Sicily and Southern Italy. Mythology, Prehistory and History, Until 13 Century. The Book.

Introduction In modern Sicily and the rest of Magna Graecia, no one learns or ever hears a single word in schools about the CONTINUITY of history of Hellenism in Magna Graecia, except for the period of the classical years. A very loud historical silence. Not even one Sicilian today knows that Magna Graecia was CONTINUOUSLY inhabited by Greeks, who only spoke Greek and were Orthodox Christians. Until the 13th century AD, they were called Magnogreci or Italogreci. No one wonders about what happened to these 5 million Magno-Greeks of the 4th century BC. Did they disappear by magic?! Did they come to Southern Italy, lived there for about 2000 years and then left this territory again, to an unknown destination when the Romans conquered the Magna Graecia? Were nomads like Gypsies? And what about the medieval Greek Empire, Byzantium? Magna Graecia was a Byzantine province where Greek was spoken until the 12-13th century! This is also absent from schoolbooks in Sicily, Calabria and other Magno-Greek regions. Some people wondered when they saw in the most successful Netflix series "Vikings", that all the Sicilians spoke Greek (in the 10th century AD). On a trip to Italy, I met a woman, professor at the Catania University: We love Greece very much, she told me. We also teach modern Greek literature in our university. But you in Greece, you don't even teach our Dante Alighieri. I answered her with a question: When and where did Dante Alighieri lived ? The second half of the 13th century, she answered me. And you, as Sicilians and Calabrians…, what is your national relation with Dante and with the language that he spoke and wrote? At the time of Dante, Catania was still a Greek-speaking city and region. Dante was a stranger to Catania and Sicily, even though you adopted him in the 19th century, when you joined the Italian state, I answered her. Catanians were my Greek compatriots then, not Dante's! Indeed, Catania and Messina still spoke Greek at the time of Dante. But the official history of the modern Italian state, made sure that the Sicilians adopted him as their compatriot! Some malicious people in Italy are even trying to present the Italo-Greeks, who are reawakening today, as IMMIGRANTS or NOMADS!!!. People who have no roots in Italy and were just something like guests! Something like the African illegal immigrants in Lampedusa! The great attack against Hellenism of Magna Graecia began by the Vatican after the schism of the Churches in 1054 and the German domination over the Vatican. The Greek language was forbidden from the 13th century (the laws and decrees are quoted in the book), the Magnogreci were burned at the stake of Vatican's «Holy inquisition» as heretics, the persecutions and the tortures they suffered from the Vatican and its Franco-German vassals, who conquered Southern Italy, were untold. Even today we can see in many Greek cities of Magna Graecia the reawakening of the ancient Greek religion, but in some cases the ancient Greek gods are called by foreign, Latin names. Ceremonies are held in honor of the goddess Ceres in the old Greek city Metapontion! But who is the Ceres? In the Greek Pantheon no goddess existed by the name Ceres! Cerere is the Latin name of the goddess Demetra, and they carefully avoid mentioning this goddess by her Greek name, in her land of Sicily. She was the goddess Protector of the island. A Latin name for a Greek goddess in a Greek city? Paradox, suspicious and inadmissible! When i asked once for information about Saint Philip of Agira (a Greek Saint who came to Sicily from Phrygia, patron of the old Greek city of Argyrion, where Diodoros of Sicily was born) and before they gave me any piece of information, they put me through an entire examination. Why am I asking about my fellow-ethnic Greek Saint? (However, the Roman Catholic Church grants the cathedral of Agira every year to the Greek Orthodox church, which does not have its own Church in Argyrion, so that it too, orthodoxy, can celebrate the Saint). We don't practice politics. We don't try to create our own history. I, personally, have a great respect for the old Roman Catholic Church. You will see in the following chapters the facts. However, I cannot omit that the Vatican and its Franco-German vassals are those who VIOLENTLY DE-HELLENIZED Magna Graecia. Apart from the role of the Vatican and the "holy inquisition", the Roman Catholics themselves recognize that and mention it. We only mention historical facts. Hundreds and thousands of images of unique masterpiece monuments show the uninterrupted relationship between Hellenism and Southern Italy, from 2000 BC until the 13th century A.D. Almost 3,200 years Greek! And still thousands more that lay today as ruins in the sacred land of Magna Graecia. The History of Magna Graecia, without any scientific doubt, the history of Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Vasilikata and Campania, is also Greek National History from 2000 BC until the 13th century AD. That's why I, as a Greek, wrote this history for the land and culture of my ancestors and compatriots in the Apennine Peninsula. After the 13th century, history ceases to be Greek. Because the inhabitants of Magna Graecia no longer participate in it as Greeks. To the question that some ask, if the Sicilians are Greeks today, my answer is yes and no. Analyzing the components that make up ETHNOS and GENUS. Which of course are different. Stephanos Sotiriou, historian