Hypotheses for the etymology of the Latin name "Italia" are numerous. One is that it was borrowed via Greek from the Oscan Víteliú 'land of calves' (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf"). Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states

Roman era
The Italian peninsula was divided into a multitude of tribal or ethnic territory prior to the

Over the ages, Italian literature had a vast influence on Western philosophy, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, and going onto Renaissance, The Enlightenment and

Italians have been the central figures of countless inventions and discoveries and they made many predominant contributions to various fields. During the Renaissance,

From the Etruscans and the Magna Graecia period to the 17th century, the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula were at the forefront of Western culture, being the fulcrum and origin of the

Since the Roman Empire, most western contributions to Western legal culture was the emergence of a class of Roman jurists. During the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Western scholar of the period, integrated the theory of natural law with the notion of an

During the Middle Ages, Leonardo Fibonacci, the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages, introduced the Hindu–Arabic numeral system to