Brill’s “Ancient Languages and Civilizations” series, which published its first volume in 2022, represents an admirably inclusive approach to the ancient world, as a platform for studies that treat “ancient civilizations from all continents” through a “non-Eurocentric, multidisciplinary” approach. Francesco Lopez’s monograph is the tenth in the series, and one of only a few of the dozen overall to focus on a Mediterranean subject: the far southern portion of the Italian peninsula (regions now known as Puglia, Calabria, and parts of Basilicata). If not precisely “non-Eurocentric,” Lopez’s work fits the series’ parameters by being substantially multidisciplinary. Though primarily a work of comparative and historical linguistics, it engages with topography, landscape studies, and historiography to examine the origin and significance of the term kalabria primarily in its Greek and Roman contexts.
Through six chapters and a brief conclusion, Lopez argues that choronyms, toponyms, and ethnonyms related to the term kalabria should be understood as referring, through their many and varying uses in antiquity and the Byzantine period, to settlements on, or inhabitants of, karst-filled, rocky, water-carved terrain, mostly found on coastlines in particular parts of the Mediterranean (but not exclusively in southern Italy). Over time, and through a number of etymological and semantic shifts, the term became associated specifically with the region that now carries the name – the “toe” of Italy with its primary city of Reggio di Calabria – but through antiquity up to the seventh century CE as a choronym it referred primarily to what is now the Salento in Puglia, the homeland of the Messapians. Lopez shows through historical and comparative linguistic analysis how the term can be semantically understood, and through literary and historiographical analysis how it migrated from region to region, all the while maintaining a connection to a core meaning of “water-carved stone.” Evaluation of natural and built topography strengthens the case. The volume includes a comprehensive appendix of source passages in Greek and Latin, arranged in chronological order and referred to in the main text by citation number, and numerous illustrations, mostly maps and tables but some photographs as well, interspersed throughout the text.
Each of the book’s six body chapters takes a different disciplinary, methodological, or chronological perspective. The first presents a diachronic overview of evidence for the choronym. Its earliest known appearance is likely in the western Greek poet Rinthon, as transmitted by Hesychius. Καλαβρία at first is identified with Μεσσαπία (i.e. the modern Salento). Through the Roman period multiple names shift and overlap – what was under Augustus the secunda regio, which included Calabria, Apulia, and lands of the Sallentini and Hirpini, was for Diocletian and his successors “Apulia and Calabria”; ultimately in the seventh century CE Καλαβρία came to denote the traditional land of the Bruttii, present-day Calabria. Though a great amount of specific geographical knowledge is assumed of the reader, the trajectory is traced lucidly, and for nonspecialists or those who are unfamiliar with the shifting onomastic landscape of southern Italy, the explanation of the migration of the choronym from the “heel” to the “toe” of the peninsula should be one of this volume’s clearest contributions.
The second chapter expands to a wider variety of onomastics and also a broader geographical area, examining the form Kala-ur / -br- where it exists outside the Salentine peninsula. Though there is a great deal of interesting material here that builds the case for the term’s usage well beyond Italy, some of this chapter reads more like a sourcebook than a chapter of a monograph, and there is some repetition.[1]
The third chapter focuses on Byzantine material, mostly in contexts other than Italian. This chapter introduces a significant interpretation of words with the related Kala-ur / -br- forms as denoting an association with water-carved stone or karst. Lopez focuses on a fortress carrying the name Καλαβρύη in Thrace, located in a water-carved area that was originally called Καλαυρία or Καλαβρία. Though this evidence for the meaning of “water-carved stone” is late (the material on the Thracian fortress comes from the 11th-12th-century chronicler Zonaras), Lopez plausibly connects this root meaning with many earlier instances of the term in toponymic and choronymic forms; this will be a critical piece of the overall argument he formulates in subsequent chapters.[2]
Lopez turns in the fourth chapter to historiography and other literary sources, focusing primarily on uses of the ethnonym Καλαβροί. The term may be originally Greek or possibly a Messapian indigenous word, but there are parallels in other locales as well (which points toward either Greek or simply a shared IE root). One interesting observation here comes on the possible use of the name pejoratively by Tarentines to refer to Messapians as κόλαβροι or κάλαβροι with the meaning of “little pigs.” This is attested by Hesychius, but Lopez connects the use also with a notable use of the verb κολαβρίζω in the Septuagint (Job 5.4) with the sense in the passive of “act submissively” or “be trampled upon.” The pejorative meaning might come from an association with the Greek χοιρίδιον, “piglet,” which Hesychius uses to gloss the word κόλαβρον. This seems like a lexical offshoot of the main semantic cluster, as Tarentines in the Classical period, in conflict with the Messapians, turned a local, possibly indigenous ethnonym into a slur, perhaps associating it with a similar sounding Greek word for “piggy.” This use was then expanded by others including the translator of the book of Job.
