. Continuous learning, creativity, and technological advancement on the Italian peninsula have shaped virtually every aspect of Western culture.

Italy was home to many well-known and influential civilizations, including the Etruscan, Greek, and the Roman ones.

Italian civilization

Italian civilization From antiquity until the mid-17th century, Italy was

considered as the central place of Western culture and the starting point of worldwide phenomena such as the Roman Empire, Roman Catholic Church, and the Renaissance. During this period, Italy gave birth to a number of famous painters, sculptors, poets, musicians, mathematicians and architects that created a niche of their own in history.

Both the internal and external facets of Western culture were born on the Italian peninsula, whether one looks at the history of the Christian faith, civil institutions, philosophy, law, art, opera, science, or social customs and culture.

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi

finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios

temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.

seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,

quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare:

Tyrrhenum sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi

spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida

aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero

Quintus Horatius Flaccus

CARMEN 1.11

Do not ask, for it is forbidden to know, Leuconoe,

what end the gods have given to me, or to you. Do not

try

the Babylonian numbers. It is better to suffer whatever

comes.

Perhaps Jupiter has allotted you many winters, or

perhaps

this is the last, which now wears the sea against the

rocks

of Etruria. Be wise, strain the wine, and for a brief hour

cut short long hopes. Even as we speak time flies

unbidden

Seize the day, not trusting in tomorrow.

Horace

Odes I.11

Transl. Mary L. J. McMenomy

Primo giorno in ItaliaL’ arrivo a Frosinone

FROSINONE

Frosinone is a town and commune in Lazio, in central Italy, the administrative seat of the Province of Frosinone. It is located about 75 km south-east of Rome. It is commonly identified as the capital of the geographical region of Ciociaria.

Frosinone is the place where the “Istituto Comprensivo 1°, our partner school, is located and also the place of our destination for the next ten days.

FROSINONE

FROSINONE

FROSINONE

ANCIENT ROME Ancient Rome was an Italic civilization

that began growing on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world.

In its approximately twelve centuries of existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an aristocratic republic and to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate Southern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa, parts of Northern Europe, and parts of Eastern Europe. Rome was preponderant throughout the Mediterranean region and was one of the most powerful entities of the ancient world. It is often grouped into "Classical Antiquity" together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world.

ANCIENT ROME

ROME “The Eternal City„ with

the great history and the unique monuments, has offered a lot to the science, culture and arts.

Rome was supposedly founded in 753 BC and ever since has been the capital of the Roman Empire, one of the main centres of Christianity, the home of the Roman Catholic Church and the seat of the Italian Republic.

Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Vittoriano Monument

Pantheon

Roman Forum

Colosseum

View of Rome from the Dome of St. Peter's Basilica

Trevi Fountain

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is a large archeological site, close to the modern suburb of Ostia (Rome). "Ostia" in Latin means "mouth". At the mouth of the River Tiber, Ostia was Rome's seaport, but due to silting the site now lies 3 km from the sea. The site is noted for the excellent preservation of its ancient buildings, magnificent frescoes and impressive mosaics.

Ostia may have been Rome's first colony.

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica

Magna Graecia

Magna Graecia

Magna Graecia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers who began arriving in the 8th century B.C. It extends from Cumae (Ancient Greek Kyme), the first Greek colony, to the south coasts of Italy and the island of Sicily. The colonists brought with them the Greek way of living and thinking, enriched it and consequently spread it in all the known Mediterranean Basin. A journey to Magna Graecia is an exploration of the Mediterranean civilization which gave birth to the greatest civilizations of the world.

CUMAE (KYME) Cumae was the first ancient

Greek settlement on Italian mainland (Magna Graecia). It is said to have been founded in the 8th century B.C. by Euboean Greek settlers who had already colonized the island of Ischia. It is located northwest of Naples. The colony was also the entry point in the Italian peninsula for the Euboean alphabet, the local variant of the Greek alphabet used by its colonists, a variant of which was adapted and modified by the Etruscans and then by the Romans and became the Latin alphabet.

