By Academician EASA Alexios P.PANAGOPOULOS

(ORCID iD 0009-0008-9304-4040)

Part C

Recently, the participation of the University of Magna Graecia (Catanzaro) in the first National University Day, following the invitation of the Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities (CRUI), was significant. The “Unveiled Universities” initiative, funded by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research, was a contemporary opportunity to share the scientific and cultural heritage produced by the academic community for the service of society and the entire territory.
The CRUI accepted the request to establish National Universities Day on 20 March 2024 to coincide with International Day of Happiness and within Minerva Week, a period dedicated to the celebration of knowledge, science and education. The conferences, workshops and guided tours at the University of Magna Graecia were intended to reveal the life that takes place every day in the halls of the University, in order to create a strong connection with the rest of the territory. The day’s program ended at 15:00 at the San Giovanni Memorial Complex, with an event that had the characteristic title: From the beginnings of Magna Graecia, to the future of Magna Graecia (Giornata Nazionale delle Università – ‘UMG SVELATA). Experts and professors met within the scientific community and with the historical, naturalistic excursion that described the beautiful peculiarities of the local culture, i.e. the culture of Magna Graecia, with the scientific, social and geopolitical eye directed to the future, and the aim of developing new strategic programs for the University of Magna Graecia in Catanzaro.
The University of Magna Graecia (UMG = University Magna Graecia) participated with great enthusiasm, using this first opportunity to share university knowledge and the ideas of European culture, and at the national level, as was confirmed by Rector Gianni Cuda, as he was thanking the president of the CRUI, Giovanna Iannantuoni for include the University of (UMG) Catanzaro in this nice event, and spoke of the National University Day which also represented a critical geostrategic and geopolitical moment for the future of the University of Magna Graecia.
At the same time, it is significant that the Institute of Philosophy and Pythagorean Sciences of Crotona wants to create a university study center modelled after the Institute of History and Archeology of Magna Graecia in Taranto and the International Center for Joachimistic Studies of San Giovanni in Fiore. This example reminds a lot of the time when liberalism was created and developed, when European universities and scientific institutes supported the idea of liberal theoreticians and thus institutionalized it. “In many countries, research institutions have established new disciplines of political science, as well as international studies.” “These institutions facilitated national cooperation and academic professionalization within specific fields. Nevertheless, the key role was for economists, politicians and intellectuals to develop and distribute the normative view and visions, scientific and political practices of liberal capitalism.” (Maksimovic, 2021: 47–48).
The fact is that beyond all logic, although today a provincial capital of 58,288 inhabitants, Crotona does not yet have a university with steady and postgraduate study centers that could attract scholars from all over Europe and the world. Geopolitically and historically this city of Crotona was once the capital of Magna Graecia. Let us recall that it was the home of the first University of the West, namely the celebrated Pythagorean School of the 6th century BC, where the philosopher Pythagoras from the island of Samos taught his students the secrets of knowledge and the world. His teaching included a philosophical theory and a theory of the universe which he explained through the theory of numbers and the soul (Michailidis-Nouaros, 1990).
Croton is the place of origin for philosopher and physician Alcmaeon, who, by anatomically dissecting corpses, discovered that the center of human life was not the heart, but the brain, turning medicine into science rather than magic. The city of Crotone was the birthplace of the great physician and surgeon, Demochides, son of Calliphon, priest of Asklipio in Knidos, who studied at the Pythagorean medical school, the best in the Hellenic world. Demochides cured the famous Persian king Darius I of sprain, and later cured his wife Atossa, who was suffering from breast disease (Alexiadis, 1989; Beloch, 1912; Christofilopoulos, 1973; Ciaceri, 1940; Finley, 1984; Graham, 1982).
It would be remiss not to say something about the great philosopher, astronomer, mathematician Philolaus, Pythagorean student of the second generation, according to Diogenes Laertius, whose philosophical and astronomical conception presented the fact that the planet Earth, as an imperfect body, was framed from a twin planet and played a marginal role for the solar system and attributed the greatest importance to the central fire, which he called Hestia, or otherwise the seat of Jupiter, or the center of cosmic activity. Two centuries before the calculations of Eratosthenes (276–194 BC), who supported the non-geocentric model, where at the center of the universe there might, he said, be a great fire and around which the ten bodies rotated counterclockwise, including the Earth, Anti-Earth, Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, with the fixed star sky interpreted as outer fire. He also taught that the ten bodies were distant from the central Fire, according to distances proportional to factors of the number 3, a number considered sacred by the Pythagorean philosophers. The numerical relationships between the planets constituted harmony, a perfect order, perceived by the most advanced minds as sound intelligence, also called the music of the spheres. The philosopher Philolaus is credited with formalizing the role of number for physical models with the following sentence: All known things have a number, and we can understand and know nothing without it (Hugh, 1911; History, 1926; Lacey, 1968; Triantafyllopoulos, 1961). When it comes to the area of Magna Graecia, it is also inevitable to mention Hippocrates, a philosopher and a man who was the pride of the whole of Greece, yet best known as the father of Greek medical science and creator of the oath that every medical doctor takes. He himself was the child of a Greek philosopher and physician named Irodikos (Panagopoulos, 2020).
For all these scientific reasons there is a need in Magna Graecia and in the city of Croton to build a large study center, for all these scientific reasons there is a need in Greater Greece and the city of Croton to build a large center for the study of both ancient Greek science and ancient Greek ethics and wisdom. Here there is a geopolitical and geoeconomic effort to create a new wax level of scientific, social and humanistic culture through cognitive efforts, and with the help of books to raise the level of scientific knowledge. This would help to separate the populist approach from the scientific study of Magna Greco. Today’s activities are far from the systematic scientific order that the city of Croton could determine as a European driving force of national, international, social-humanistic and scientific knowledge.
For all of the above reasons, the people involved in the social/cultural Association of Education and the International Institute of Pythagorean Sciences and Philosophy wish to invite several scholars and scientists to Crotona, such as Prof. Maurizio Giangiulio of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, professor of Greek history in Trento, dean of the school of letters and member of the scientific council and professor of the Italian archaeological school of Athens, to form and organize a part for the study of Mediterranean and Ancient Greek History within the framework of the European network. The Education association in collaboration with Prof. Giangiulio, decided to reprint his work under the title: Research on Archaic Crotone, ed. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 1989, urging the institutions and citizens of Crotona to establish a voluntary fund to reprint this work in Crotona, to start the operation of a University Study Center to cooperate with the International Institute of Philosophy and Pythagorean Sciences, founded by Dr. Luigi Bitonti, a few years ago, and presented to Sandro Pertini at the school institute of Crotone with the intervention of scholars, such as Vittorio Emanuele Esposito, the archaeologist and senator Margherita Corrado and several others. 

