Region
Brittius
Calabria
Listen to the story
Brittius, the land of the Bruttii, covers the toe of Italy now called Calabria. The historian Diodorus and the geographer Strabo report that in the Lucanian tongue the name meant runaway slaves or rebels, a fitting label for the shepherds and charcoal burners of the Sila forest who threw off Lucanian rule in 356 BC. The spelling with an i is the late Roman form. Unusually for a region, the name is written in black rather than red, with a small black dot before the first letter. In the early Middle Ages the old name vanished, and Calabria took its place.