SICILY, slightly surpassed by Sardinia in superficial extent, is, in its geographical and historical position,
position. ^ greatest island of the Mediterranean. As such it holds among European lands a position answering to that of Great Britain, the greatest island of the Ocean, and the events of their history have at more than one period brought the two islands into a close connexion with one another. The geo-graphical position of Sicily (see vol. xiii. pi. IV.) led almost as a matter of necessity to its historical position, as the meet-ing-place of the nations, the battle-field of contending races and creeds. Lying nearer to the mainland of Europe and nearer to Africa than any other of the great Mediterranean islands, Sicily is, next to Spain, the connecting link between those two quarters of the world. It stands also as a break-water between the eastern and western divisions of the Medi-terranean Sea. In prss-historic times those two divisions were two vast lakes, and Sicily is a surviving fragment of the land which once parted the two united seas and united the continents which are now distinct. That Sicily and Africa were once joined we know only from modern scien-tific research; that Sicily and Italy were once joined is handed down in legend, unless the legend itself is not rather an obvious guess. Sicily then, comparatively near to Africa, but much nearer to Europe, has been a European land, but one specially open to invasion and settlement from Africa. Dividing the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, it has been a part of western Europe, but a part which has had specially close relations with eastern Europe. It has stood at various times in close connexion with Greece, with Africa, and with Spain; but its closest connexion has been with the neighbouring land of Italy. Still Italy and Sicily are thoroughly distinct lands, and the history of Sicily should never be looked on as simply part of the history of Italy. Lying thus between Europe and Africa, Sicily has been the battle-field of Europe and Africa. That is to say, it has been at two separate periods the battle-field of Aryan and Semitic man. In the later stage of the strife it has been the battle-field of Christendom and Islam. This history Sicily shares with Spain to the west of it and with Cyprus to the east. And with Spain the island has had several direct points of connexion. There was in all likelihood a near kindred between the earliest inhabitants of the two lands. In later times Sicily was ruled by Spanish kings, both alone and in union with other kingdoms. The connexion with Africa has consisted simply in the settlement of conquerors from Africa at two periods, first Phoenician, then Saracen. On the other hand Sicily has been more than once made the road to African con-quest and settlement, both by Sicilian princes and by the Bpman masters of Sicily. The connexion with Greece, the most memorable of all, has consisted in the settlement of many colonies from old Greece, which gave the island the most brilliant part of its history, and which made the greater part practically Greek. This Greek element was strengthened at a later time by the long connexion of Sicily with the Eastern, the Greek-speaking, division of the Boman empire. And the influence of Greece on Sicily has been repaid in more than one shape by Sicilian rulers who have at various times held influence and dominion in Greece and elsewhere beyond the Hadriatic (Adriatic). The connexion between Sicily and Italy begins with the primitive kindred between some of the oldest elements in each. Then came the contemporary Greek colonization in both lands. Then came the tendency in the dominant powers in southern Italy to make their way into Sicily also. Thus the Boman occupation of Sicily ended the struggle between Greek and Phoenician. Thus the Norman occupation ended the struggle between Greek and Saracen. Of this last came the long connexion between Sicily and southern Italy under several dynasties. Lastly comes the late absorption of Sicily in the modern kingdom of Italy. The result of these various forms of Italian influence has been that all the other tongues of the island have died out before the advance of a peculiar dialect of Italian. In religion again both Islam and the Eastern form of Christianity have given way to its Italian form. The connexion with England amounts to this, that both islands came under Norman dynasties, that under Norman rule the intercourse between the two countries was ex-tremely close, and that the last time that Sicily was the seat of a separate power it was under British protection.
The Bhoenician, whether from old Phoenicia or from Car-thage, came from lands which were mere strips of sea-coast with a boundless continent behind them. The Greek of old Hellas came from a land of islands, peninsulas, and inland seas. So did the Greek of Asia, though he had, like the Phoenician, a vast continent behind him. In Sicily they all found a strip of sea-coast with an inland region behind; but the strip of sea-coast was not like the broken coast of Greece and Greek Asia, and the inland region was not a boundless continent like Africa or Asia. In Sicily therefore the Greek became more continental, and the Phoe-nician became more insular, than either nation had been in its own land. Neither people ever occupied the whole island: the presence of the other hindered either from occupying even the whole of the coast; nor was either people ever able to spread its dominion over the earlier inhabitants very far inland. Sicily thus remained a world of its own, with interests and disputes of its own, and divided among in-habitants of various nations. The history of the Greeks of Sicily is constantly connected with the history of old Hellas, but it runs a separate course of its own. Their position answers somewhat to that of the English people of the United States with regard to the mother-country of Great Britain. It differs in this, that the independence of the Greek cities in Sicily was not the result of warfare with the mother-country. Otherwise the analogy would have been almost exact, if France or Spain had kept its old power in North America. The Phoenician element ran an opposite course, as the independent Phoenician settlements in Sicily sank into dependencies of Carthage. The entrance of the Bomans put an end to all practical independence on the part of either nation. But Roman ascendency did not affect Greeks and Phoenicians in the same way. Phoenician
life gradually died out. But Boman ascendency nowhere crushed out Greek life where it already existed, and in some ways it strengthened it. Though the Greeks never spread their dominion over the island, they made a peace-ful conquest of it. This process was in no way hindered by the Boman dominion; the work of assimilation went on still faster.
Original The question now comes, "Who were the original inhabit-inhabit- ants of Sicily ? The island itself, SiKeAia, Sicilia, plainly an*3' takes its name from the Sikels (2IK«A<H, Siculi), a people whom we find occupying a great part of the island, chiefly east of the river Gela. They appear also in Italy, in the toe of the boot, and older history or tradition spoke of them as having in earlier days held a large place in Latium and elsewhere in central Italy. They were believed to have crossed the strait into the island about 300 years before the beginning of the Greek settlements, that is to say in the 11th century B.C. They found in the island a people called Sikans (Sixavot, Sicani), whose name might pass for a dialectic form of their own, did not the ancient writers straitly affirm them to be a wholly distinct people, akin to the Iberians. Sikans also appear with the Ligurians among the early inhabitants of Italy (Virg., jEn., vii. 795, viii. 328, xi. 317, and Servius's note). It is possible then that the likeness of name is accidental, that the Sikels belonged to the same branch of the Aryan family as the Italians, while Sikans, like Ligurians and Iberians and the surviving Basques, belonged to the earlier non-Aryan population of western Europe. But, whatever the origin of either, in the history of the island Sikans and Sikels appear as two distinct nations with a clear geographical boundary. And we may venture to set down the Sikels as undeveloped Latins, who were hindered by the coming of the Greeks from reaching the same independent national life as their kinsfolk in Italy, and, instead of so doing, were gradually Hellenized. On the other hand, some Sikel elements made their way into the Greek life of Sicily. That the Sikels spoke a tongue closely akin to Latin is plain from several Sikel words which crept into Sicilian Greek, and from the Sikeliot system of weights and measures,—utterly unlike anything in old Greece. When the Greek settlements began, the Sikans had hardly got beyond the life of villages on hill-tops (Dion. Hal., v. 6), more truly perhaps villages with places of shelter on the hill-tops. The more advanced Sikels had their hill-forts also, but they had learned the advantages of the sea, and they already had settlements on the coast when the Greeks came. As we go on, we hear of both Sikel and Sikan towns; but we may suspect that any approach to true city life was owing to Greek influences. Neither people grew into any form of national unity. There was neither common king nor common confederation either of Sikels or of Sikans. They were therefore partly subdued, partly assimilated, slowly, but without much effort.
In the north-east corner of the island we find a small territory occupied by a people who seem to have made much greater advances towards civilized life. The Elymoi were a people of uncertain origin, but they claimed a mixed descent, partly Trojan, partly Greek. Thucydides however unhesitatingly reckons them among barbarians. They had considerable towns, as Segesta (the Greek Egesta) and Eryx, and the whole history, as well as the remains, of Segesta, shows that Greek influences prevailed among them very early. In short, we find in the island three nations distinct from the Greeks, two of which at least easily adopted Greek culture and came in the end to pass for Greeks by adoption. Early But, as we have already seen, the Greeks were not the dan"'" ^rs^ ccuomzing people who were drawn to the great island, settle- As in Cyprus and in the islands of the Aegaean, the ments. Phoenicians were before them. And it is from this presence of the highest forms of Aryan and of Semitic man that the history of Sicily draws its highest interest. Of Phoenician occupation there are two, or rather three, marked periods. We must always remember that Carthage —the new city—was one of the latest of Phoenician founda-tions, and that the days of the Carthaginian dominion show us only the latest form of Phoenician life. Phoenician settlement in Sicily began before Carthage became great, perhaps before Carthage came into being. A crowd of small settlements from the old Phoenicia, settlements for trade rather than for dominion, factories rather than colonies, grew up on promontories and small islands all round the Sicilian coast. These were unable to withstand the Greek settlers, and the Phoenicians of Sicily withdrew step by step to form three considerable towns in the north-west corner of the island,—Motye, Soloeis or Solunto, on a hill overhanging the sea on the north coast, and the great Panormos, the all-haven (see PALERMO), the city destined to be, in two different periods of the world's history, the head of Semitic power in Sicily.
Our earlier notices of Sicily, of Sikels and Sikans, in the Greek Homeric poems and elsewhere, are vague and legendary. cploin:i Both races appear as given to the buying and selling oftlon" slaves (Od., xx. 383, xxiv. 30, 210). The intimate con-nexion between old Hellas and Sicily begins with the foundation of the Sicilian Naxos by Chalkidians of Euboia under Theokles, which is assigned to the year 735 B.C. The site, a low promontory on the east coast, immediately below the height of Tauromenion, marks an age which had advanced beyond the hill-fortress and which thoroughly valued the sea. The next year Corinth began her system of settlement in the west: Korkyra (Corcyra), the path to Sicily, and Syracuse on the Sicilian coast were planted as parts of one enterprise. From this time, for about 150 years, Greek settlement in the island, with some intervals, goes steadily on. Both Ionian and Dorian colonies were planted, both from the older Greek lands and from the older Sicilian settlements. The east coast, nearest to Greece and richest in good harbours, was occupied first. Here, between Naxos and Syracuse, arose the Ionian cities of Leontinoi and Katana (Catina, Catania) and the Dorian Megara by Hybla. Settlement on the south-western coast began about 688 B.C. with the joint Cretan and Bhodian settle-ment of Gela, and went on in the foundation of Selinous (the most distant Greek city on this side), of Kamarina (Camarina), and in 588 B.C. of the Geloan settlement of Akragas (Agrigentum, Girgenti), planted on a high hill, a little way from the sea, which became the second city of Hellenic Sicily. On the north coast the Ionian Himera was the only Greek city in Sicily itself, but the Knidians founded Lipara in the JEolian Islands. At the north-east corner, opposite to Italy, and commanding the strait, arose Zankle, a city of uncertain date and mixed origin, better known under its later name of Messana (Messene, Messina).
Thus nearly all the east coast of Sicily, a great part of the south coast, and a much smaller part of the north, passed into the hands of Greek settlers,—Sikeliots (2i«e-AIWTGU), as distinguished from the native Sikels. This was one of the greatest advances ever made by the Greek people. The Greek element began to be predominant in the island. Among the earlier inhabitants the Sikels were already be-coming adopted Greeks. Many of them gradually sank into a not wholly unwilling subjection as cultivators of the soil under Greek masters,—a relation embodied perhaps in the legend that a native Sikel prince led the Greek settlers to the foundation of Megara. But there were also inde-pendent Sikel towns in the interior, and there was a strong religious intercommunion between the two races. Sikel Henna (Enna, Castrogiovanni) is the special seat of the worship of Demeter and her daughter. The Sikans, on the other hand, seem more distinct and more steadily 454 B.C. hostile. The Phoenicians, now shut up in one corner of the island, with Selinous on one side and Himera on the other founded right in their teeth, are bitter enemies ; but the time of their renewed greatness under the headship of Prosper- Carthage has not yet come. The 7th century B.C. and the ousGreek early part of the 6th were a time in which the Greek period. cjties 0f Sicily had their full share in the general prosperity of the Greek colonies everywhere. For a while they out- stripped the cities of old Greece. Their political constitu- tions were aristocratic; that is, the franchise was confined to the descendants of the original settlers, round whom an excluded body or plebs) was often growing up. The ancient kingship was perhaps kept on or renewed in some of the Sikeliot and Italiot towns; but it is more certain that civil dissensions led very early to the rise of tyrants. The first and most famous is Phalaris of Akragas, whose exact date is uncertain, whose letters are now cast aside, and whose brazen bull has been called in question, but who clearly rose to power very soon after the foundation of Akragas. Under his rule the city at once sprang to the first place in Sicily, and he was the first Sikeliot ruler who held dominion over two Greek cities, Akragas and Himera. This time of prosperity was also a time of intel-lectual progress. To say nothing of lawgivers like Char-ondas, the line of Sikeliot poets began early, and the cir-cumstances of the island, the adoption of many of its local traditions and beliefs—perhaps a certain intermingling of native blood—gave the intellectual life of Sicily a char-acter in some things distinct from that of old Hellas. Stesichoros of Himera (c. 632-556 B.C.) holds a great place among the lyric poets of Greece, and some place in the political history of Sicily as the opponent of Phalaris. The architecture and sculpture of this age have also left some of their most remarkable monuments among the Greek cities of Sicily (see SYRACUSE). The remains of the old temples of Selinous, attributed to the 7th century B.C., show us the Doric style in its earlier state, and the sculp-tures of their metopes (preserved at Palermo) are as dis-tinctly grotesque as any Romanesque sculpture of the 11th or 12th century. In both ages the art of the builder was far in advance of that of the ornamental carver.
