"It was during the height of their prosperity, seemingly, in
the sixth century B. C., that the Italic Greeks [in southern
Italy] either acquired for, or bestowed upon, their territory
the appellation of Magna Græcia, which at that time it well
deserved; for not only were Sybaris and Kroton then the
greatest Grecian cities situated near together, but the whole
peninsula of Calabria may be considered as attached to the
Grecian cities on the coast. The native Œnotrians and Sikels
occupying the interior had become hellenised, or
semi-hellenised, with a mixture of Greeks among them—common
subjects of these great cities."
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 22._