Italy

Definition

The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe (the other two being the Iberian Peninsula and Balkan Peninsula), spanning 1,000 km from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula is bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west, the Ionian Sea on the south, and the Adriatic Sea on the east. The interior part of the Apennine Peninsula consists of the Apennine Mountains, from which it takes its name, the northern part is largely plains and the coasts are lined with cliffs.

Excavations throughout Italy reveal a modern human presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago. In the 8th and 7th centuries BC Greek colonies were established all along the coast of Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. Subsequently, Romans referred to this area as Magna Graecia, as it was so densely inhabited by Greeks. Ancient Rome was at first a small agricultural community founded circa the 8th century BC that grew over the course of the centuries into a colossal empire encompassing the whole Mediterranean Sea, in which Ancient Greek and Roman cultures merged into one civilization.

This civilization was so influential that parts of it survive in modern law, administration, philosophy and arts, forming the ground that Western civilization is based upon. In its twelve-century existence, it transformed itself from monarchy to republic and finally to autocracy. In steady decline since the 2nd century AD, the empire finally broke into two parts in 285 AD: the Western Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire in the East. The western part under the pressure of Goths finally dissolved, leaving the Italian peninsula divided into small independent kingdoms and feuding city states for the next 14 centuries, and leaving the eastern part sole heir to the Roman legacy.

Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 license. Last reviewed by Jan van der Crabben on 28 April 2011. Please help and improve this definition!

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Articles

• The Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study

  The origins of the Etruscans, a non-Indo-European population of preclassical Italy, are unclear. There is broad agreement that their culture developed locally, but the Etruscans’ evolutionary and migrational relationships are largely unknown. In this study, we determined mitochondrial DNA sequences...

• Gods and Places in Etruscan Religion

  The ancient Romans took every precaution in their prayers or rituals to ensure that their deities were addressed by name or generically as a divine spirit, or numen. In many matters of ritual and tradition they acknowledged their dependence on Etruscan practices, Etrusca disciplina. The Etruscans were...

• Roman Healing Spas in Itaiy: A Study in Design and Function

  A spa is defined as a bathing establishment which used thermal-mineral spring water for therapeutic purposes. Although the topics of bathing and medicine in the Roman world have received considerable attention, thermal-mineral spas have remained inadequately studied. Recent research acknowledges...

Illustrations

Italy Books

• The Tragedy of Julius Caesar William Shakespeare LeClue (25 January 2008) Currently unavailable

• Livy: The Early History of Rome, Books I-V Titus Livy Penguin Classics (25 June 2002) Price: $10.88

• Rome Amanda Claridge Oxford University Press, USA (30 September 2010) Price: $23.07

• The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures Anonymous Princeton University Press (08 November 2010) Price: $29.41

• Religions of Rome: Volume 2: A Sourcebook Mary Beard Cambridge University Press (28 June 1998) Price: $32.17