Today is February 14, Valentine's Day, the most romantic day of the year, and flowers and chocolates have their place in the spotlight.

When people think of ancient Greece, they often picture Athens, Sparta, or Olympia. Yet some of the most influential ideas of classical civilization did not fully mature on the Greek mainland. They flourished instead across the sea, in what the ancients called Magna Graecia, the great Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily.