Recently, I’m told, a resident of central-Italy posted a note on Facebook indicating that in Italy today, ‘Southern Italy’ was considered the area south of Lazio – i.e. Lazio is not considered part of the area denoted by expressions such as ‘Southern Italy’ or ‘South of Rome’. 

It is important to keep in mind that the term ‘South’ as used in the Facebook writer’s context is a ‘geopolitical’ term, and geopolitical definitions and connotations vary from time to time.  For example, below are three maps of Italy showing varying geopolitical divisions of Italy:

Map 1 three-part division (Continental, Peninsular and Insular)

Map 2 two-part division (North and South)

Map 3 five-part division (4 Mainland sections and Islands)

                  Map 1                                                               Map 2                                                       Map 3

Note: while, the “South” section boundary in maps 2 & 3 begins on the west coast at about Lazio’s southern boundary (as the Facebook writer indicates), it continues north to about Abruzzi’s northern boundary (i.e. north of Rome).

However, apart from such geopolitical definitions, the term ‘South’ also has a cultural connotation in Italian American and ancient Italian history. 

During the great migration of Italians from Italy to the U.S. circa 1880 -1920, many of the immigrants came from the Lazio area south of Rome and Abruzzi north of Rome.

However, all the emigrants arriving in America (from Abruzzi’s north to Sicily), while diverse in many ways (dialects, foods, festivals, etc.), manifested a common historic cultural identity, reasonably denoted as ‘Southern-Italian Culture’.

Historically, Southern-Italian Culture is rooted in ancient Roman culture and Graecian culture before Rome. 

However, even after the Romans turn their military wrath on the Greeks and conquered Magna Graecia, not only was the Greek society and culture uniquely preserved, Rome melded with the Greek to create what came to be called Greco-Roman culture. 

Accordingly, Italian Americana is a southern-Italian culture; meaning that the vast majority of the diaspora were descended culturally from the South, tracing their continuous unbroken history back to the Greco-Roman culture.

In sum, the manifestations of a society’s culture are not limited to geographic boundaries.  The historic culture of southern Italy is not limited to the geopolitical boundary of today’s ‘South’.

Thus, for example, the Roman architectural innovation of Emperor Diocletian, discussed below, was not built geographically in ‘Southern Italy’.  Nevertheless, because that architecture is a quintessential manifestation of Greco-Roman culture, it is reasonable to consider it a manifestation of historic southern-Italian culture and progenitor of southern-Italian American culture.

 

In various articles posted on this site, I have provided copious documentary evidence of the complete absence of Patria Meridionale history and culture education in the New York State secondary education system and a community college servicing a county where near 200,000 Americans of southern-Italian descent reside.  Further, catalogues of many American universities have been cited demonstrating a similar absence of southern-Italian American history and culture before Ellis Island (e.g. see Related Articles box).

I feel that this disregard of the history of Americans descended from the pre-1920 southern-Italian diaspora is both insulting and detrimental to southern-Italian American culture, for there can be no culture without history. 

Surely something more than recipes!  More importantly, in the absence of history and cultural education we are condemning our children to ‘mindless’ ‘cultureless’ GUIDOism à la Jersey Shore.

Further, not only is the complete absence of southern-Italian American history and culture insulting and detrimental, it is from a purely scholarly point of view intellectually shabby. How can the so-called scholars and professors in the Italian and Italian American Studies programs in our colleges and universities ignore the very source and fountainhead of Western Civilization – i.e. Southern Italy? 

For example, Christianity’s tenuous birth in the far eastern Mediterranean backwaters of the Roman Empire took hold in the proletarian and slave populations of Rome and southern Italy to become the defining ideology of Western Civilization.  The renowned classical scholar and world history A. J. Toynbee wrote:

The “old (caterpillar) religion” of the ancient Mediterranean Graeco-Roman world was transformed into the “new (butterfly) religion” of Western Civilization in the chrysalis of southern Italy.

Similarly, architecture innovations in the Mediterranean world, transmitted through southern Italy, made possible the Romanesque and Gothic churches and cathedrals in which Western Christians worshiped.  For example, the point arch, which is the primary structural component of the Gothic Cathedral, was a Middle Eastern innovation first used in the West with the Palermo“Admiral’s Bridge”.

A much more fundamental (indeed profound) structural component of Western architecture was first seen in the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s Palace Colonnade.

Circa 300 A.D. the Roman Emperor Diocletian built a massive palace in present day Split Croatia across the Adriatic Sea from Pescara Italy (see location  ‘A’ on Goggle map below.

 

 

Much of the original structure and buildings remain today; however, significantly modified over the years.  Historians and archeologist have reconstructed a model of the original structure pictured below. For purposes of this discussion, the peristyle (colonnade) and Temple of Jupiter are labeled.

 

The Temple of Jupiter is a microcosmic example of the essence of Graeco-Roman architecture.  It combines the structural engineering genius and masterful craftsmanship of the Romans with the aesthetic eloquence of Greece.

However, from the point of view of architecture history, it is important to note that while both Roman and Greek architectural elements are present in the Temple, they are distinct; they are not integrated into an architectural unity – Roman structural elements are distinct from the Greek aesthetic.

The renowned and seminal classical scholar Edward A. Freedman eloquently characterized this Roman Greek architectural dichotomy, he wrote:

“Certainly there is no building which can be more truly said to be a Greek mask placed on a Roman body than the [Temple of Jupiter].” (Historical Essays, “Diocletian’s Place in Architectural History” 1879, p.64 emp.+)

Specifically, consider the cross-sectional drawing of the Temple below:

Freeman:

“Outside, the octagon was surrounded by a portico of its own shape; inside, there were two orders of columns, the lower Corinthian, the upper Composite. These stand detached, and support broken entablatures, the upper range standing on the cornice of the lower. These columns serve no constructive purpose whatever; the upper range can at most have carried statues.” (p.63 emp.+)

Throughout the history of Roman architecture, one can see this combined but not integrated Roman structural components and Greek aesthetic.

 

The historic continuity of separating the structural elements from the aesthetic in Roman architecture was broken when Diocletian had the column and arch peristyle (colonnade) constructed in the center of the palace complex.  Here, the eloquent Corinthian columns supported the structural Roman arch – the unity of structure and aesthetic.

 

Freeman writes:

At first glance it is hard to appreciate that this colonnade is all that important in the history of architecture. Indeed, in 1849 Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, reporting on his trip to “The Palace of Diocletian at Spalato[Split] in present day Croatia” noted the innovation, but he failed to appreciate the profound significance of the event.

Wilkinson was not the only one who failed to appreciate significance of the colonnade. Freeman notes:

While, Freeman was not the first to notice the uniqueness of the column/arch structure of Diocletian’s colonnade, he was however, the first to grasp its profound significance in the history of Western architecture

Freeman:

“ The reign of Diocletian... marks an æra equally great in its own way in the development of Roman architecture, and thereby in the general history of art... a change was made which had an effect on all later developments of architecture, and which in truth contained all later developments of architecture within it. This change is that by which, in the peristyle at Spalato, Corinthian columns are made to support arches.” (p 61)

More specifically, regarding “an effect on all later developments of architecture”, Freeman uniquely recognized that:

In short, the history of church, cathedral and municipal buildings until the advent of iron and reinforce concrete building material can be understood as beginning with Diocletian’s colonnade.  The structural and aesthetic principles governing such buildings first manifested itself in that colonnade.