76-666: Teatro Verga is a theatre or performance stage located in Via Giuseppe Fava #34 in Catania , Sicily , Italy . It is located a few blocks south of the Stadio Angelo Massimino , the main soccer arena in the city. The theater is the headquarters of the Teatro Stabile di Catania , which mainly sponsors works by regional authors. The theatre was built in 1969, after renovating an old cinema. The hall
152-460: A hot-summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csa ). The city has hot summers, one of the hottest in the whole country of Italy. Temperatures of 40 °C (104 °F) are surpassed almost every year a couple of times. Winters are mild, with significant nighttime cooling. Precipitation is concentrated from October to March, leaving late spring and summer virtually dry. The city receives around 500 millimetres (20 inches) of rain per year, although
228-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
304-646: A basin or a bay" and "a bowl, a vessel or a trough", thanks to the city's distinctive topography. Around 900, when Catania was part of the emirate of Sicily , it was known in Arabic as Balad al-fīl ( بلد الفيل ) and Madīnat al-fīl ( مدينة الفيل ), respectively meaning "the Village (or Country) of the Elephant" and "the City of the Elephant". The Elephant likely referred to the ancient lava sculpture, now placed over
380-545: A curse and a blessing. On the one hand, violent outbursts of the volcano throughout history have destroyed large parts of the city, while on the other hand the volcanic ashes yield fertile soil, especially suited for the growth of vines. (Strab. vi. p. 269) Two subterranean rivers run under the city; the Amenano, which surfaces at one single point south of Piazza Duomo, and the Longane (or Lognina). Catania experiences
456-525: A fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as
532-456: A large fleet of warships at his base at Messana , with many slaves joining from the villas of patricians. After the victory of Augustus in 36 BC much of the vast farmland in Sicily was either ruined or left empty, and much of this land was taken and distributed to members of the legions which had fought there. Catania suffered severely from the ravages but was afterwards one of the cities raised to
608-467: A local center of learning. The philosopher and legislator Charondas (late 6th c. BC), born in Catania, putatively wrote program of laws used here and in other Chalcidic cities, both in Sicily and through Magna Graecia . suggesting a link between Catania and other cities during this time. The poets Ibycus and Stesichorus ( c. 630 –555 BC) lived in Catania. The latter putatively was buried in
684-460: A magnificent sepulchre outside one of the gates, therefore named Porta Stesichoreia . Xenophanes ( c. 570 -475 BC), one of the founders of the Eleatic school of philosophy, also spent the latter years of his life in the city. The first introduction of dancing to accompany the flute was also ascribed to Andron , a citizen of Catania. Catania appears to have remained independent until
760-642: A massive castle, Castello Ursino and also made Catania a royal city, ending the dominance of the bishops. Catania was one of the main centers of the Sicilian Vespers revolt (1282) against the House of Anjou and was the seat of the coronation of the new Aragonese king of Sicily, Peter I . The city remained a key Sicilian port during the War of the Sicilian Vespers . After a civil revolt in 1299,
836-577: A position of great prosperity under the Roman rule. Around 135 BC during the First Servile War , it was conquered by rebel slaves. One of the most serious eruptions of Mount Etna happened in 121 BC, when a great part of Catania was overwhelmed by streams of lava, and the hot ashes fell in such quantities in the city itself, as to break in the roofs of the houses. Catana was in consequence exempted, for 10 years, from its usual contributions to
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#1732802016998912-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
988-542: A strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either
1064-563: A time (Plut. Dion. 58); and when Timoleon landed in Sicily in 344 BC Catania was subject to the despot Mamercus who at first joined the Corinthian leader, but afterwards abandoned this allegiance for that of the Carthaginians. As a consequence he was attacked and expelled by Timoleon in 338 BC. Catania was now restored to a fragile independence; changing sides during the wars starting in 311 BC of Agathocles of Syracuse with
1140-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
1216-460: A wealthy and flourishing city; it retained its ancient municipal institutions, its chief magistrate bearing the title of Proagorus ; and appears to have been one of the principal ports of Sicily for the export of corn. In the Sicilian revolt from 44 BC Sextus Pompeius selected Sicily as his base and Catania gave in to Sextus' revolt and joined his forces. Sextus amassed a formidable army and
1292-454: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Catania Catania ( / k ə ˈ t ɑː n i ə / , also UK : /- ˈ t eɪ n -/ , US : /- ˈ t æ n -/ ; Sicilian and Italian: [kaˈtaːnja] ) is the second-largest municipality in Sicily , after Palermo , both by area and by population. Despite its reputation as the second city of
1368-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
1444-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
1520-640: Is the seventh-largest metropolitan area in Italy. The population of the city proper is 311,584, while the population of the Metropolitan City of Catania is 1,107,702. Catania was founded in the 8th century BC by Chalcidian Greeks in Magna Graecia . The city has weathered multiple geologic catastrophes: it was almost completely destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake in 1169 . A major eruption and lava flow from nearby Mount Etna nearly swamped
