Was Southern Italy during Roman times always irrelevant besides Pompeii (which was destroyed by a volcano)...

>biggest cultural center
You mean biggest prostitution center?

Go to any major city and you have prostitution. You could make the same lame joke about London, NY, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Moscow etc.

One could, but it does seem like Pompeii was bigger on the whores than most cities.

It was also bigger on art, since the majority of Roman frescoes are from there.

I always thought Sicily was supposed to be like the big bread basket before Egypt.

>since the majority of surviving Roman frescoes are from there.

ftfy ;^)

Sicily and the fertile plains in the Campania region (around Naples) were very important for farming.

The slave rebellions were able to happen there because they were just that chock full of slaves used in farming.

Sicily wasn't even considered Italian.

It was also much poorer than Italia.

This is a linguistic map

Veneti and Ligurians = Italic
Lepontics and Gauls = Celtic
Rhaetians = Unsure if Italic or Celtic
Etruscans and Nuragics = Pre-Indo-European civilizations

Sicily was Magna Graecia, Archimedes was from there.

>Besides serving as a vessel for the Greeks to bring advancements to Italy Southern Italy always seemed to be considerably behind the rest

it was basically Greece
Anyway, they weren't behind the North until industrial age.

Man Veeky Forums sure does have a poor grasp of history
Do you know what the kingdom of Sicily was?

No. A huge part of it was native Italic. The Greek colonies were small and limited to coastal areas only. Remember that Southern Italy = Kingdom of Naples/Two Sicilies, which is a much bigger area than that.

>Anyway, they weren't behind the North until industrial age

That's false. Tuscany, Papal Sates, Venice, Milan, etc were way more relevant than the Naples and Sicily which were subjugated by several different people through history.

They were part of the ERE while the rest wasn't.

>the rest wasn't

Except when Justinian conquered the entire peninsula again? Byzantine South Italy (encompassing a large territory) only lasts 100 years after that. And then they get conquered by Moors (Sicily only), Normans, Bourbons, Spaniards and fucked over by the Savoys.

That gif you post shows that throughout various centuries parts of southern Italy were indeed controlled by ERE. not just for 100 years.

But so were other parts of Central and Northern Italy. Pic related is the geographic definition of Southern Italy (I would exclude Sardinia from it though). The Byzantines never controlled that much after the Lombards invaded.

Some Romans described Pompeii as dirty back then. I guess nothing changed.

Have a read through the graffiti. You're right, nothing has changed.
pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti from Pompeii.htm

The North was subjugated by the Austrians at a certain point, so what's your point?
Also this has nothing to do with advancement by itself.
Culturally speaking, the Italian language was born from Tuscany (center italy) with a good contribution from the Sicilian poetry (Scuola siciliana), and in the XV century Sicily had painters like Antonello da Messina who is now considered a precursor of Reinassance Art.
If you want an example of local powers, then you can look at Amalfi (near Naples), the oldest marinary republic.

look at this motherfucker, LOOK
technically the Middle Age wasn't over yet when he painted this

I would say Brunelleschi is the eponym of Renaissance art though, since he invented linear perspective.

Because the swarthy arabmonkey southerners have low iqs caused by sun exposure

because southern arab-monkeys have low iqs due to sun exposure

t. ignorant ape

South Italy was elder Greek aquisition and was becoming bad compare to newer land - obvious rule of colonisation.
Another important reason - British expansion after Napoleonic wars. All these mafia groups were created by Britain which stealing big part of local income.

I thought modern mafia was born after unification.

Yes. Unification was forced by Britain, but northern regions were displeased by that, so Italian state still weak and not so centralised. Mafia was created as parralel branch of power. Its glory path started in Sicilia near English settlement.

>on about roman times
>mentions an artifical kingdom created in the 12th century by Norman larpers.

You are joking, right? The Mafia was just the evolution of the latifundiary nobility of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies being like that kid that cheats in a multiplayer game by giving himself invincibility.

Essentially, the Mafia was the response both disgruntled peasants and noble fucknuts to Italian Unification. The former didn't like that the funny man asking you to pay taxes to "the King" was now asking for your sons (admittedly a bad idea in an agricultural society); the latter because the mere thought that having a latifunds occupying an area roughly equivalent to 140 square kilometers was not normal and/or beneficial to anyone.

Aristocrats havent reasons to hide and ignore their own native state institutions. Mafia was gradually breaking traditional authorities of Sicilia and furthermore. But you are right about mafia as additional guarantee against anti-British politicans in Italian government.

People forget that the capitals of the late Western Roman Empire were both in Northern Italy; Milan and Ravenna, so Northern Italy was already the most important region back then. Southern Italy served as the breadbasket for farming early on, but was supplanted by Egypt/North Africa.