ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the settlement patterns and the urban culture of the territory of modern Calabria between the second half of the fourth and the second centuries BCE. From the last decades of the fourth century, the Italic populations whom we call Lucanians and Brettians/Bruttians (hereafter, ‘Brettians’) adopted principles of Greek urban planning, with their subsequent widespread application in large areas where the urban form had been previously absent. Through the analysis of the urban layouts of San Bartolo di Marcellina/Laos and Castiglione di Paludi, it will be highlighted how, despite the apparent similarities, the model of the contiguous Greek poleis was implemented and adapted to very different political and institutional realities. We will then examine the radical changes in the regional settlement pattern and urban network following the conflicts of the third century BCE, the destruction and depopulation caused by the Hannibalic War, and the utter defeat of the Brettian rebel communities. In this context, the Taureani Mamertini implemented a remarkable project of urbanization which produced the two flourishing centers of Taureana di Palmi, on the Tyrrhenian coast, and Contrada Mella di Oppido Mamertina, showing how in Calabria, as in Sicily, the local elites who had been loyal to Rome in the crisis of the Second Punic War enjoyed special opportunities for political and economic advancement in the second and first centuries BCE.