1596-679: The Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about
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#17328020169981672-606: The Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek
1748-494: The Mezzogiorno , namely a heavy gap in industrial development and infrastructures, and the threat of the mafia . This notwithstanding, during the 1960s (and partly during the 1990s) Catania enjoyed development and a period of economic, social, and cultural success. In the first decade of the 21st century, Catania's economic and social development somewhat faltered and the city is again facing economic and social stagnation. This
1824-501: The Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
1900-603: The epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between
1976-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
2052-557: The 1693 earthquake, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site . The ancient indigenous population of Sicily, the Sicels , named their villages after geographical attributes of their location. The Siculian word katane means "grater, flaying knife, skinning place" or a "crude tool apt to pare". Other translations of the name are "harsh lands", "uneven ground", "sharp stones", or "rugged or rough soil". The latter etymologies are easily justifiable since, for many centuries following an eruption,
2128-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
2204-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
2280-663: The Carthaginians. When Pyrrhus landed in Sicily in 278 BC, Catania was the first to open its gates to him, and welcomed him with great splendor. During the First Punic War , Catania was one of the first cities of Sicily to submit to the Roman Republic after their first successes in 263 BC when it was taken by Valerius Messalla . A sundial was part of the booty which was placed in the Comitium in Rome. Since then
2356-545: The Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for
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2432-461: The Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Catania residents is 41 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Catania declined by 3.35 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.85 percent. The reason for this population decline in the comune di Catania is mainly due to a large segment of
2508-447: The Italian average of 9.45 births. As of 2006 , 98.03% of the population was Italian . The largest immigrant groups come from Sub-Saharan Africa : 0.69%, South Asia : 0.46%, and from other European countries (particularly from Ukraine and Poland ): 0.33%. There is currently a small community of Samaritans from Israel. Around 729 BC, the ancient village of Katane was occupied by Chalcidian Greek settlers from nearby Naxos along
2584-559: The Roman state. The greater part of the broad tract of plain to the southwest of Catana (now called the Piana di Catania , a district of great fertility), appears to have belonged, in ancient times , to Leontini or Centuripa (modern Centuripe ), but that portion of it between Catana itself and the mouth of the Symaethus was annexed to Catana and must have furnished abundant supplies of grain. Cicero repeatedly mentions it as, in his time,
2660-570: The Triple Alliance. After one year, Italy joined the Allied forces. Many promises made to secure Italy’s help during the war were not kept resulting in stability issues throughout the country leading to the adoption of fascist ideations. As the second World War began, the new regime opted to support Adolf Hitler, resulting in Catania and all the surrounding areas on Sicily being destroyed by Allied bombing. During World War II , Catania
2736-411: The amount can vary greatly from year to year, from over 1,200 mm (47 in) to under 250 mm (9.8 in). During winter nights, lows can occasionally reach below freezing. Highs under 10 °C (50 °F) may happen during winter. Snow, due to the presence of Etna that protects the city from the northern winds, is an uncommon occurrence, but occasional snow flurries have been seen over
2812-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
2888-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
2964-475: The city became a civitas decumana i.e. was subject to the payment of a tenth of its agricultural income as a tax to Rome. The conqueror of Syracuse, Marcus Claudius Marcellus , built a gymnasium here. It appears to have continued afterwards to maintain its friendly relations with Rome and though it did not enjoy the advantages of a confederate city ( foederata civitas ), like its neighbours Tauromenium (modern Taormina ) and Messana (modern Messina ), it rose to
3040-471: The city has always been rebuilt within its black-lava landscape. Around 263 BC, the city was variously known as Catĭna ( Latin: [ˈkatɪna] ) and Catăna ( Latin: [ˈkatana] ; Ancient Greek : Κατάνη [katánɛː] ). The former has been primarily used for its supposed assonance with catina , the Latin feminization of the name catinus . Catinus has two meanings: "a gulf,
3116-403: The city in 1669 and it suffered severe devastation from the 1693 Sicily earthquake . During the 14th century, and into the Renaissance period, Catania was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres. It was the site of Sicily's first university , founded in 1434. It has been the native or adopted home of some of Italy's most famous artists and writers, including
