The Italiotes (Ancient Greek: Ἰταλιῶται, Italiōtai) were the pre-Roman Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula, between Naples and Calabria.
Greek colonisation of the coastal areas of southern Italy and Sicily started in the 8th century BC and, by the time of the Roman ascendance, the area was so extensively hellenized that Romans called it Magna Graecia, that is "Greater Greece".
Magna Graecia was the historical Greek-speaking area of southern Italy. It encompassed the modern Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were extensively settled by Greeks beginning in the 8th century BC.
Initially founded by their metropoleis (mother cities), the settlements evolved into independent and powerful Greek city-states (poleis). The settlers brought with them Hellenic civilization, which over time developed distinct local forms due to both their distance from Greece and the influence of the indigenous peoples of southern Italy. This interaction left a lasting imprint on Italy, including on Roman culture. The Greek settlers also influenced native groups such as the Sicels and the Oenotrians, many of whom adopted Greek culture and became Hellenized. In areas like architecture and urban planning, the colonies sometimes surpassed the achievements of the motherland. The ancient inhabitants of Magna Graecia are referred to as Italiotes and Siceliotes.
The etymology of the name of Italy has been the subject of reconstructions by linguists and historians. Considerations extraneous to the specifically linguistic reconstruction of the name have formed a rich corpus of solutions that are either associated with legend (the existence of a king named Italus) or in any case strongly problematic (such as the connection of the name with the grape vine, vitis in Latin).
One theory is that the name derives from the word Italói, a term with which the ancient Greeks designated a tribe of Sicels who had crossed the Strait of Messina and who inhabited the extreme tip of the Italic Peninsula, near today's Catanzaro. This is attested by the fact that the ancient Greek peoples who colonized present-day Calabria, referred to themselves as Italiotes, that is, inhabitants of Italy. This group of Italian people had worshiped the simulacrum of a calf (vitulus, in Latin), and the name would therefore mean "inhabitants of the land of calves (young bulls)". In any case, it is known that in archaic times the name indicated the part located in the extreme south of the Italian Peninsula.
Publius Valerius Laevinus was Roman consul in 280 BC. A patrician, his plebeian colleague was Tiberius Coruncanius. During his consulship he was assigned to southern Italy to conduct the Pyrrhic War against Pyrrhus of Epirus.
Moving south, he fortified Roman lines of communication in southern Italy by garrisoning hostile Lucania with allied troops. He also Pyrrhus' attempts to insert himself as arbitrator of Rome's dispute with the Italiote city of Tarentum. In the summer, Laevinus engaged Pyrrhus at Heraclea with both generals commanding roughly 20,000 men. The resulting battle, however, was a Roman defeat which forced Laevinus to withdraw northwards across the Apennines into Campania. Reinforced with two freshly raised legions, he was able to deter Pyrrhus' pursuit and with the Epirotes' lack of siege equipment force them to withdraw south.