Epilogue
It is telling that when the increased feelings of Freedom and the Pan-European Idea of Freedom dominate the peoples of Europe, it is something that transcends our lives, a higher spiritual ideal in front of which the small goals and labors of everyday life seem insignificant, as it brings us to a pan-European union of souls and meanings that creates an unprecedented dynamic, which also constitutes the guarantee for the certain positive result of our goal. And perhaps the day is near when Magna Graecia will again breathe the fresh air of European Freedom and, if supported by the institutions of Europe, of Cultural European Independence, hoping for a better European tomorrow for the Greater Greece and the success of the common European struggle. The University of Magna Graecia (UMG = University Magna Graecia) must participate in such opportunities in order to share university knowledge and European culture at the national level, as mentioned by Rector Gianni Cuda on the National University Day, and this also represents a critical geostrategy and geopolitical moment for the future of the University of Magna Graecia, European culture, European society and United Europe.

REFERENCES
Alexiadis, S. G. (1989). Ancient Hellenic La. Athens: Sakkoula. Aristotle. (1999). Politics. Kitchener: Batoche Books.                                                                                     Beloch, K. J. (1912). Griechische Geschichte, Vol. 1(2). 2 ed. Berlin und Leipzig:K. J. Trübner, Strassberg.                                                                                                        Cantarella, E. (1981). L’ ambiguo malanno. Condizionne e imagine della donna nel antiquita greca e romana. Roma : Feltrinelli.
Compernolle, Van B. (1981). La Legistation aristocratique de Locres epizephyriennes dite legislation‚ de Zaleukos. Antiquite classique, 50.
Christofilopoulos, A. P. (1973). Law and History. Athens.
Ciaceri, E. (1940). Storia della Magna Grecia, I2. Milano: Editrice Dante Alighieri.
Diodorus Siculus. (1933). Library of History, Volume I: Books 1–2.34. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dunbabin, J. (1948). The Western Greeks. Oxford: Oxford Press.

Source: Panagopoulos, A. (2024). Geopolitical and Social Significance of the Magna Graecia Development – From Yesterday to Today. In: Maksimovic, M. &
Rohrbach, W. (Eds). The Geo-Economic Landscape: A Market and Social Approach, pp. 324–343. Edited Volumes. Belgrade: Institute of Social Sciences; Krems: University for Continuing Education Krems, Danube University Krems. https://doi.org/10.59954/QGRL7430-12

PANAGOPOULOS ALEXIOS, Academician EASA, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Greece, and former Rector of the Athoniada Academy in Karyes, Holy Mountain Athos. Panagopolous is a doctor of political sciences, bioethics, political history and religion, and holds a post-doctorate in law. Scientific Research: University of Munich; Vienna University; Tomas College University in Warsaw, IKY scholarship in Geneva; Chambesy Center of Ecumenical Patriarchate; Interdisciplinary Hellenic Studies Program Coordinator in the Institute of Saint Gregorious Nazianzine in Central America; Faculty of Religious Law; Rector of Athoniada Ecclesiastical Academy in Karyes, Holy Mountain Athos – in 2012–2013. Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg. Member of the International Slavic Academy of Sciences, Education, Arts & Culture, Moscow & Belgrade.