This first period of Sicilian history lasts as long as Sicily remains untouched from any non-Hellenic quarter outside, and as long as the Greek cities in Sicily remain as a rule independent of one another. A change begins in the 6th century and is accomplished early in the 5th. The Phoeni-cian settlements in Sicily become dependent on Carthage, whose growing power begins to be dangerous to the Greeks Growth of Sicily. Meanwhile the growth of tyrannies in the of tyran- Greek cities was beginning to group several towns together Bles" under a single master, and thus to increase the greatness of particular cities at the expense of their freedom. Thus Theron of Akragas (488-472), who bears a good character there, acquired also, like Phalaris, the rule of Himera. One such power held dominion both in Italy and Sicily. Anaxilaos of Ehegion, by a long and strange tale of treachery, occupied Zankle and changed its name to Mes-sana. But the greatest of the Sikeliot powers began at Gelon. Gela in 505, and was in 485 translated by Gelon to Syra-cuse. That city now became the centre of a greater dominion over both Greeks and Sikels than the island had ever before seen. But Gelon, like several later tyrants of Syracuse, takes his place—and it is the redeeming point in the position of all of them—as the champion of Hellas against the barbarian. The great double invasion of 480 B.cwas planned in concert by the barbarians of the East and the West (Diod., xi. 20; schol. on Pind., Pyth., i. 146; Grote, v. 294). While the Persians threatened old Greece, Carth-age threatened the Greeks of Sicily. There were Sikeliots who played the part of the Medizers in Greece : Selinous was on the side of Carthage, and the coming of Hamilkar was immediately brought about by a tyrant of Himera driven out by Theron. But the united power of Gelon and Theron crushed the invaders in the great battle of Himera, won, men said, on the same day as Salamis, and the victors of both were coupled as the joint deliverers of Hellas (Herod., vii. 165-167; Diod., xx. 20-25; Pind., Pyth., i. 147-156; Simonides, fr. 42; Polyainos, i. 27). But, while the victory of Salamis was followed by a long war with Persia, the peace which was now granted to Carthage stayed in force for seventy years. Gelon was followed by his brother Hieron (478-467), the special Hieron subject of the songs of Pindar. Akragas meanwhile1-flourished under Theron; but a war between him and Hieron led to slaughter and new settlement at Himera. These transplantings from city to city began under Gelon and went on under Hieron. They made speakers in old Greece (Thuc, vi. 17) contrast the permanence of habi-tation there with the constant changes in Sicily. Hieron won the fame of a founder by peopling Katana with new citizens, and changing its name to Aitna.
None of these tyrannies were long-lived. The power of Theron fell to pieces under his son Thrasydaios. When the power of Hieron passed in 467 B.C. to his brother Thrasyboulos the freedom of Syracuse was won by a combined movement of Greeks and Sikels, and the Greek cities gradually settled down as they had been before the tyrannies, only with a change to democracy in their con-stitutions. The mercenaries who had received citizenship from the tyrants were settled at Messana. About fifty years of general prosperity followed. We have special pictures of almost incredible wealth and luxury at Akra-gas, chiefly founded on an African trade. Moreover art, science, poetry, had all been encouraged by the tyrants, and they went on flourishing in the free states. To these was now added the special growth of freedom, the art of public speaking. Epicharmos (540-450), carried as a babe to Sicily, is a link between native Sikeliots and the strangers invited by Hieron; as the founder of the local Sicilian comedy, he ranks among Sikeliots. After him Sophron of Syracuse gave the Sicilian mimes a place among the forms of Greek poetry. But the intellect of free Sicily struck out higher paths. Empedokles of Akragas is best known from the legends of his miracles and of his death in the fires of iEtna; but he was not the less philosopher, poet, and physician, besides his political career. It is vaguely implied (Diog. Laert., viii. 2, 9) that he refused an offer of the tyranny or of authority in some shape. Gorgias of Leontinoi (c. 480-375) had a still more direct influence on Greek culture, as father of the technical schools of rhetoric throughout Greece. Architecture too advanced, and the Doric style gradually lost somewhat of its ancient massiveness. The temple at Syracuse which is now the metropolitan church belongs to the earlier days of this time. It is followed by the later temples at Selinous, among them the temple of Zeus, which is said to have been the greatest in Sicily, and by the wonderful series at Akragas, crowned by the Olympian temple, with its many architectural singularities. This, like its fellow at Selinous, was not fully finished at the time of the Carthaginian inroad at the end of the century.
During this time of prosperity there was no dread of Condi-Carthaginian inroads. But in 454 B.C. we read of a war tion of between Segesta and Lilybaion (Lilybasum). There was as ^els yet no town of Lilybaion; but, if the war was waged gyjans. against any Phoenician settlement, the fact is to be noticed, as hitherto Segesta has been allied with the Phoenicians against the Greeks. Far more important are our notices of the earlier inhabitants. For now comes the great Sikel movement under Douketios, who, between force and per-suasion, came nearer towards uniting his people into one body than had ever been done before. From his native hill-top of Menai, rising above the lake dedicated to the Palikoi, the native deities whom Sikels and Greeks alike honoured, he brought down his people to the new city of Palikai in the plain. His power grew, and Akragas could withstand him only by the help of Syracuse. Alternately victorious and defeated, spared by Syracuse (451), sent to be safe at Corinth, he came back to Sicily only to form greater plans than before. War between Akragas and Syracuse enabled him to carry out his schemes, and, with the help of another Sikel prince who bore the Greek name of Archom'dcs, ne founded Kale Akte on the northern coast. But his work was cut short by his death in 440 ; the hope of the Sikel people now lay in assimilation to their Hellenic neighbours. Douketios's own foundation of Kale Akte lived on, and we presently hear of Sikel towns under kings and tyrants, all marking an approach to Greek life. Boughly speaking, while the Sikels of the plain country on the east coast became subject to Syracuse, most of those in other parts of the island re-mained independent. Of the Sikans we hear less; but Hykkara in the north-west was an independent Sikan town on bad terms with Segesta. On the whole, setting aside the impassable barrier between Greek and Phoenician, other distinctions of race within the island were breaking down through the spread of the Hellenic element. Segesta was on familiar terms with both Greek and Phoenician neighbours, and had the right of intermarriage (Time., vi. 6) with Hellenic Selinous. Among the Greek cities them-selves the distinction between the Dorian and the Ionian or Chalkidian settlements is still keenly felt. The Ionian is decidedly the weaker element; and it was most likely owing to the rivalry between the two great Dorian cities of Syracuse and Akragas that the Chalkidian towns were able to keep any independence at all.
Up to this time the Italiot and Sikeliot Greeks have formed part of the general Greek world, while within that world they have formed a world of their own, and Sicily has again formed a world of its own within that. Wars and conquests between Greeks and Greeks, especially on the part of Syracuse, though not wanting, have been on the whole less constant than in old Greece. It is even possible to appeal to a vein of local Sicilian patriotism, to preach a kind of Monroe doctrine by which Greeks from other lands should be shut out as strangers (aAAooSiAoi, Thuc, vi. 61, 74). Presently this state of Sicilian isolation was broken in upon by the great Peloponnesian War. The Sikeliot cities were drawn into alliance with one side or the other, till the main interest of Greek history gathers for a while round the Athenian attack on Syracuse. At the very beginning of the war the Lacedaemonians looked for help from the Dorian Sikeliots. But the first active Interfer- intervention came from the other side. Conquest in Sicily erjee of was a favourite dream at Athens (Thuc, vi. 1, cf. i. 48, ens' and Diod., xii. 54), with a view to wider conquest or influ-ence in the western Mediterranean. An opportunity for Athenian interference was found in 427 in a quarrel be-tween Syracuse and Leontinoi and their allies. Leontinoi craved help from Athens on the ground of Ionian kindred. Her envoy was Gorgias ; his peculiar style of rhetoric was now first heard in old Greece (Diod., xii. 53, 54), and his pleadings were successful. For several years from this time (427-422) Athens plays a part, chiefly unsuccessful, in Sicilian affairs. But the particular events are of little importance, except as leading the way to the greater events that follow. The steadiest ally of Athens was the Italiot Rhegion; Messana, with its mixed population, was repeatedly won and lost; the Sikel tributaries of Syracuse give zealous help to the Athenians. But in 424 all the 454-413B.
