Every city in today’s Italy that became Greek between the first colonies and the fall of Bari in 1071, and every bilingual city where Greek was spoken beside a language that lived on: when Greek came, how, and when its last Greek speakers were gone.
Pick a period to see the cities that became Greek or bilingual in it, in colour; the cities that already had Greek speakers are grey, and a dark ring marks a city whose last Greek speakers were gone by the end of the period. Or drag the year slider to see which cities had Greek speakers in any year from 750 BC to 1700. Hover or tap a dot for its name; select it for the full record.
Hatched: after 1071 most end dates are known only to a century or more. The band runs from the earliest to the latest end the evidence allows; the steep fall around 1400 is where many estimates meet, not a dated event.
Greek was not banned, and it did not just fade. From 1059 popes and Norman rulers cut the Greek church of southern Italy off from Constantinople and put Latins at its head, one see at a time. Henry VI and Frederick II took Greek out of government, law and the notaries’ deeds. Latin lords and bishops brought in Romance-speaking settlers, and the Greek abbeys went to absentee holders. From 1460 bishops abolished the Greek rite, and popes ranked it below the Latin. Each decision made Latin and Romance the language of office, law, marriage and advancement, and the townspeople conformed; Greek lasted only in villages those pressures barely reached. The church that did this had itself begun in Greek (see Rome).
Rome never banned the Greek language. It took apart the institution that kept Greek written, sung and taught: the Greek bishops, the Greek rite, the Greek monasteries and their schools. The cardinal who ran the campaign wrote in 1585 that the rite should be suppressed “where there is no Greek people”, and kept where the people were Greek; in the villages of Bova and the Salento, Greek speech outlived the rite by three or four centuries.
Before the Latins, most of the mainland’s Greek cities had become Latin under Rome, and in Sicily the Arab conquest (827–965) ended Greek in the west and south. Each city’s record names who ended its Greek, under “Who ended it”.
Historians differ on intent. Loud (2016) finds that “much of the pressure for acculturation and Latinisation was unconscious and unintended”; Peri (1975) and Palma (2023) describe a deliberate campaign against the rite after the Council of Trent. The acts listed here are documented either way.
Sources: Malaterra; Liber Pontificalis; Loud 2016; Jamil and Johns; Lateran IV, canon 4; Ottobre 2023; Palma 2023; Gaballo and Polito (Santoro’s letter of 16 August 1585); Pius IV, Romanus Pontifex (1564); Clement VIII, Perbrevis instructio (1595); Benedict XIV, Allatae sunt §20 (1755); Pagratis 2025.
Rome is on the map as a bilingual city. From c. 100 BC to c. AD 400, and again from c. 600 to c. 1000, it had a large Greek-speaking community, but Latin always remained its main language, so it never became Greek.
The church of Rome began in Greek. Paul wrote to the Romans in Greek (c. 57), and the church of Rome wrote to Corinth in Greek (1 Clement, c. 96); Hermas, Justin and Hippolytus wrote at Rome in Greek. The bishops of the 3rd century lie under Greek epitaphs in the catacomb of Callixtus: ΠΟΝΤΙΑΝΟϹ, ΑΝΤΕΡΩϹ, ΦΑΒΙΑΝΟϹ, ΛΟΥΚΙϹ, ΕΥΤΥΧΙΑΝΟϹ. Latin took over slowly: Jerome names the African pope Victor (c. 189–199) as the first Latin church writer, and the Mass was fully Latin only under Damasus (366–384). The Latin Mass still keeps a Greek chant, the Kyrie eleison.
In the city, some 1,700 Greek inscriptions survive beside more than 40,000 Latin ones; there was a Greek-speaking Jewish community, and Juvenal could not bear a “Graecam urbem” (Satires 3.60–61). Greek epitaphs become rare after c. 400, when the community was absorbed into Latin.
A second Greek community came after c. 600 with clergy and refugees from the East and from Greek Sicily: the Greek quarter and S. Maria in Cosmedin by the river, and Greek monasteries such as S. Saba, S. Anastasio and S. Silvestro in Capite. Eleven of the thirteen popes of 678–752 came from Greek, Sicilian or Syrian families. Sergius I, born at Palermo, brought the Agnus Dei into the Roman Mass; Zachary translated Gregory the Great’s Dialogues into Greek; the Sicilian Stephen III (768–772) was the last Greek pope. A “substantial Greek community” is still reported in 855–872 (Osborne 2023), and the Greek monasteries faded by the 11th century.
27 of the 95 were Greek by native language and 10 more possibly; 12 of the first 13 were Greek. From our Popes set, which follows the Liber Pontificalis and the popes’ own epitaphs.
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Select a row for the full record. ? after a name: doubtful as a Greek city or as a site. Bilingual city: Greek spoken beside the town’s own language, which lived on. † a Greek city with a bilingual period. Grey Italian names are villages. Dates of fading are approximate; a city with two Greek phases shows its first start and its last end.
The cards for posting: the overview, one map per period, the rise and fade, the church that forgot it was Greek, today’s Italy and the list by region.