CUMAE (KYME)

CUMAE was the seat of the Cumaean Sibyl. The Sybil was a prophetic priestess sacred to the Greek god Apollo. The Cumaean Sibyl prophesied by “singing the fates” and writing on oak leaves. These would be arranged inside the entrance of her cave but, if the wind blew and scattered them, she would not help to reassemble the leaves to form the original prophecy again.

CUMAE (KYME) CUMAE became a sacred place in Roman

mythology according to Virgil’s tales. The Sibyl was a guide to the underworld (Hades), its entry being at the nearby crater of Avernus. Aeneas employed her services before his descent to the lower world to visit his dead father Anchises, but she warned him that it was no light undertaking:

“Trojan, Anchises' son, the descent of Avernus is easy.

All night long, all day, the doors of Hades stand open.

But to retrace the path, to come up to the sweet air of

heaven, That is labour indeed.” (Aeneid 6.126-129.)

Ruins of the Temple of Apollo, Cumae Archaeological Park

Cumae ruins Jupiter´s Temple

Pompeii The town was founded around the

7th–6th century BC by the Osci or Oscans. It had already been used as a safe port by Greek and Phoenician sailors. Pompeii was captured for the first time by the Greek colony of Cumae, allied with Syracuse. Romans took control of Pompeii around 200 BC. On August 24, 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted, burying the nearby town of Pompeii in ash and soot, killing 20,000 people, and preserving the city in its state from that fateful day. Pompeii was lost for about 1500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599.

Pompeii

While some people fell dead on the spot, several others died at exit points, trying to escape from the killer lava. As if this was not enough, the torrent of the lava was followed by the flowing of white ash from the volcano, which systematically covered the lava like a topping of snow. Entire families, homes, streets, buildings, animals, verily the entire city was buried underneath the layers of hot ash and lava.

Pompeii

Pompeii ruins

Pompeii The ancient theatre

PAESTUM (POSEIDONIA)

Paestum is the classical Roman name of a major Greco-Roman city in the Campania region of Italy. It was founded around the end of the 7th century BC by colonists from the Greek city of Sybaris, and originally was known as POSEIDONIA.

Paestum (Poseidonia)

Temple of Hera (Basilica)

Temple of Hera

Temple of Athena

Poseidonians The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language

after so many centuries of minglingwith Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.The only thing surviving from their ancestors

was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.

And it was their habit toward the festival’s endto tell each other about their ancient customs

and once again to speak Greek namesthat only a few of them still recognized.

And so their festival always had a melancholy endingbecause they remembered that they too were Greeks,

they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia;and how low they’d fallen now, what they’d become,

living and speaking like barbarians,cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.

C. P. Cavafy

Sicily A great many mythological

characters visited or lived in Sicily: Persephone was abducted by Hades near Etna in the Sicilian hinterland, Arethusa, originally an Arcadian nymph, fled the amorous advances of the river God Alpheios and ended up as a spring in Siracuse, Charybdis, the water sucking daughter of Poseidon created the dangerous whirlpools that almost sank Odysseus while passing through the Straits of Messina, Hephaestus was believed (at least by Greeks in the Sicilian colonies of Magna Grecia) to have his forge in Mount Etna, and Aiolos, the God of Winds resided in the Aeolian Islands.

Giardini Naxos

Naxos was an ancient Greek colony of Sicily. It founded colonies of its own and it was known as a religion center of the God Apollo.

Giardini Naxos is a commune in the Province of Messina. It is situated on the coast of the Ionian Sea on a bay which lies between Cape Taormina and Cape Schisò. Today it is a popular seaside resort.

Giardini Naxos

Giardini Naxos

Taormina

Taormina is a commune and small town on the east coast of the island of Sicily, in the Province of Messina.

Taormina's area was inhabited by the Siculi even before the Greeks arrived on the Sicilian coast in 734 BC to found a town called Naxos. The theory that Tauromenion was founded by colonists from Naxos is confirmed by Strabo and other ancient writers.

Taormina

Taormina piazza Nove Aprile

Teatro Greco

AGRIGENTO (AKRAGAS)

Agrigento is a city on the southern coast of Sicily and the capital of the province of Agrigento. It is renowned as the site of the ancient Greek city of AKRAGAS.

Pindarus praised Akragas as “the most beautiful of the mortal cities”. It was the home of artists, philosophers, and important men of the ancient period

The Valley of the Temples is one of the most outstanding examples of Magna Graecia art and architecture, and is one of the main attractions of Sicily as well as a national monument of Italy.

AGRIGENTO (AKRAGAS)

AGRIGENTOTemple of Concordia at Night

Agrigento The Temple of Hera at Night

Agrigento Temple of the Dioscuri

(Castor and Pollux)

Agrigento Remains of the Temple of Hercules

AGRIGENTO Remains of one atlas in the Olympeion field

Piazza Armerina

Piazza Armerina is an Italian commune in the province of Enna of Sicily. The town is famous chiefly for its Roman mosaics in the Villa Romana del Casale.

Villa Romana del Casale is a Roman villa built in the first quarter of the 4th century and located about 3 km outside the town of Piazza Armerina. Containing the richest, largest and most complex collection of Roman mosaics in the world, it is one of THE UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy.

Piazza Armerina

Villa Romana del Casale.

Villa Romana di Casale The "bikini girls" mosaic, showing women playing sports

SIRACUSE Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the

capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek history, culture, theatres, architecture, and as the birthplace of the preeminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in ancient times, when it was one of the major powers of the Mediterranean world. Syracuse is located in the southeast corner of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Syracuse next to the Ionian Sea.

The city was founded by Ancient Greek Corinthians and became a very powerful city-state. Syracuse was allied with Sparta and Corinth, exerting influence over the entire Magna Graecia area of which it was the most important city. Once described by Cicero as "the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all", it later became part of the Roman Republic and Byzantine Empire.

SIRACUSE

SIRACUSE

SIRACUSE

SIRACUSE Piazza Duomo.

The ancient Greek theatre in Siracuse

Archimedes lever

Noto

Noto is famous for its fine buildings of the early 18th century, considered among the main masterpieces in the Sicilian baroque style. It is a place of many religious buildings and several palaces.

Noto

CATANIA Catania is the second biggest town

in Sicily. Catania is nearby Etna. It was founded in 729 B.C. by colonists from the Greek city of Naxos (Sicily), under the guidance of a leader named Euarchus.

Catania is known for its seismic history, having been destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake in 1169, another in 1693, and several volcanic eruptions from the neighboring Mount Etna volcano, the most violent of which was in 1669.

One of the most important monument in Catania is the ancient theatre.

CATANIA

CATANIA Piazza Duomo

CATANIA

CATANIA: View from the port and volcano Etna

Mount Etna It is an active volcano in Sicily. It is the tallest active volcano in Europe.

EtnaSnowy Etna, nurse of biting snow all year

round,from whose depths belch forth holiest springsof unapproachable fire; during the days rivers

of lavapour forth a blazing stream

of smoke, but in times of darknessa rolling red flame carries rocks into the deep

expanse of the sea with a crash.That monster sends up most terrible springs

of Hephaistos’ fire — a portentwondrous to behold.

Pindar, Pythian Ode I, lines 15-27

Crotone

Crotone is a city and commune in Calabria, southern Italy, on the Ionian Sea coast. It was founded in 710 B.C. appr. as the Achaean colony of Croton. Pythagoras the Greek Philosopher founded his school, the Pythagoreans, at Croton in 530 B.C. Among his pupils were the early medical theorist Alcmaeon of Croton and the philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Philolaus. Its inhabitants were famous for their physical strength and for the simple sobriety of their lives. From 588 B.C. onwards, Croton produced many generations of victors in the Olympics and the other Panhellenic Games, the most famous of whom was Milo of Croton.

