In the course of researching and then editing my latest novel, “Q.Fulvius: I Called You Brother” a couple of thoughts repeatedly ran through my mind. The first was “will this ever be done?!?” But the second, slightly more useful thought, was a recognition of just how much Greek influence was exerted upon early Rome.
Okay, okay, so most people don’t really worry about such things, I accept that. But much of the story this time around takes place in southern Italy after Hannibal’s victory over the Romans at Cannae in 216 BC. The more time I spent rooting around the ancient historical records related to the cities and areas near the heel of Italy’s boot, the more I kept running into Greek cities, Greek temples and gods, and Greek people. In short, I’d stumbled upon Greek culture, alive and well in southern Italy. While I knew there’d been a ton of influence on the young Roman republic, it hadn’t really sunk in until then that the source of that influence lay within Italy itself and didn’t necessarily need to be brought wholesale from Greece proper.
Traders, educators, even slaves, the great cities of southern Italy—to include Naples, Taranto, and Brindisi—had been founded by Greek colonists hundreds of years prior. In fact, it was precisely these Greek cities, fearing Roman encroachment, which had requested the assistance of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 282 BC. This, of course, led to the latter’s invasion and subsequent romp around southern Italy and Sicily. Never heard of him? I’m betting you actually have. Ever heard the term “Pyrrhic Victory”? That’s the guy…one of the earliest military leaders reported by historians to have won every battle he fought, yet still lost the war. I’ve written about his exploits in a previous posting, “Defining Success: Pyrrhus Style”.
Regardless, the plucky little republic’s stubbornness, exhibiting an apparent willingness to repeatedly bash its rhetorical face into the wall until the stones cracked, did eventually force Pyrhus to withdraw his forces from Italy in 275 BC. While I knew that, I guess I sort of assumed the Italian Greeks who’d brought him there had simply packed up and gone home afterward, leaving Italy to the Romans, Samnites, Etruscans, and Gauls still vying for supremacy.
But the more I dug the more I found that these cities, Roman or at least Latin Colonies by the time of “The Fulvius Chronicles” in 216 BC, were still more Greek than Roman. City names and prominent locations within them remained Greek. The foods the citizens there consumed were more Greek than Roman. Even bathhouses—famous as they were in Rome—remained in the Greek style throughout much of southern Italy, noticeably different than they were back in the Eternal City.
On the one hand this was great news, as for a novel of this size I was fast running out of Roman names for characters. There are really only a dozen or so commonly used names in the Roman naming lexicon, and I was already feeling the pinch. The Greeks, however, seem to have an endless supply of names from which to draw upon, making that part of things so much easier.
On the other hand, I’d spent years—really since 2015—studying early Roman architecture, eating and drinking habits, social conventions and . . . well . . . culture in general. This, I found to my surprise, was just different, and had to be treated as such. That revelation partly explains the extra time needed to bring this one to print . . . though having a busy day job doesn’t exactly help! Still, the reference books I’d relied upon for two previous works in the series proved of little use for this one, and Amazon benefitted once more from my misfortune.
The really crazy thing was, the Greek influence didn’t stop there. Since this story covers a lot of ground geographically speaking, I kept tripping across references to Greek colonies in Sicily, Corsica, and southern Gaul in what is now France. While I was certainly familiar with the Greek influence on Sicily, and vaguely aware of a Greek presence at Massalia (modern day Marseille), reference to an abandoned Greek colony on the island of Corsica surprised me. Greek colonists founded Massalia around 600 BC, nearly four centuries prior to the Second Punic War that serves as backdrop to “The Fulvius Chronicles”. To drive things home a little further, that’s nearly a hundred years before the Romans expelled their last king and founded a republic.
The truth of the matter is that by 550 BC Greek cities had colonized tremendous swaths of land all around the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Far from being limited to southern Italy, Greek influence was being felt as far away as modern Spain in the west, Libya and Egypt to the south, Cyprus to the east, and nearly the entire coastline of the Black Sea and sea of Azov to the north. They were . . . well . . . everywhere.
So, the next time you visit your local Mediterranean restaurant, ordering a MacSouflaki with cheese, or ten-piece calamari nuggets, bear in mind that the food you’re consuming alongside your Diet Coke has a long and glorious history all its own. Once upon a time the Greeks cornered the market on fusion products, ensuring an entry-level influence upon so much of our modern lives that we can all easily say—almost no matter the topic—that “it’s all Greek to me.”
M. G. Haynes