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3192-413: The city of Catania. During the years 1923 and 1928, Catania endured two major eruptions of Mt. Etna. The 1923 eruption lasted twenty-nine days, from June 6 until June 29. A large lava flow occurred in the 1928 event and was the first to destroy a population center in over two hundred years. At the onset of World War 1, Italy was part of a defensive alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary referred to as
3268-567: The city was captured by an Angevin army, which occupied the city until the Angevins evacuated their holdings on Sicily in 1302. In the 14th century it gained importance as it was chosen by the Aragonese as a Parliament and Royal seat. Here, in 1347, it was signed the treaty of peace that ended the long War of the Vesper between Aragonese and Angevines. Catania lost its capital role when, in
3344-492: The city, sold its citizens as slaves, and repopulated the town with Campanian mercenaries. However, the Carthaginians would take possession of Catania under Himilco and Mago , after the nearby great naval Battle of Catana (397 BC) where they defeated Leptines of Syracuse , and in 396 BC forcing the local Campanian mercenaries to relocate to Aetna . Calippus , the assassin of Dion of Syracuse , held Catania for
3420-467: The coast. It became the Chalcidian colony of Katánē under a leader named Euarchos (Euarchus) and the native population was rapidly Hellenised . Thucydides states that it came into existence slightly later than Leontini (modern Lentini ), which he claims was five years after Syracuse , or 730 BC. The settlement's acropolis was on the hill of Monte Vergine, a defensible hill immediately west of
3496-544: The composers Vincenzo Bellini and Giovanni Pacini , and the writers Giovanni Verga , Luigi Capuana , Federico De Roberto and Nino Martoglio . Catania today is the industrial, logistical, and commercial centre of Sicily. Its airport, the Catania–Fontanarossa Airport , is the largest in Southern Italy. The central "old town" of Catania features exuberant late- baroque architecture , prompted after
3572-477: The conquest by the despot Hieron of Syracuse ; in 476 BC, he expelled all the original inhabitants of Catania and replaced them with his subjects from the town of Leontini – said to have numbered no less than 10,000, consisting partly of Syracusans and Peloponnesians . Hieron changed the city's name to Αἴτνη ( Aítnē , Aetna or Ætna, after the nearby Mount Etna , and proclaimed himself the Oekist or founder of
3648-409: The current city centre. The port of Catania appears to have been much frequented in ancient time and was the chief place of export for the corn of the rich neighbouring plains. Catania was associated with the ancient legend of Amphinomos and Anapias, who, on occasion of a great eruption of Etna, abandoned all their property and carried off their aged parents on their shoulders. The stream of lava itself
3724-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
3800-530: The dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under
3876-567: The divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at
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#17328020169983952-609: The early 15th century, Sicily was turned into a member of the Crown of Aragon , and kept its autonomy and original privileges specially during the period from 1282 to 1410. In 1434 King Alfonso V founded here the Siciliae Studium Generale , the oldest university in the island. With the unification of Castile and Aragon (early 16th century ), Sicily became part of the Spanish Empire. It rebelled against
4028-500: The foreign government in 1516 and 1647. In 1669 the city's surroundings suffered great material damage from the 1669 Etna eruption . The city itself was largely saved by its walls that diverted most of the lava into the port. Afterwards, in 1693 the city was nearly completely destroyed by a heavy 1693 Sicily earthquake and its aftershocks. The city was then rebuilt in the Baroque architecture that nowadays characterizes it. Catania
4104-590: The fountain in Piazza Duomo. The sculpture is most likely a prehistoric sculpture that was reforged during the Byzantine Era, prized as a protective talisman against enemies, both human, natural or geologic. Another Arab toponym was Qaṭāniyyah ( قطانية ), allegedly from the Arabic word for the " leguminous plants ". Pulses like lentils , beans, peas, broad beans , and lupins were chiefly cultivated in
4180-536: The island, Catania is the largest Sicilian conurbation, and among the largest in Italy. It has important road and rail transport infrastructures, and hosts the main airport in Sicily (fifth-largest in Italy). The city is located on Sicily's east coast, facing the Ionian Sea at the base of the active volcano Mount Etna . It is the capital of the 58-municipality region known as the Metropolitan City of Catania , which
4256-516: The latter had forced an entrance, the Athenian leader Alcibiades made a famous speech in front of the assembly. Catania became an ally, and the headquarters of the Athenian army for the first year of the expedition, and a base of their subsequent operations against Syracuse. After the defeat of the Athenians, Catania was again threatened by Syracuse. In 403 BC, Dionysius I of Syracuse plundered
4332-578: The name Aetna). The old Chalcidic citizens returned to the city in 461 BC. The period that followed appears to have been one of great prosperity for Catania, as well as for the Sicilian cities in general. In 415 BC, Catania became involved with the expedition to Sicily pursued by the Athenians to punish Syracuse. Initially the Catanaeans refused to allow the Athenians into their city, but after
4408-469: The new city. For this he was celebrated by Pindar , and after his death he received heroic honours from the citizens of his new colony. A few years after the death of Hieron and the expulsion of Thrasybulus of Syracuse , the Syracusans combined with Ducetius , king of the Sicels , to expel the newly settled inhabitants of Catania, who went on to settle in the fortress of Inessa (to which they gave