Crotone

Crotone castle

CrotoneTemple of Hera Lacinia (Capo Colonna)

Other worth seeing cities or places of Magna Graecia that are closely related to the history of the two neighbouring countries

Napoli

It is the capital of Campania and the third-largest municipality in Italy, after Rome and Milan.

In the 8th century B.C., a settlement called Parthenope was founded by settlers from Cumae in the Naples region. In the 6th century B.C., after the decline of Parthenope, the new urban zone of Neápolis was founded, eventually becoming one of the foremost cities of Magna Graecia, playing a key role in the merging of Greek culture into Roman society and eventually becoming a cultural centre of the Roman Republic.

Napoli

Napoli Piazza plebiscito

Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae.

Elea

Velia is the Italian (and Latin) name of the ancient town of Elea located in Campania region. Originally it was founded by the Greeks as Hyele in Magna Graecia around 538–535 BC. It is best known as the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, as well as the Eleatic school of which they were a part.

The Eleatics were a school of pre-Socratic philosophers. The group was founded in the early fifth century B.C. by Parmenides. Other members of the school were Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Xenophanes is sometimes included in the list, though there is some dispute over this.

Parmenides

EleaRuins of the Greek theatre

TARANTO

Taranto was founded in 706 BC by Dorian Greek immigrants as the only Spartan colony. Its origin is peculiar: the founders were Partheniae ("sons of virgins"), sons of unmarried Spartan women and Perioeci (free men, but not citizens of Sparta). The Partheniae arrived in Apulia, and founded the city, naming it Taras after the son of the Greek sea god, Poseidon, and of a local nymph, Satyrion.

Taranto increased its power, becoming a commercial power and a sovereign city of Magna Graecia, ruling over the Greek colonies in southern Italy. Its independence and power came to an end as the Romans expanded throughout Italy.

TARANTO

TARANTO

Calabria Calabria is a region in southern Italy,

located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro. The most populated city and the seat of the Calabrian Regional Council, however, is Reggio. It is bounded to the north by the region of Basilicata, to the south-west by the region of Sicily, to the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and to the east by the Ionian Sea.

In ancient times the region was the focus of powerful and prosperous Greek colonization, notably at Crotone, Sybaris, and Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria)

Calabria

CalabriaDancing Tarantella

Sybaris

Sybaris was a Greek colony on the western shore of the Gulf of Taranto in Calabria, at the very southern end of the Italian peninsula. Enjoying an excellent weather, surrounded by fertile land, and extremely wealthy due to its busy port, the city's level of prosperity was vast, and its inhabitants were famous for their hedonism, feasts, and excesses, to the extent that "sybarite" and "sybaritic" have become bywords for opulent luxury and outrageous pleasure seeking.

Sybaris

Thurii

Thurii,  also called by some Latin writers Thurium, was a city of Magna Graecia, situated on the Tarentine gulf, within a short distance of the site of Sybaris, whose place it may be considered as having taken. The ruins of the city can be found in the Sybaris archaeological park near Sibari in the Province of Cosenza Calabria.

Thurii was one of the latest of all the Greek colonies in this part of Italy, not having been founded until nearly 70 years after the fall of Sybaris.

Lokri Locri is a town and commune

(municipality) in the province of Reggio Calabria. The name derives from the ancient Greek town Locris.

Epizephyrian Locris (from Greek epi-Zephyros, "under the West Wind")was founded about 680 BC on the Italian shore of the Ionian Sea, near modern Capo Zefirio, by the Locrians, apparently by Opuntii (East Locrians) from the city of Opus, but including Ozolae (West Locrians) and Lacedaemonians. Strabo suggests that it was the Ozolae who were the main founders.

LokriPinax of Persephone and Hades

Reggio di Calabria After Cumae, Reggio is one of the oldest

Greek colonies in southern Italy. The colony was settled by the inhabitants of Chalcis in 720 B.C. on the site of the older settlement, Erythrà , meaning "the Red one".

It is the oldest city in the region, and despite its ancient foundation – Ρήγιον was an important and flourishing colony of Magna Graecia - it boasts a modern urban system, set up after the catastrophic earthquake on December 28, 1908, which destroyed most of the city.

