THE FIRST GREEKS IN ITALY* Bruno d’Agostino The end of the Mycenaean world saw a hiatus in the contacts be- tween the Aegean and Italy which lasted throughout the 11th–9th centuries B.C. These contacts were resumed in the Salento Peninsula, whose most important town was Otranto. In addition to a limited presence of fragments datable to the 9th century, the most significant finds date to the decades before the middle of the 8th century B.C. (phase MGII), made up mainly of Corinthian pottery. Such early involvement by the Corinthians in the West seems to have touched peninsular Italy only marginally: evidence for these contacts with Greece is limited to Messapic settlements on the coasts, which were probably ports of call for internal Greek shipping routes in the Ionian Sea. As d’Andria suggests,1 in its earliest stages this phenomenon is very much tied to Corinthian expansion into north-western Greece, a fact well documented at Ambracia and Vitsa Zagoriou. On the Tyrrhenian coast, Corinth appears only towards the middle of the 8th century. Here the resumption of contacts with the Aegean between the end of the 9th and the first years of the 8th century was mainly due to Euboean and Cycladic initiatives. Pottery shapes and styles typical of these areas, such as pendent semi-circle and chevron skyphoi of MGII, punctuate the renewed intercourse (Fig. 1).2 Before entering too deeply into the Italian situation, it is neces- sary to ask by way of introduction: why Euboea?3 One must look for the answer in the unique conditions enjoyed by the island at the threshold of the 1st millennium B.C. While the majority of Greece during this period was undergoing radical transformations which cre- ated a completely new political and cultural order, Euboea was affected only very slightly by these events. Already at the end of the * Translated by Pierpaolo Finaldi. 1 d’Andria 1984. The bibliography is collected in d’Agostino and Soteriou 1998, 363–5. 2 d’Agostino 1985. 3 Popham 1981. 202 bruno d’agostino Fig. 1. Map of the Mediterranean with places mentioned in the text: 1. Al Mina; 2. Sidon; 3. Tyre; 4. Naukratis; 5. Chalcis; 6. Lefkandi; 7. Eretria; 8. Olympia; 9. Knossos; 10. Kommos; 11. Vetulonia; 12. Vulci; 13. Gravisca; 14. Caera; 15. Veii; 16. Praeneste; 17. Pithekoussai (Ischia); 18. Cumae; 19. Calatia; 20. Ponte- cagnano; 21. Zancle; 22. Naxos; 23. Catane; 24. Leontini; 25. Carthage (after J.P. Crielaard, Hamburger Beiträge 19/20 [1992/93], 237). 10th century power was in the hands of a rich social class which engaged in contacts and exchange with the Near East. The great apsidal building at Lefkandi surrounded by wooden columns pre- serves for us a vivid picture of this society. The structure served first as a dwelling place and then as a burial site for a prince and his wife, accompanied by rich grave goods and the horses from the funeral cart.4 The presence of Euboean pottery at Tyre from the end of the 10th century B.C.5 illustrates the strength of the ties between Euboea and the Phoenicians which stretched back to the time of the prince of Lefkandi (see H.G. Niemeyer’s chapter in the present volume). As D. Ridgway has rightly noted,6 Euboean ships first reached Sardinia by following the shipping route opened by the Phoenicians from Cyprus. This is demonstrated by the pendent semicircle skyphoi and 4 Lefkandi II. 5 Coldstream 1988; 1998. 6 Ridgway 1984; 1992..