4484-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
4560-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
4636-660: The period of the Roman Empire ; so that in the 4th century Ausonius in his Ordo Nobilium Urbium , notices Catania and Syracuse alone among the cities of Sicily. Catania was sacked by the Vandals of Gaiseric in 440–441. After a period under the Ostrogoths , it was reconquered in 535 by the Eastern Roman Empire , under which (aside from a short period in 550–555) it remained until the 9th century. It
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#17328020169984712-516: The plains around the city well before the arrival of Aghlabids . Afterwards, many Arabic agronomists developed these crops and the citrus orchards in the area around the city. The toponym Wādī Mūsá ( وادي موسى ), or "the Valley of Moses" (from the Arabic name of the Simeto River), was rarely used. As observed by Strabo , the location of Catania at the foot of Mount Etna has been both
4788-472: The population leaving the city centre to go to live in the uptown residential areas of the comuni of the Metropolitan area. As a result of this, while the population in the comune di Catania declines, the population of the hinterland comuni increases making the overall population of the Metropolitan area increase. The current birth rate of Catania is 10.07 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to
4864-550: The population to flee to the countryside. After heavy fighting across eastern Sicily, Catania was eventually captured by the British 8th Army on 5 August 1943. After the conflict, and the constitution of the Italian Republic (1946), Catania attempted to catch up with the economic and social development of Italy's richer northern regions. The problems faced in Catania were emblematic of those faced by other towns in
4940-460: The recent years, especially in the hilly districts. More recently, light snowfalls occurred on 9 February 2015, 6 January 2017 and 5 January 2019, but the last heavy snowfall dates back to 17 December 1988. In January 2015, there were 315,601 people residing in Catania, of whom 47.2% were male and 52.8% were female. Minors (people under age 18) totalled 20.50 percent of the population compared to pensioners who number 18.87 percent. This compares with
5016-609: The status of colony by Augustus which restored its prosperity through the settlement of veterans, so that in Strabo 's time it was one of the few cities in the island that was flourishing. Another revolt led by the gladiator Selurus in 35 BC created mayhem for a while. The Roman aqueduct of Catania was the longest in Roman Sicily at 24 kilometres (15 mi), starting from the springs of Santa Maria di Licodia. It retained its colonial rank, as well as its prosperity, throughout
5092-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
5168-467: The time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with
5244-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
5320-452: Was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in
5396-550: Was aggravated by the economic crisis left by the Forza Italia administration of mayor Scapagnini in 2008. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ),
5472-491: Was given the name of Teatro delle Muse, and became the main theater company of the Teatro Stabile di Catania. Equipped with a spacious hall and a gallery, it has over 1,000 seats. In January 1981 the theater was destroyed by fire but was immediately rebuilt and in less than a year became available again. The new theatre is named after the writer Giovanni Verga . This article about an Italian building or structure
5548-634: Was heavily bombed by the Allied air forces, owing to the presence of two of the main Axis airfields in Sicily ( Gerbini and Fontanarossa ) and for its strategically important port and marshalling yard . Altogether, the city suffered eighty-seven air raids. The heaviest took place in the spring and summer of 1943, before and during the Allied invasion of Sicily ; they caused heavy damage to the city (among others, twenty-eight churches and most historic palaces suffered damage), killed 750 inhabitants and prompted most of
5624-599: Was one of the vanguards of the movement for Sicilian autonomy in the early 19th century. In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi 's expedition of the Thousand conquered Sicily for Piedmont from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies . Since the following year Catania was part of the newly unified Italy , whose history it shares since then. The first half of the twentieth century was a cycle of repeated destruction and rebuilding for
5700-597: Was said to have parted, and flowed aside so as not to harm them. Statues were erected to their honour, and the place of their burial was known as the Campus Piorum ; the Catanaeans even introduced the figures of the youths on their coins, and the legend became a favorite subject of allusion and declamation among the Latin poets , of whom the younger Lucilius and Claudian have dwelt upon it at considerable length. The Greek polis of Catania appears to have been
5776-532: Was the seat of the Byzantine governor of the island. Catania was under an Islamic emirate for two centuries, after which it fell to the Normans of Roger I of Sicily . Subsequently, the city was ruled by a bishop-count (1072). In 1194–1197 the city was sacked by German soldiers during after the conquest of the island by emperor Henry VI . In 1232 it rebelled to the former's son, Frederick II , who later built
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