Chapter five turns to a specifically linguistic analysis of the IE or pre-IE roots *kar- / *kal- and the morpheme –bria / -uria. This chapter runs through a wide variety of material, and includes several discussions treated entirely in lengthy footnotes, which might have been brought productively into the body of the discussion.[3] The overall argument, that the *kar- / *kal- root refers to karsty, or water-worn stone, and –bria / -uria is a form used primarily in compounds to denote “city,” “country,” “region,” though possibly originally a morpheme with hydronymic associations, is plausibly if somewhat tendentiously presented.
The final and lengthiest chapter serves to bring together the varying and sometimes disparate material that has come previously to mount an argument that these related terms ought to be interpreted as referring to, broadly, settlement on, or inhabitants of, an area of water-carved stone or coastline. There are many interesting observations and tidbits that Lopez touches on here. For example, the argument presents a neat and plausible explanation for understanding the name of city now called Gallipoli, in antiquity Καλλίπολις, on the gulf of Taranto. Though there is a patent Greek meaning to the name (“beautiful city”), and it is natural that many have understood the name simply at this surface level, it seems more likely that the first portion is a Hellenized version of the root *kala meaning “water-carved stone,” and the second a Greek version of the -bria / -uria morpheme, and thus Καλλίπολις is nothing more than Καλαβρία / Καλαυρία, transformed over time into a “beautiful city.”[4]
A short conclusion ties up the argument and offers a useful table depicting the development and associations of the term through time. This is followed by an appendix of Greek and Latin sources, a bibliography, and index. Overall, Lopez should be commended for synthesizing a large amount of disparate material, mostly linguistic but also drawn from other areas, and formulating a plausible thesis. The volume suffers in places from a lack of polish, in terms of language and presentation, as well as from some significant but perhaps unavoidable repetition. Despite these blemishes, which perhaps point to a general sense that the author was not well-served by Brill’s editorial attention,[5] Lopez has drawn together a great amount of compelling and at times fascinating material into a convincing transmethodological argument, and for this we should be grateful.
Notes
[1] For example, repetition in section 5 of material from section 2.
[2] There is a significant and somewhat distracting level of repetition of material in this chapter; for example fn. 3 presents substantially the same material as the caption of fig. 4 in chapter 1 (p. 11); pp. 34-36 repeats material already covered on p. 22-23 in chapter 2; etc. This is in part a symptom of the structure of the monograph, since chapters that treat material already presented, but with differing methodological or chronological frames, will require some retreading.
[3] Footnotes 5 and 6 especially. In particular the material in fn. 6 offers discussion critical to the argument around understanding the *kar- / *kal- root as denoting “rock” or “stone,” a significant step in Lopez’s thesis.
[4] In this chapter again some important material is consigned to lengthy footnotes. Much is review of other earlier linguistic interpretations, but as in prior chapters, some could be productively treated in the main text, where the full impact of earlier studies could be recognized; see for example fn. 10.
[5] Some representative minor infelicities of language or editorial slips: p. 16 missing “was”; p. 31 “false” for “a forgery”; use of the word “restitution” to mean “explanation” on pp. 39, 40, 50, 99; p. 97 “mith” for “myth”; p. 110 should read “the Amazon Cleta” not “the Cleta Amazon”; p. 125 “for oldest phases,” and “Ermocrates” for “Hermocrates”; p. 130 “hydronimyc” for “hydronymic.” There are occasional infelicities of English in the translations of Greek and Latin texts in the appendix as well. While many illustrations and maps are useful, some are poorly chosen or reproduced, the worst example being figure 13 on p. 37.