Becoming Achaean in Italy

This chapter examines the Achaeans of southern Italy through case studies of two communities, Croton and Metapontion. It first examines the creation of Achaean ethnicity, which occurred not through a single shared process but rather through a series of conflicts between different Greek communities in Italy. Croton articulated its ethnic and polis identities in intertwining ways, through a series of foundation myths, coins, and a prominent cult of Hera, which worked together to claim ethnic origins both in the northern Peloponnese and from the Homeric Achaean heroes and, at the same time, to define a distinctively Crotoniate polis identity. Metapontion followed a similar process but with different materials and shaped by different circumstances, since its identity was defined partly by outsiders using it for their own purposes. The two cities did not form a single unified ethnic group but rather used Achaean ethnicity to articulate their identities separately.