Having walked down the Appian Way for his acclaimed book ” Between Two Seas”, Charles Lister found himself irresistibly drawn to the land of contrasts that is the extreme south of Italy. A French traveller once observed that Italy south of Naples is Africa, yet this had once been Magna Graecia, a land of luxury, & home of the Sybarites. George Berkely had visited in search of tarantulas, & George Gissing, in a feverish dream, had imagined he was back in Ancient Greece. So what is it like today, 25 centuries after it was a region studded with Greek temples, where Hannibal & Pyrrhus had massacred thousands, & where Pythagoras had tried to invent democracy? Lister had planned to travel by bicycle, but an Italian said he was mad & insisted he take his moped. He travelled extensively, as engaged by the wines of the region & the beauty of the local women as by the plethora of temples & the weight of history. In captivating prose, he reveals it to be a place haunted by its extraordinary past; once great & famous, still beautiful, &, in places, now tragically abandoned.