Sikeliot and most of the Italiot cities, under the guidance of Hermokrates of Syracuse, who powerfully set forth the doctrine of Sikeliot, perhaps of Sicilian unity, agreed on a peace. Presently an internal disturbance at Leontinoi led to annexation by Syracuse. This gave the Athenians a pretext for another attempt in 422. Little came of it, though Athens was joined by the Doric cities of Kamarina and Akragas, clearly out of jealousy towards Syracuse. For several years the island was left to itself.
The far more memorable interference of Athens in Sicilian affairs in the year 415 was partly in answer to the cry of the exiles of Leontinoi, partly to a quite distinct appeal from the Elymian Segesta. That city, an ally of Athens, asked for Athenian help against its Greek neighbour Selinous. In a dispute, partly about bound-aries, partly about the right of intermarriage between the Hellenic and the Hellenizing city, Segesta was hard pressed. She vainly asked for help at Akragas—some say at Syracuse (Diod., xii. 82)—and even at Carthage. The last appeal was to Athens. But the claims of Segesta and Leontinoi are soon forgotten in the struggle for life and death between Syracuse and Athens.
The details of the great Athenian expedition (415-413) Athenian belong partly to the political history of Athens, partly to expedi-that of SYRACUSE (q.v.). But its results make it a markedtlon-epoch in Sicilian history, and the Athenian plans, if successful, would have changed the whole face of the West. If the later stages of the struggle were remarkable for the vast number of Greek cities engaged on both sides, and for the strange inversion of relations among them on which Thucydides (vii. 57, 58) comments, the whole war was yet more remarkable for the large entrance of the barbarian element into the Athenian reckonings. The war was undertaken on behalf of Segesta; the Sikels gave Athens valuable help ; the greater barbarian powers out of Sicily also came into play. Some help actually came from Etruria. But Carthage was more far-sighted. If Syracuse was an object of jealousy, Athens, succeeding to her dominion, creating a power too nearly alike to her own, would have provoked far greater jealousy. So Athens found no active support save at Naxos and Katana, though Akragas, if she would not help the invaders, at least gave no help to her own rival. The war is instruct-ive in many ways : it reminds us of the general conditions of Greek seamanship when we find that Korkyra was the meeting-place for the allied fleet, and that Syracuse was reached only by a coasting voyage along the shores of Greek Italy. We are struck also by the low military level of the Sicilian Greeks. The Syracusan heavy-armed are as far below those of Athens as those of Athens are below those of Sparta. The jMtm'-continental character of Sicily causes Syracuse, with its havens and its island, to be looked on, in comparison with Athens, as a land power _______, Thuc, vii. 21). That is to say, the Sikeliot level represents the general Greek level as it stood before the wars in which Athens won and defended her dominion. The Greeks of Sicily had had no such military practice as the Greeks of old Greece; but an able commander could teach both Sikeliot soldiers and Sikeliot seamen to out-manoeuvre Athenians. The main result of the expedition, as regards Sicily, was to bring the island more thoroughly into the thick of Greek affairs. Syracuse, threatened with destruction by Athens, was saved by the zeal of her metropolis Corinth in stirring up the Peloponnesian rivals of Athens to help her. Gylippos came; the second Athenian fleet came and perished. Syracuse was saved; all chance of Athenian dominion in Sicily or elsewhere in the West came to an end. Syracuse repaid the debt by good service to the Peloponnesian cause, and from that time the mutual influence of Sicily and old Greece upon one another is far stronger than in earlier times. Phoeni- But before the war in old Greece was over, seventy years cian in- after the great victory of Gelon (410), the Greeks of Sicily under ^° underg° barbarian invasion on a vaster scale than Hanni- ever- The disputes between Segesta and Selinous called bal. in these enemies also. Carthage stepped in as the ally of Segesta, the enemy of her old ally Selinous. Her leader was Hannibal, grandson and avenger of the Hamilkar who had died at Himera. In 408, at the head of a vast mer- cenary host, he sailed to Sicily, attacked Selinous, and stormed the town after a murderous assault of nine days, while the other Sikeliot cities, summoned to help, were still lingering. The walls and temples were overthrown ; the mass of the people were massacred; the few who escaped were allowed to return to the dismantled site as tributaries of Carthage; and the city never recovered its old greatness. Thence Hannibal went on to Himera, with the special mission of avenging his grandfather. By this time the other Greek cities were stirred to help, while Sikels and Sikans joined Hannibal; the strife was distinctly a strife of Greeks and barbarians. At last Himera was stormed, and 3000 of its citizens were solemnly slaughtered on the spot where Hamilkar had died. Himera ceased to exist; but the Carthaginians founded the new town of Thermai (Termini) not far off, to which the name is some- times laxly applied. The Phoenician possessions in Sicily now stretched across the island from Himera to Selinous. The next victim was Akragas; its defenders, natives and allies, quarrelled among themselves; the mass of the people forsook the city, and found shelter at Gela and elsewhere. The few who were left were slaughtered; the town was sacked and the walls destroyed. Akragas was presently restored, and it has lived on to this day; but it never recovered its old greatness.
Meanwhile the revolutions of Syracuse affected the history of Sicily and of the whole Greek world. Dionysios the tyrant began his reign of thirty-eight years in the first months of 405. Almost at the same moment, the new Carthaginian commander, Himilkon, attacked Gela and Kamarina. Dionysios, coming to the help of Gela, was defeated, and was charged with treachery. He now made the mass of the people of both towns find shelter at Syracuse. But now the plague led Himilkon to ask for peace.
Carthage was confirmed in her possession of Selinous, Himera, and Akragas, with some Sikan districts which had opposed her. The people of Gela and Kamarina were allowed to occupy their unwalled towns as tributaries of Carthage. Leontinoi, latterly a Syracusan fort, as well as Messana and all the Sikels, were declared independent, while Dionysios was acknowledged as master of Syracuse. No war was ever more grievous to freedom and civiliza-tion. More than half Sicily was now under barbarian dominion; several of its noblest cities had perished, and a tyrant was established in the greatest. The 5th century B.C., after its central years of freedom and prosperity, ended in far deeper darkness than it had begun. The minuter account of Dionysios belongs to Syracusan history; but his position, one unlike anything that had been before seen in Sicily or elsewhere in Hellas, forms an epoch in the history of Europe. His only bright side is his cham-pionship of Hellas against the Phoenician, and this is balanced by his settlements of barbarian mercenaries in several Greek cities. Towards the native races his policy varied according to momentary interests; but on the whole his reign tended to bring the Sikels more and more within the Greek pale. His dominion is Italian as well as Sicilian; his influence, as an ally of Sparta, is important in old Greece; while, as a hirer of mercenaries everywhere, he had wider relations than any earlier Greek with the nations of western Europe. He further opened new fields for Greek settlement on both sides of the Hadriatic. In short, under him Sicily became for the first time the seat of a great European power, while Syracuse, as its head, became the greatest of European cities. His reign was unusually long for a Greek tyrant, and his career furnished a model for other rulers and invaders of Sicily. With him in truth begins that wider range of Greek warfare, policy, and dominion which the Macedonian kingdoms carry on. The master of such a dominion becomes the improver of the military art. With him begins the employment of ships greater than the old triremes, of more effective engines in sieges, and that combined use of troops of various arms and nations which Alexander carried to perfection.
The reign of Dionysios (405-367) is divided into marked His wars periods by four wars with Carthage, in 397-396, 392, 383, withCar-and 368. In the first war his home power was all but ^fse' overthrown ; but he lived through the storm, and extended his dominion over Naxos, Katana, and Leontinoi. All three perished as Greek cities. Katana was the first Sikeliot city to receive a settlement of Campanian mercenaries, while others settled in non-Hellenic Entella. Naxos was settled by Sikels ; Leontinoi was again merged in Syracuse. Now begin the dealings of Dionysios with Italy, where the Khegines, kinsmen of Naxos and Katana, planned a fruitless attack on him in common with Messana. He then sought a wife at B-hegion, but was refused with scorn, while Lokroi (Locri) gladly gave him Doris. The two cities afterwards fared accordingly. In the first war with Carthage, the Greek cities under Carthaginian dominion or dependence helped him ; so did Sikans and Sikels, which last had among them some stirring leaders; Elymian Segesta clave to Carthage. Dionysios took the Bhoenician strong-hold of Motye; but Himilkon recovered it, destroyed Mes-sana, founded the hill-town of Tauromenion (Taormina) above Naxos for Sikels who had joined him, defeated the fleet of Dionysios, and besieged Syracuse. Between in-vasion and home discontent, the tyrant was all but lost; but the Spartan Pharakidas stood his friend; the Cartha-ginians again suffered from pestilence; and Himilkon went away defeated, taking with him his Carthaginian troops and forsaking his allies. Gela, Kamarina, Himera, Seli-nous, Akragas itself, now passed into the dependent alliance of Dionysios. The Carthaginian dominion was cut down to what it had been before Hannibal's invasion. The lord of Syracuse had grown at the cost of Greek and barbarian alike.
He planted mercenaries at Leontinoi, conquered some Sikel towns, central Henna among them, and made alliances with others. He restored Messana, peopling it with motley settlers, among whom were some of the old Messenians from Peloponnesos. But the Spartan masters of the old Messenian land grudged this possible begin-ning of a new Messenian power. Dionysios therefore moved his Messenians to a point on the north coast, where they founded Tyndaris. He clearly had a special eye to that region. He took the Sikel Kephaloidion (Cefalu), and even the old Phoenician border-fortress of Solous was betrayed to him. He beat back a Bhegine expedi-tion ; but his advance was checked by a failure to take the new Sikel settlement of Tauromenion. His enemies of all races now declared themselves. Many of the Sikels forsook him ; Akragas declared herself independent; Car-thage herself, stirred by the loss of Solous, again took the field.
The Punic war of 392-391 was not very memorable. Both sides failed in their chief enterprises, and the main interest of the story comes from the glimpses which we get of the Sikel states. Most of them joined the Carthaginian leader Mago; but be was successfully withstood at Agyrion by Agyris, the ally of Dionysios, who is described as a tyrant second in power to Dionysios himself. This way of speaking would imply that Agyrion had so far advanced in Greek ways as to run the usual course of a Greek commonwealth. The two tyrants drove Carthage to a peace by which she abandoned all her Sikel allies to Dionysios. This time he took Tauromenion and settled it with his mercenaries. For new colonists of this kind the established communities of all races were making way. The transportations under the older tyrants had been move-ments of Greeks from one Greek site to another. Now all races are confounded.
Dionysios, now free from Phoenician warfare, gave his mind to enterprises which raised his power to its greatest height. In the years 390-387 he warred against the Italiot cities in alliance with their Lucanian enemies. Ehegion, Kroton (Croton), the whole toe of the boot, were conquered. Their lands were given to Lokroi; their citizens were taken to Syracuse, sometimes' as slaves, sometimes as citizens. The master of barbarians fell below the lowest Hellenic level when he put the brave Ehegine general Phyton to a lingering death, and in other cases imitated the Cartha-ginian cruelty of crucifixion. Conqueror of southern Italy, he turned his thoughts yet further, and became the first ruler of Sicily to stretch forth his hands towards the eastern peninsula. In the Hadriatic he helped Hellenic extension. He planted directly and indirectly some settlements in Apulia, while Syracusan exiles founded the more famous Ankon or Ancona. On the east coast he founded Lissos; he helped the Parians in their settlements of Issa and Pharos ; he took into his pay Illyrian warriors with Greek arms, and helped the Molottian Alketas to win back part of his kingdom. He was even charged with plotting with his Epeirot ally to plunder Delphoi. This even Sparta would not endure; Dionysios had to content himself with sending a fleet along the west coast of Italy, to carry off the wealth of the great temple of Agylla or Csere.
In old Greece men now said that the Greek folk was hemmed in between the barbarian Artaxerxes on the one side and Dionysios, master and planter of barbarians, on the other. These feelings found expression when Dionysios sent his embassy to the Olympic games of 384, and when Lysias bade Greece rise against both its oppressors. Dionysios vented his wrath on those who were nearest to him, banish-ing many, among them his brother Leptines and his earliest friend Philistos, and putting many to death. He was also once more stirred up to play the part of a Hellenic champion : he made ready for yet another Punic war.
In this war (383-382) Dionysios seems for once to have had his head turned by a first success. His demand that Carthage should altogether withdraw from Sicily was met by a crushing defeat. Then came a treaty by which Carthage kept Selinous and part of the land of Akragas. The Halykos became the boundary. Dionysios had also to pay 1000 talents, which caused him to be spoken of as becoming tributary to the barbarians. In the last years of his reign we hear dimly of both Syracusan and Carthaginian operations in southern Italy. He also gave help to Sparta against Thebes, sending Gaulish and Iberian mercenaries to take part in Greek warfare. His last war with Carthage, which was going on at his death, was ended by a peace by which the Halykos remained the boundary. Diony- The tyranny of Dionysios fell, as usual, in the second sios II. generation; but it was kept up for ten. years after his IMon death by the energy of Philistos, now minister of his son Dionysios the Younger. It fell with the coming back of the exile Dion in 357. The tyranny had lasted so long that it was less easy than at the overthrow of the elder tyrants to fall back on an earlier state of things. It had been a time of frightful changes throughout Sicily, full of 392-337 B.O. breaking up of old landmarks, of confusion of races, and of movements of inhabitants. But it also saw the founda-tion of new cities. Besides Tyndaris and Tauromenion, the foundation of Alaisa marks another step in Sikel pro-gress towards Hellenism, while the Carthaginians founded their strong town and fortress of Lilybaion. Among these changes the most marked is the settlement of Campanian mercenaries in Greek and Sikel towns. Yet they too could be brought under Greek influences; they were distant kinsfolk of the Sikels, and they were the forerunners of Bome. They mark one stage of migration from Italy into Sicily.
The reign of Dionysios was less brilliant in the way of art and literature than that of Hieron. Yet Dionysios himself sought fame as a poet, and his success at Athens shows that his compositions did not deserve the full scorn of his enemies. The dithyrambic poet Philoxenos, by birth of Kythera, won his fame in Sicily, and other authors of lost poems are mentioned in various Sikeliot cities. One of the greatest losses in all Greek history is that of the writings of Philistos (436-356), the Syracusan who had seen the Athenian siege and who died in the warfare between Dion and the younger Dionysios. Through the time of both tyrants, he was, next to the actual rulers, the first man in Sicily; but of his record of his own times we have only what filters through the recasting of Diodoros. But the most remarkable intellectual movement in Sicily at this time was the influence of the Pythagorean philosophy, which still lived on in southern Italy. It led, through Dion, to the several visits of Plato to Sicily under both the elder and the younger Dionysios. To architecture the time was not favourable anywhere but in Syracuse.
The time following the Dionysian tyranny was at Syra-cuse a time full of the most stirring local and personal interest, under her two deliverers Dion and Timoleon. It is less easy to make out the exact effect on the rest of Sicily of the three years' career of Dion. But we may mark that, in driving out the younger Dionysios, he was helped by a general movement of Greeks, Sikels, and Sikans. Between the death of Dion in 354 and the coming of Timoleon in 344 we hear of a time of confusion in which Hellenic life seemed likely to die out. The cities, Greek and Sikel, were occupied by tyrants. Syra-cuse was parted between several, Dionysios coming back to hold Ortygia. Timoleon's work was threefold—the imme- Timo-diate deliverance of Syracuse, the restoration of Sicily in leon. general to freedom and Greek life, and the defence of the Greek cities against Carthage. The victory of the Krimisos in 340 led to a peace with Carthage with the old frontier; but all Greek cities were to be free, and Carthage was to give no help to any tyrant. Timoleon drove out all the tyrants, and it specially marks the fusion of the two races that the people of the Sikel Agyrion were admitted to the citizenship of free Syracuse. From some towns he drove out the Campanians, and he largely invited Greek settlement, especially from the Italiot towns, which were hard pressed by the Bruttians. The Corinthian deliverer gave, not only Syracuse, but all Greek Sicily, a new lease of life, though a short one.
With Timoleon begins a series of leaders who came from old Greece to deliver or to conquer among the Greeks of Italy and Sicily. The enterprise of Dion most likely sug-gested those that followed, but Dion, as a native Syracusan, does not belong altogether to the same class. Timoleon alone was a pure republican deliverer. The Macedonian kings had established a Greek dominion in the East, and a series of princes from Sparta and Epeiros came to estab-lish in the West a Greek dominion which should balance that of the Macedonians. Archidamos, Alexander of 337-276B.C. Epeiros,Akrotatos,Kleonymos, all unsuccessfully attempted this work in Italy; it was only Pyrrhos, the last and greatest of the series, who played any great part in Sicily. And before he came, Sicily had become the seat of a greater native power than ever. Never till the Norman came was any Sicilian dominion so famous in the world as that of the Syracusan tyrant or king Agathokles.
We have unluckily no intelligible account of Sicily during the twenty years after the death of Timoleon (337-317). His deliverance is said to have been followed by great immediate prosperity, but wars and dissensions very Aga- soon began again. Agathokles won his first fame in war thokles. between Syracuse and Akragas. The Carthaginians played off one city and party against another, and Agathokles, following the same policy, became in 317, by treachery and massacre, undisputed tyrant of Syracuse, and spread his dominion over many other cities. Akragas, strengthened by Syracusan exiles, now stands out again as the rival of Syracuse. The Carthaginian Hamilkar, by conduct which contrasted with the cruelty of Agathokles, won many Greek cities to the Punic alliance. Defeated in battle, with Syracuse blockaded by a Carthaginian fleet, Agathokles formed the bold idea of carrying the war into Africa. He set the model for Eegulus and Scipio, and not a few later rulers of Sicily.
For more than three years (310-307) each side carried on warfare in the land of the other. Carthage was hard pressed by Agathokles, while Syracuse was no less hard pressed by Hamilkar. The force with which Agathokles invaded Africa was far from being wholly Greek; but it was representatively European. Gauls, Samnites, Tyrrhenians, fought for him, while mercenary Greeks and Syracusan exiles fought for Carthage. He won many battles and towns; he quelled mutinies of his own troops; by inviting and murdering Ophelias lord of Kyrene(Cyrene)he doubled his army and brought Carthage near to despair. Mean-while Syracuse, all but lost, had driven back Hamilkar, and had taken and slain him when he came again with the help of the Syracusan exile Deinokrates. Meanwhile Akragas, deeming Agathokles and the barbarians alike weakened, proclaimed freedom for the Sicilian cities under her own headship. Many towns,j3oth Greek and Sikel, joined the confederacy. It has now become impossible to distinguish the two races; Henna and Erbessos are now the fellows of Kamarina and Leontinoi. But the hopes of Akragas were checked when Agathokles suddenly came back from Africa, landed at Selinous, and marched to Syracuse, taking one town after another. A new scheme of Sicilian union was taken up by Deinokrates, which cut short his dominion. But he now relieved Syracuse from the Carthaginian blockade; his mercenaries gained a victory over Akragas; and he sailed again for Africa, where fortune had turned against his son Archagathos, as it now did against himself. He left his sons and his army to death, bondage, or Carthaginian service, and came back to Sicily almost alone. Yet he could still gather a force which en-abled him to seize Segesta,to slay or enslave the whole popu-lation, and to settle the city with new inhabitants. This change amounts to the extinction of one of the elements in the old population of Sicily. We hear no more of Elymoi; indeed Segesta has been practically Greek long before this. Deinokrates and Agathokles came to a kind of partnership, and a peace with Carthage, with the old boundary, secured Agathokles in the possession of Syracuse and eastern Sicily (301).
At some stage of his African campaigns Agathokles had taken the title of king. Earlier tyrants were well pleased to be spoken of as kings; but no earlier rulers of Sicily put either their heads or their names on the coin. Agathokles now put his name, first without, and then with, the kingly title. This was in imitation of the Macedonian leaders who divided the dominion of Alexander. The relations between the eastern and western Greek worlds are drawing closer. Agathokles in his old age took a wife of the house of Btolemy; he gave his daughter Lanassa to Byrrhos, and established his power east of Hadria, as the first Sicilian ruler of Korkyra. He carried on wars in the Liparsean Islands and in southern Italy, and died in 289 B.C., poisoned, some said, by his own grandson. Alike more daring and more cruel than any ruler before him, he carried the arms of Sicily further afield, and made the island the seat of a greater power than any of them.
This time was not favourable to the intellectual life of Sicily. Hitherto the island had attracted men of letters from old Greece. Now several distinguished Sicilian writers either chose or were driven to find homes else-where. Tinaios of Tauromenion, scorned by Polybios, but whose great Sicilian history is none the less a loss, was banished by Agathokles, and made Athens his headquarters for the last fifty years of his long life (356-c. 260 B.C.). Dikaiarchos (Dicsearchus) of Messana, geographer and phil-osopher and author of the Life of Greece, lived mainly in Peloponnesos till about 285 B.C. Euhemeros (Evemerus), despiser of the gods, who is claimed by more than one birthplace besides Messana, lived in the service and friend-ship of the Macedonian Kassandros. Philemon too, the long-lived writer of comedy (361-262 B.C.), is claimed for Syracuse, and it was only as an adopted citizen that he spent most of his life at Athens.
On the death of Agathokles tyrants sprang up in Period various cities. Akragas, under its king Phintias, won after back for the moment somewhat of its old greatness. By ^gyes a new depopulation of Gela, he founded the youngest of Sikeliot cities, Bhintias, by the mouth of the southern Himera. And Hellas was cut short by the seizure of Messana by the disbanded Campanian mercenaries of Agathokles (c. 282). They slew the men, took the women as wives, and proclaimed themselves a new people in a new city by the name of Mamertines, children of Mamers or Mars. Messana became an Italian town; hence-forth its formal name was " Mamertina civitas."
The Campanian occupation of Messana is the first of the chain of events which led to the Boman dominion in Sicily. As yet Borne has hardly been mentioned in Sicilian story, either for friendship or for enmity. The Mamertine settlement, the war with Pyrrhos, bring us on quickly. Pyrrhos came as the champion of the western Greeks Pyrrhos. against all barbarians, whether Bomans in Italy or Cartha-ginians in Sicily. His Sicilian war (278-276) was a mere interlude between the two acts of his war with Borne. As son-in-law of Agathokles, he claimed to be specially king of Sicily, and he held the Sicilian conquest of Korkyra as the dowry of Lanassa. With such a deliverer, deliver-ance meant submission. Pyrrhos is said to have dreamed of kingdoms of Sicily and of Italy for his two sons, the grandsons of Agathokles, and he himself reigned for two years in Sicily as a king who came to be no less hated than the tyrants. Still as Hellenic champion in Sicily he has no peer. As European champion he has none till Koger of Hauteville. Eryx was won from the Bhcenician; Panormos first became a city of Europe; if he failed before Lilybaion, that fortress and Messana were all that was left in barbarian hands through the whole island.
All this was but for a moment. The Greek king, on his way back to fight for Tarentum against Bome, had to cut his way through Carthaginians and Mamertines in Boman alliance. His saying that he left Sicily as a wrestling-ground for Bomans and Carthaginians was the very truth of the matter. Very soon came the first war between Rome and Cartilage, the war which is best marked by its other name of the War for Sicily. It mattered much, now that Sicily was to have a barbarian master, whether that master should be the kindred barbarian of Europe or the barbarian of Asia transplanted to the shore of Africa. That question was decided for Europe, that is for Rome, now beginning her long career as European champion. That strife too gave a large part of Sicily a last day of prosperity under a native ruler who was a king and not a tyrant. Hieron Sicily in truth never had a more hopeful champion than the second Hieron of Syracuse. The established rule of Carthage in western Sicily was now something that could well be endured alongside of the robber commonwealth at Messana. The dominion of the freebooters was spreading. Besides the whole north-eastern corner of the island, it reached inland to Agyrion and Kentoripa. The Mamer-tines leagued with other Campanian freebooters who had forsaken the service of Rome to establish themselves at Rhegion. But a new Syracusan power was growing up to meet them. Hieron, claiming descent from Gelon, pressed the Mamertines hard. He all but drove them to the surrender of Messana ; he even helped Bome to chastise her own rebels at Bhegion. The wrestling-ground was thus opened for the two barbarian commonwealths. Car-thaginian troops held the Messanian citadel against Hieron, while another party in Messana craved the help of the head of Italy. Bome, chastiser of the freebooters of Bhegion, saw Italian brethren in the freebooters of Messana. The War for Sicily began (264).
The exploits of Hieron had already won him the kingly title (270) at Syracuse, and he was the representative of Hellenic life and independence throughout the island. Partly in this character, partly as direct sovereign, he was virtual ruler of a large part of eastern Sicily. But he could not aspire to the dominion of earlier Syracusan rulers. The advance of Bome after the retreat of Pyrrhos kept the new king from all hope of their Italian position. And presently the new kingdom exchanged independence for safety. When Rome entered Sicily as the ally of the Ma-mertines, Hieron became the ally of Carthage. But in the second year of the war (263) he found it needful to change sides. His alliance with Bome marks a great epoch in the history of the Greek nation. The kingdom of Hieron was the firstfruits out of Italy of the system by which alliance with Bome grew into subjection to Bome. He was the first of Bome's kingly vassals. His only burthen was to give help to the Boman side in war; within his kingdom he was free, and his dominions flourished as no part of Sicily had flourished since the days of Timoleon. First During the twenty-three years of the First Punic War Punic (264-241) the rest of the island suffered greatly. The ^ar- War for Sicily was fought in and round Sicily, and the Sicilian cities were taken and retaken by the contending powers. Akragas, held by Carthage, stood a Boman siege (262); the Punic garrison escaped; the inhabitants were sold into slavery. Seven years later the repeopled city was taken and burned and its walls destroyed by a Car-thaginian army. Selinous was utterly destroyed, when, towards the end of the war, Carthage gathered her whole strength again in a few points in the west. Greek Selinous and Elymian Eryx alike gave way to the new fortress of Drepanon, which, along with Lilybaion, held out till the end of the war. Segesta, subject to Carthage, still remem-bered its old traditions, and the sons of ^Eneas were welcomed as deliverers by the Trojan city. Kamarina and inland Henna passed to and fro between the two powers. But the great exploit of Bome was the second winning of Panormos for Europe, and its brilliant defence against the Semitic enemy. The highest calling of the Greek had now, in the Western lands, passed to the Boman. By the 276-210B.O. treaty which ended the war Carthage ceded to Bome all her possessions in Sicily. As that part of the island which kept a national Greek government became the first king-dom dependent on Bome, so the share of Carthage became the first Boman province. One point alone did not come under either of those heads. Messana, Mamertina civitas, remained an Italian ally of Bome on Sicilian soil.
We have no picture of Sicily in the first period of Boman rule. One hundred and seventy years later, several towns within the original province enjoyed various degrees of freedom, which they had doubtless kept from the beginning. Besides the old ally Messana, Panormos, Segesta, with Kentoripa, Halesa, and Halikye, once Sikel but now Hellenized, kept the position of free cities (liberx et im-munes, Cic, Verr., iii. 6). The rest paid tithe to the Boman people as landlord. The province was ruled by a praetor sent yearly from Bome. Within the Boman pro-vince the new state of things called forth much discontent; but Hieron remained the faithful ally of Bome through a long life. On his death (215) and the accession of his grandson Hieronymos, his dynasty was swept away by the last revolution of Greek Syracuse. The result was revolt against Bome, the great siege by Marcellus, the taking of the city, the addition of Hieron's kingdom to the Boman province. Two towns only, which had taken the Boman side, Tauromenion and Netos, were admitted to the full privileges of Boman alliance (cf. Diod. Fr., Hoeschl., lib. xxiii. p. 18 ; Cic, Verr., iii. 6, v. 22). Tauromenion indeed was more highly favoured than the children of Mamers. Rome had a right to demand ships of Messana, but not of Tauromenion. Some towns were destroyed; the people of Henna were massacred. Akragas, again held for Carthage, was for four years (214-210) the centre of an active campaign. The story of Akragas ended in plunder, slaughter, and slavery; three years later, the story of Agrigentum began.
