Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Kapuê ( Capua), Neapolis (Νεάπολις, Naples), Syracuse, Akragas, Subaris (Σύβαρις, Sybaris). The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean/ Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet, which was adopted by the Etruscans the Old Italic alphabet subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic and Latin civilisations. With this colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. The ancient geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia and Calabria - Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy Magna Graecia (Latin, “Greater Greece”), since it was so densely inhabited by Greeks. They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula.
![magna graecia map magna graecia map](https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/magna_graecia_ancient_colonies_and_dialects-en.svg.png)
In this same time, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Massalia (Marseille). In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, climate change, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in southern Italy (Cerchiai, pp.