[Graymatter]

I tend to think of Sicily as the heart of Magna Graecia, the great economic pump that nourished the whole.
Part of the problem, I think, is the historians' perspective. Few writers look at MG as such, or define the trade- and culture-connected colonies as a single phenomenon. No one ruler stands out; no precise territory in the modern sense, just a range, a "sphere of influence" if you will. MG was not a political phenomenon, not a state, not a nation, and few historians have as much grasp of trade as they have of politics. Every library has books on Rome, on Greece---they had their turf and their wars and their documentable wins and losses. You'll look a long time before you find a book on Magna Graecia.

[wildandcrazyrussian]

Nice article. Also, wasn't the Crimea in southern Russia/Ukraine a Greek colony back then , as well as the whole western coast of the Black Sea? I think I remember reading that Prince Vladimir (of the 988 conversion of Russia to Orthodoxy) was actually baptized in a Greek church in the Crimea.