ABSTRACT
Gerhard Rohlfs always maintained that Calabrian dialects to the north of a corridor stretching from Gizzeria / Lamezia, on the Tyrrhenian coast, via Tiriolo, to Catanzaro and Crotone on the Ionian, showed an archaic Latin stratum, while to the south, an originally Greek-speaking population had been Romanized only in the Middle Ages; indeed, Greek elements consistent with a pre-Roman origin in Magna Graecia (lexical and phonetic relics consistent with Doric, rather than Attic, origin) survived. Counterarguments are:
Roman imperial policy was to Romanize all colonies, including Gk-speaking ones;
the extreme north of Calabria, never part of Magna Graecia, shares Gk items with southern Calabria, and these may therefore be assumed to be Byzantine, hence medieval (Alessio (1941: 635f.));
Alessio also shows that the Gk placenames are also present in the Cal.-Luc. area while, pace Rohlfs, Latin placenames abound in S. Calabria.