A self-governing city or bishop’s see, not a village, fort, sanctuary or trading post, whose people spoke Greek or came to. The evidence: a polis in the Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, the city’s own coins with Greek legends together with another sign of Greek speakers, Greek civic decrees, a Sicilian civitas in Cicero’s speeches against Verres, or a see with Greek evidence before 1071. The site must lie in present-day Italy, including Sicily, Sardinia and the small islands. The same test applies everywhere, as for the companion set on Turkey.
When the place became a Greek city: its foundation for a Greek foundation; for a native or Latin town, its first positive evidence of Greek civic life or Greek speakers; for a bilingual city, the first evidence of Greek speakers. Renamings and refoundations do not change the date. Only places that became Greek or bilingual by 1071, when the Normans took Bari and rule from Constantinople ended in Italy, are counted.
When the last resident Greek-speaking community was gone, whether Greek was then the majority language or a minority. This is kept apart from conquest and from the end of the Greek rite: Greek used only by officials, a garrison or clergy who no longer spoke it does not count, and neither do newcomers who arrived after the old community had gone. A city can have two Greek phases, for example Kroton, which became Latin under Rome and Greek again under the emperors in Constantinople. Medieval dates are often approximate; for the 34 cities still Greek-speaking in 1071 the record also gives the range of end dates the evidence allows.
A bilingual city had many Greek-speaking residents, but its own language lived on beside Greek: Latin at Rome, Punic at Palermo, Motya, Soluntum and Lilybaeum, Oscan at Nola, Consentia and Petelia, Daunian at Arpi and Canusium, Etruscan at Spina and Adria, Elymian, Sikel or Sikan in a few Sicilian towns. It has its own colour, is never said to have become Greek, and its dates are when Greek was spoken there. A native town whose own language gave way to Greek, as Elymian did at Segesta and Entella and Sikel at Menaenum and Calacte, counts as a town that became Greek; these and the Greek foundations that later had a second main language (Paestum under the Lucanians, Selinous under Carthage, Messina with the Oscan Mamertines and later Arabic, Catania and Tyndaris with Latin colonists) are marked † for a bilingual period. Either way the city needs positive evidence of Greek-speaking residents. A city where Greek speakers were only ever a small minority is not included; minorities only lengthen the Greek phases of cities already in the set.
The Italian name is that of the town or village whose built-up area covers the ancient city; ruins outside a town count as ruins. A provincial capital counts if it stands within about 3 km of the city or bears its name. Italian names are traced through Latin, medieval Greek or Arabic; Giardini-Naxos, a modern revival, does not count as a continued name.
Seven research batches by region, then checks: one rule for borderline cases, a search for omissions, three passes on when Greek faded (Sicily, the ancient mainland, the medieval mainland), a reading of the two early descriptions of Calabria, Barrio (1571) and Marafioti (1601), for where Greek was still spoken, and a match against the Pleiades gazetteer and Wikidata’s Inventory numbers. Every change is logged in the data. Places considered and left out are listed with a reason in the spreadsheet. Each city’s “Who ended it” line names the act and the people closest to the end of Greek there, from a further study of the conquests, the Latin bishops and the end of the Greek rite (sources graded; uncertain claims left out).
The full table with every field, sources, notes and the log of changes, as a CSV table, as JSON, or as the spreadsheet with the places left out and the year-by-year series.
Sources: M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (2004); Thucydides, Diodorus, Strabo, Cicero, Pliny; the Notitiae of the see of Constantinople; studies of the Greek of southern Italy and Sicily (Rohlfs, Guillou, von Falkenhausen, Metcalfe, Korhonen, Lucà, Safran); the Pleiades gazetteer; Wikipedia and diocesan histories for many individual entries. Map: Natural Earth; today’s borders dashed.
These calls rest on thin or conflicting evidence. The map, the chart and the list follow the reading shown here; the alternative is given so that readers can weigh it themselves.
Showna bilingual city, with Greek speakers without a break to c. 1340.
EvidenceGreek always shared the city with another language: Punic, then Latin, then, after 831, Arabic. Greek captives were held there after 878; a Greek bishop, Nicodemus, in 1072; the Greek notary Kalokyros worked there 1155–77; Greek deeds of S. Maria della Grotta run from 1160 to 1259; Greeks still appear in the notarial registers of the 1320s and 1330s (Goodman 2009).
Alternativea gap from the Arab conquest (831) to 1072, if captives and a small church flock do not make a community.
ShownGreek speakers to c. 1100.
EvidenceGreek-speaking monks survived Arab rule, and a Greek dedication of the early Norman period survives at S. Lucia (Rizzone 2011).
Alternativec. 900, at the Arab conquest (878), if only lay people count.
ShownGreek speakers to c. 1500.
EvidenceGreek was the main language to c. 1250 (the last Greek private deed is of 1244); Greek-rite faithful are recorded in 1262 and a third of the clergy was still Greek c. 1310; the last speakers died out in the 16th century (Korhonen). The refugees from Coron (1533–34) are counted as newcomers, not as the old community.
