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Multi-color map of northern Italy
Map of ancient Lucania

Lucania (Greek: , translit. Leukanía, lit. "Lefkanía (Modern Greek)") was a historical region of Southern Italy. It was the land of the Lucani, an Oscan people. It extended from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Gulf of Taranto.

It bordered with Samnium and Campania in the north, Apulia in the east, and Bruttium in the south-west, at the tip of the peninsula which is now called Calabria. It thus comprised almost all the modern region of Basilicata, the southern part of the Province of Salerno (the Cilento area) and a northern portion of the Province of Cosenza.

The precise limits were the river Silarus in the north-west, which separated it from Campania, and the Bradanus, which flows into the Gulf of Taranto, in the east. The lower tract of the river Laus, which flows from a ridge of the Apennine Mountains to the Tyrrhenian Sea in an east-west direction, marked part of the border with Bruttium.


Almost the whole area is occupied by the Apennine Mountains, which here are an irregular group of lofty masses. The main ridge approaches the western sea, and continues from the lofty knot of mountains on the frontiers of Samnium, in a mostly southerly direction, to within a few miles of the Gulf of Policastro. From then on it is separated from the sea by only a narrow interval until it enters Bruttium.

Just within the frontier of Lucania rises Monte Pollino, 7,325 ft (2,233 m), the highest peak in the southern Apennines. The mountains descend in a much more gradual slope to the coastal plain of the Gulf of Taranto. Thus the rivers which flow to the Tyrrhenian Sea are of little importance compared with those that descend towards the Gulf of Tarentum. Of these the most important are the Bradanus (Bradano), the Casuentus (Basento), the Aciris (Agri), and the Siris (Sinni).



There are several hypotheses on the origin of the name Lucania, inhabited by Lucani, an Osco-Samnite population from central Italy. Lucania might be derived from Greek , leukos meaning "white", cognate of Latin lux ("light"). According to another hypothesis, Lucania might be derived from Latin word lucus meaning "sacred wood" (cognate of lucere), or from Greek , lykos meaning "wolf".



A mounted Lucani warrior, fresco from a tomb of Paestum, Italy, c. 360 BC








Middle Ages

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Lucania fell to Odoacer and became part of the Kingdom of Italy before being turned into the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in 493 CE. Ostrogothic rule in the region was short lived however because due to Justinian's reconquest of Italy in the mid-Sixth century. The Byzantine conquest reintroduced Greeks and Greek culture to the region. In the early 7th, Byzantine rule was cut short as another Germanic people, the Lombards conquered Lucania from the Byzantines and became part of the Kingdom of the Lombards. In 774, after the Frankish invasion, Lucania became a part of the independent Duchy of Benevento and later, under Holy Roman Emperor Louis II, part of the Duchy was turned into the independent Principality of Salerno in 851.

In the late 10th century the Byzantines began to re-enter the region of Lucania forming the Catapanate of Italy with Salerno being granted autonomy. By the early 11th century the Byzantine revival in Lucania came with both a process of Hellenization and significant Greek migrations from southern and central Calabria and Salento, into regions such as Cilento. Lucania would remain largely Greek till the 12th century when a gradual process of Latinization would occur. By the 14th century, there were few Greek inhabitants as the majority had been assimilated.[3][4][5]

In the mid-11th century, Lucania was conquered by the Normans first becoming the County of Apulia and Calabria then becoming part of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. In 1194, Lucania would become part of the Holy Roman Empire under the Hohenstaufen dynasty. After that the Angevins would take control of Lucania in the mid-13th century before being part of the Kingdom of Aragon in the 14th century after the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

Cities and towns

A Lucani man riding a chariot, from a tomb in Paestum, Italy, 4th century BC





The Via Popilia traversed the district from north to south, entering it at the northwestern extremity; the Via Herculia, coming southwards from the Via Appia and passing through Potentia and Grumentum, joined the Via Popilia near the southwestern edge of the district: while another nameless road followed the east coast and other roads of less importance ran west from Potentia to the Via Popilia, northeast to the Via Appia and east from Grumentum to the coast at Heraclea.

Later use

The modern name Basilicata originates from the 10th century AD, when the area was under Byzantine control. During the early 19th century, during the Carbonari revolution of 1820-21, the region was renamed and divided into Eastern and Western Lucania (Lucania Orientale and Lucania Occidentale). From the latter half of the 19th century some residents campaigned to reinstate that name.

In 1932 the Fascist regime changed the name to Lucania, as part of its appropriation of symbols from the Roman Empire. After the end of the war and Italy's defeat, the new government restored the name of Basilicata to the province in 1947. In the late 20th century, Lucania was still in vernacular use as a synonym to Basilicata.[6]


  2. ^ Cassiodorus: Chapter 1, Backgrounds and Some Dates Archived 2005-05-10 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Loud, G. A. (2007). The Latin Church in Norman Italy. Cambridge University Press. p. 494. ISBN 978-0-521-25551-6. ISBN 0-521-25551-1" "At the end of the twelfth century ... While in Apulia Greeks were in a majority - and indeed present in any numbers at all - only in the Salento peninsula in the extreme south, at the time of the conquest they had an overwhelming preponderance in Lucania and central and southern Calabria, as well as comprising anything up to a third of the population of Sicily, concentrated especially in the north-east of the island, the Val Demone.
  4. ^ Oldfield, Paul (2014). Sanctity and Pilgrimage in Medieval Southern Italy, 1000-1200. Cambridge University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-107-00028-5. However, the Byzantine revival of the tenth century generated a concomitant process of Hellenization, while Muslim raids in southern Calabria, and instability in Sicily, may also have displaced Greek Christians further north on the mainland. Consequently, zones in northern Calabria, Lucania and central Apulia which were reintegrated into Byzantine control also experienced demographic shifts, and the increasing establishment of immigrant Greek communities. These zones also acted as springboards for Greek migration further north, into regions such as the Cilento and areas around Salerno, which had never been under Byzantine control.
  5. ^ Kleinhenz, Christopher (2004). Medieval Italy: an encyclopedia, Volume 1. Routledge. pp. 444-445. ISBN 978-0-415-93930-0. ISBN 0-415-93930-5" "In Lucania (northern Calabria, Basilicata, and southernmost portion of today's Campania) ... From the late ninth century into the eleventh, Greek-speaking populations and Byzantine temporal power advanced, in stages but by no means always in tandem, out of southern Calabria and the lower Salentine peninsula across Lucania and through much of Apulia as well. By the early eleventh century, Greek settlement had radiated northward and had reached the interior of the Cilento, deep in Salernitan territory. Parts of the central and north-western Salento, recovered early, came to have a Greek majority through immigration, as did parts of Lucania.





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