Reggio, with Naples and Taranto, is home to one of the most important archaeological museums, the prestigious National Archaeological Museum of Magna Græcia, dedicated to Ancient Greece.

Reggio di Calabria

Palermo Palermo is the capital of Sicily

and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Palermo is located in the northwest of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The city was founded in 734 BC by the Phoenicians as Ziz. The Greeks, who were the most dominant culture on the island of Sicily due to the powerful city state of Syracuse to the east, instead called the settlement Panormus because of its fine natural harbor.

Palermo

Messina Founded by Greek colonists in the

8th century BC, Messina was originally called Zancle, from the Greek: ζάγκλον meaning "scythe" because of the shape of its natural harbor.

In the early 5th century BC, Anaxilas of Rhegium renamed it Messene in honour of the Greek city Messene.

Messina is the capital of the Italian province of Messina and the third largest city on the island of Sicily. It is located near the northeast corner of Sicily, at the Strait of Messina, just opposite Villa San Giovanni on the mainland.

Messina

Megara Hyblaea

It was unquestionably a Greek colony, deriving its origin from the Megara in Greece; and the circumstances attending its foundation are related in detail by Thucydides .

Megara Hyblaea

Lentini

Lentini, historically Leontini or Leontium, is a town and commune in the Province of Syracuse, southeast Sicily.

The ancient city was founded as Leontini by colonists from Naxos in 729 B.C.

It is virtually the only Greek settlement in Sicily not located on the coast, being some 6 miles inland.

Lentini

Gela

The city was founded around 688 BC by colonists from Rhodos (Rhodes) and Crete, 45 years after the founding of Syracuse. The city was named after the river Gela.

Aeschylus died in this city in 456 BC. The inscription on Aeschylus's gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:

“Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian,

who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela;

of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak,

and the long-haired Persian knows it well”.

Gela

Heraclea Minoa

It was an ancient Greek city, situated on the southern coast of Sicily at the mouth of the river Halycus.

Its ruins are now found near a modern town of the same name in the commune Montallegro in Italy. Archaeological finds suggest that it was founded in the middle of the 6th century BC, and was abandoned around the beginning of the 1st century AD.

Heraclea Minoa

Selinunte

Selinunte was one of the most important ancient Greek city on the southern coast of Sicily. It was situated between the valleys of the Belice and Modione rivers. The archaeological site contains five temples centered on an acropolis. Of the five temples, only the Temple of Hera, also known as "Temple E", has been re-erected.

Selinunte

SelinunteTemple of Hera

 

Himera Himera was an important ancient

Greek city of Sicily, situated on the north coast of the island, at the mouth of the river of the same name (the modern Grande), between Panormus (modern Palermo) and Cephaloedium (modern Cefalù). Its remains lie within the borders of the modern commune of Termini Imerese.

Himera was a colony of Zancle, but Thucydides tells us that, with the emigrants from Zancle, who were of Chalcidic origin, were mingled a number of Syracusan exiles, the consequence of which was, that, though the institutions of the new city were Chalcidic, its dialect had a mixture of Doric.

Himera

Termini Imerese

At this point, the first part of our educational program “Greek and Italian civilization”, which began in our schools in September 2012, comes to an end. All of us, students and teachers, who had eagerly anticipated for this journey to occur, are happy to say that this whole experience was beyond all our expectations. So filled with creativity, experience, and indelible memories, we come back more experienced and at the same time more conscious citizens of a world without cultural boundaries. We had the opportunity of stepping on the footprints in the sands of time of the two civilizations, the Greek and Italian one, where they lived together in harmony and their “syncretism” has been creating across the ages reciprocal influences and eternal bonds between the two neighbouring countries.

We will continue the second part of our program during the next school year (2013-2014), passing from Rome to Athens, the two eternal cities, going to Gortys, the capital of Crete during the Roman Period (Greece), and ending our cultural journey in Candia - Chandax, the capital of Crete during Venetian Period (Heraklion - Greece).