Campania

Moving on now to central Italy, where we are going to hear from Sarah, who manages the Untold Italy tour operations, is a tour host and is also one of our trip planners.

Sarah is based in the Umbria region, which is next to Tuscany, where she has lived for many years with her Italian husband, Salvatore, who is from the Campania region in southern Italy.

Sarah was actually looking after some guests who were in Florence while the protests took place and has some interesting insights.

back in a flash, right after these

Okay.

Is the Greco Bianco, Greco obviously denoting its Grecian origins, is the Greco Bianco different from the Greco perhaps from Campania?

Absolutely, yeah.

It's a completely different varieties.

The most important subdivision of central Italy was Latium, bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea.

North of it on the same coast was Etruria, and to the south was Campania.

On the Adriatic coast were the Umbria, Pacinum, and Samnium.

The cities of Latium were Rome on the Tiber and its seaport, Ostia, near the north of the same river.

Lake Regulus was near Rome.

In Etruria were Florentia, Fusile, Pace, Arentium, Volatere, Clusium, Tarquiniae, also Lake Trasimenus.

In Campania were Capua, Neapolis, Naples, Curmae, Baiae, a watering place, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Capitum, Salernum, Cosilinum, and Nola.

The famous volcano Vesuvius was here, and also Lake Avernus.

I don't think that's as popular as you think it is, but oh dear.

Petropius says that Tarquin beat the Volsci on the road to Campania.

The Volsci.

Yes, Volsci.

And it is at least permissible to doubt whether the population of Rome, in spite of its exacting a tribute of seaborne food from the whole of the Mediterranean basin, exceeded a million for any great length of time.

Footnote, it is true that many scholars estimate a high-water mark for the Roman population in excess of two millions, and one daring authority, by throwing out suburbs ad libitum into the Campania, suburbs of which no trace remains, has raised the two to ten.

The Colosseum could no doubt seat over eighty thousand spectators.

The circuit of the bench frontage of the Circus Maximus was very nearly a mile in length, and the Romans of imperial times certainly used ten times as much water as the modern Romans.

And they still spend a bulk of their monies more on Northern cities.

You'll hear people talk about, you know, Tuscany versus Calabria versus Campania versus Sicily versus, you know, Longoria versus, and it's always the Northern is the more elite snooty people with more

money.

And I've heard this, I'm Italian American, as you can tell by my name.

In 62 AD, one nearly wiped out the town.

Historian Ray Lawrence has studied the houses of the town and the surrounding area of Campania.

Campania is associated always with earthquakes, so there's a certain amount of, yes, it's Campania, so there are earthquakes.

So after the AD62 earthquake, Seneca would tell us that somebody's mad if they want to give up coming to Pompeii, for instance, because they're frightened of earthquakes.

He'd say that's the wrong motive.