Italia

Italian name of Italy. The ancient Greeks gave it first to the territory occupied by the Oenotri, the southern part of the ‘toe’ of modern Italy, and later (after 272 BC) to the whole peninsula.

‘Italia’ was probably a Greek form of Italic Vitelia ‘calf land’ or ‘grazing land’. During the second half of the 4th century BC the name Italia was used synonymously with Oenotria to denote the whole ‘toe’ (Bruttium) together with Lucania; Campania and Latium were known as Ausonia; Calabria, the ‘heel’, as Iapygia. After 272 BC it came to be applied to the whole peninsula as far north as a line drawn between the rivers Arnus and Rubicon. Beyond this line, to the foot of the Alps, lay Gallia Cisalpina, which remained officially a province until the end of the republic, although from at least the mid-2nd century BC it was considered to be part of Italia. The emperor Augustus, for purposes of administration, divided Italia into 11 regiones: Latium and Campania with the Volsci, Hernici, Aurunci, and Picentini; Apulia and Calabria with the Hirpini; Bruttii and Lucania bounded on the north by a line between the rivers Silarus and Bradanus; the Samnites (excluding the Hirpini) and Sabines bounded on the north by Picenum and on the south by Apulia; Picenum on the Adriatic between the Matrinus and the Aesis; Umbria bounded north and south by the Ariminus and Aternus; Etruria between the River Tiber, the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Macra; Gallia Cispadana; Liguria extending along the coast from the Macra to the Varus and inland to the River Padus (Po) from its source to just above Placentia; Venetia from the Padus to the Alps and Adriatic, together with Istria and west to the Addua; and Gallia Transpadana beyond the Padus.