Alternativec. 1300, if the minority needs documents of its own.
ShownGreek speakers without a break to c. 1050.
EvidenceGreek was still used unofficially after the city council turned to Latin c. 300–400 (Leiwo 1994); Greek-rite monasteries lasted through the duchy; nuns from Italo-Greek families still ‘knew Greek letters’ in 1041.
Alternativean end c. 400: the evidence of 1041 shows people reading Greek, not speaking it.
Showna bilingual city: Greek beside Latin c. 100 BC – AD 400, and a Greek community again c. 600–1000 (see Rome).
Evidencethe Greek church and popes of early Rome; some 1,700 Greek inscriptions; the Greek quarter, monasteries and popes of the 7th–8th centuries.
AlternativeRome left out, since Greek was never its majority language.
ShownGreek speakers to 1480.
Evidencethe last lay Greek speakers in the city itself are attested before the Ottoman sack of 1480–81, which killed or enslaved much of the population; the Greek rite lasted in the villages of the archdiocese, which had 200 native Greek priests in 1583, and Griko is still spoken there.
Alternative1684, a date given for the end of the Greek rite in the city by Aprile (2025), without a source.
ShownGreek speakers to c. 1500.
Evidencethe cathedral turned Latin in 1461 (Lucà 2006) or only in 1571 (Catholic Encyclopedia); Barrio wrote in 1571 that a Calabrian church, probably Rossano’s (the printed name is unclear in the scan), ‘became Latin a few years ago’; Greek clergy lasted into the 17th century, but no lay Greek speech is reported in the 16th.
Alternativec. 1570–1620, if the late Greek rite served a lay Greek community.
ShownGreek speakers to c. 1350–1500, approximate.
Evidencethe end of the Greek rite in each diocese, the last Greek documents, and the visitation of 1457–58, which found the Basilian monks without Greek. The two early descriptions of Calabria that list where Greek was still spoken, Barrio (1571) and Marafioti (1601), name only villages: around Reggio, Bova and the Aspromonte, Cosoleto and Santa Cristina. They name none of the cities, so all of them except Reggio, with its Greek parish to c. 1600, had lost their Greek speakers by about 1570.
Alternativeearlier ends for some towns; no source dates the last speakers town by town.
Shownbilingual cities, marked doubtful.
EvidenceSpina had a treasury at Delphi and is called a ‘Greek city’ in Pseudo-Scylax (a word restored by editors); both have Greek graffiti; settlers sent by Dionysius I to Adria are reported in the Etymologicum Magnum.
AlternativeEtruscan towns with Greek traders, left out.
Shownnative and Sikel towns that became Greek, with a bilingual period (†) in the 5th–4th centuries BC.
EvidenceElymian and Sikel are not written after the 4th century BC, and the Oscan of the Campanian mercenaries at Entella and Nakone left no trace in their decrees; these towns then kept Greek decrees, coins and civic offices (Segesta’s decrees and theatre, the Entella and Nakone decrees of the 3rd century BC, Menaenum’s coins, the rhetor Caecilius of Kale Akte). Segesta is dated from its first Greek coin legend (c. 415 BC), not from its earlier coins, which write Elymian in Greek letters.
Alternativebilingual cities, if the old language lived on in speech after it stopped being written.
Showntwo cities: the old city (c. 680–326 BC) and the new city (from c. 470 BC).
Evidencethe two settlements stood side by side; Palaepolis surrendered to Rome in 326 BC and then drops out of the record (Livy 8.22–26).
Alternativeone city, Neapolis, from c. 680 BC.
Shownleft out.
Evidencea city: Hamilcar made the harbour of Eryx a town in 260/59 BC, and Pliny lists the Drepanitani among Sicily’s tax-paying communities. But no Greek speakers are shown there before 1071: no coins, no Greek civic inscriptions, no bishop before 1844. A Greek church of Santa Sofia and the nickname ‘Greci’ or ‘grecaglia’, which the people of Erice gave the Trapanesi, are known only from writers of 1558–1605 (Fazello, Pugnatore, Orlandini), as hearsay about a few foreign Greeks before Count Roger took the town in 1077.
Alternativea bilingual city under Rome, if its Greek name and the Greek of its neighbours Eryx and Segesta are taken as enough.
Shownleft out, though Greek is still spoken in the villages around it.
Evidenceits see is first documented in 1094 (bishop Luca); the Greek rite lasted there until 1573.
Alternativea see founded by c. 1070, the date some lists give without a document, which would bring it in.
Shownthe numbers of Hansen and Nielsen’s Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis for 58 cities.
Evidencethey come from Wikidata (property P8137), checked against the Inventory’s alphabetical order where Wikidata links the wrong place (no. 27 is Kallipolis in Sicily, not Gallipoli). 36 cities with Greek speakers before 323 BC have no number there: some are not in the Inventory, but others, such as Himera, Selinous, Hyele (Velia), Siris and Ankon, surely are.
Alternativethe book itself, pp. 172–337, would settle the missing numbers.