The reign of Hieron was the last time of independent Greek culture in Sicily. His great works belong to the special history of Syracuse ; but his time marks the growth of a new form of local Sicilian genius. The spread of Hellenic culture among the Sikels had in return made a Greek home for many Sikel beliefs, traditions, and customs. Bucolic poetry is the native growth of Sicily; in the hands of Theokritos it grew out of the germs supplied by Epi-charmos and Sophron into a distinct and finished form of the art. The poet, himself of Syracuse, went to and fro between the courts of Hieron and Ptolemy Philadelphos ; but his poetry is essentially Sicilian. So is that of his suc-cessors, both the Syracusan Moschos and Bion of Smyrna, who came to Sicily as to his natural school. The most renowned Sicilian name of this time, that of Archimedes, is hardly distinctively Sicilian. A great name in the history of science, a great name in the local history of Syracuse, he had not, like the earlier philosophers and the bucolic poets, any direct bearing on the general political or intellectual development of the island.
With the incorporation of the kingdom of Hieron into the Sicily Roman province independent Sicilian history comes to an Roman, end for many ages. Of the state of Sicily under the Roman commonwealth our chief source of knowledge is the plead-ing of Cicero against the worst Roman oppressor of Sicily, Gaius Verres. Next in importance to this come those frag-ments of Diodoros which describe the two insurrections of the slaves. Between those insurrections came the legisla-tion of Bupilius which settled the Boman system of admini-stration in Sicily. Cicero's description comes later than all these; but the general relations between Bome and Sicily seem to have been much the same from the first occupation I till the beginning of the empire. In one part of the island the Roman people stepped into the position of Carthage, in 477 A.D. another part into that of King Hieron. The allied cities kept their several terms of alliance; the free cities kept their freedom; elsewhere the land paid to the Roman people, according to the law of Hieron, the tithe which it had paid to Hieron. But, as the tithe was let out to publicans, oppression was easy. The praetor, after the occu-pation of Syracuse, dwelled there in the palace of Hieron, as in the capital of the island. But, as a survival of the earlier state of things, one of his two quaestors was quartered at Lilybaion. Under the supreme dominion of Rome even the unprivileged cities kept their own laws, magistrates, and assemblies, provision being made for suits between Romans and Sicilians and between Sicilians of different cities (Verr., ii. 16). In Latin the one name Siculi takes in all the inhabitants of the island; no distinc-tion is drawn between Greek and Sikel, or even between Greek and Phoenician cities. It is assumed that all Siculi are Greeks (Verr., ii. 3, 29, 49, 52, 65; iii. 37, 40, 73). Even in Greek, SiKeAoi is now sometimes used instead of 2tKeA«oTc«. All the persons spoken of by Cicero came to have Greek names save—a most speaking exception—Gaius Heius of Mamertina civitas. Inscriptions too from Sikel and Phoenician cities are commonly Greek, even when they commemorate men with Phoenician names, coupled perhaps with Greek surnames (C. I. G., iii. 597, cf. 628). The process of Hellenization which had been so long going on had at last made Sicily thoroughly Greek. Roman con-quest itself, which everywhere carried a Greek element with it, would help this result. The corn of the fertile island was said even then to feed the Roman people. It was this character of Sicily which led to its one frightful Slave piece of local history. The evils of slavery and the slave-revolts, trade in their worst form—the slavery of men who are their masters' equals in all but luck—reached their height in the 2d century B.C. The wars of Rome, and the system-atic piracy and kidnapping that followed them, filled the Mediterranean lands with slaves of all nations. Sicily stood out before the rest as the first land to be tilled by slave-gangs, on the estates both of rich natives and of Roman settlers. The free population naturally degener-ated and died out. The slaves were most harshly treated, and even encouraged by their masters to rob. The land was full of disorder, and the praetors shrank from enforc-ing the law against offenders, many of whom, as Roman knights, might be their own judges. Of these causes came the two great slave-revolts of the second half of the 2d century B.C. They did not stand alone in the world, but no others reached the same extent. The first outbreak was stained by some excesses, but after that we are struck with the orderly course of the rebellion. It is regular warfare. Sicily had neither native militia nor Roman army; the slaves therefore, strengthened by the poorer freemen, occu-pied the whole land save only the great cities; they chose kings and founded them a capital. The chosen king of one district submits to the other for the general good. They form armies which could defeat Roman generals, and they are subdued only by efforts on the same scale as the conquest of a kingdom. For most of the slaves were men used to freedom and to arms, not a few of them Sicilian pirates. The fact that in the first war a slave named Achaios—like Davus, Geta, or Syrus—plays a chief part also tells us a good deal. The Syrian element was large, and the movement was mixed up with much of Syrian religion. But the native deities of Sicily and the holy place of the Palikoi were not forgotten. The first slave war lasted from 135 to 132, the time of Tiberius Gracchus and the fall of Numantia. The second lasted from 102 to 99, the time of the Cimbrian invasion. At other times the power of Rome might have quelled the revolt more speedily.
The slave wars were not the only scourge that fell on Later Sicily. The pirates troubled the coast, and all other evils Roman were outdone by the three years' government of VerreSg1*1?,"1 (73-70 B.C.). Besides the light which the great impeach-ment throws on the state of the island, his administration seems really to have dealt a lasting blow to its prosperity. The slave wars had not directly touched the great cities; Verres plundered and impoverished everywhere. Another blow was the occupation of Messana by Sextus Pompeius in 42 B.C. He was master of Sicily for six years, and Strabo (vi. 2, 4) attributes to this war the decayed state of several cities. To undo this mischief Augustus planted Boman colonies at Syracuse, Tauromenion, Thermae, Tyn-daris, and Katana. The island thus received another Italian infusion; but, as elsewhere, Latin in no way dis-placed Greek; it was simply set up alongside of it for certain purposes. Roman tastes now came in; Roman buildings, especially amphitheatres, arose. But Sicily never became Boman like Gaul and Spain. The dictator Caesar designed the Boman, and Marcus Antonius the Latin, franchise for all Sicily; but neither plan was carried out. Sicily remained a province, a province of the senate and people, not of the prince. Particular cities were promoted to higher privileges, and that was all. The Mamertines were Romans in Pliny's day; two free cities, Kentoripa and Segesta, had become Latin ; still later, Phoe-nician Lilybaion received a Boman colony. All these were steps in the progress by which, in Sicily as elsewhere, political distinctions were broken down, till the edict of Antoninus bestowed at least the Boman name—no small gift—on all Boman allies and subjects. Sicily was now part of Romania, but it was one of its Greek members.
Till this change was made, Sicily could not be in any sense incorporated with Italy. In the division of Con-stantine, when the word province had lost its meaning, when Italy itself was mapped out into provinces, Sicily became one of these last. Along with Africa, Baetia (Bhaetia), and western Illyricum, it became part of the Italian praefecture; along with the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, it became part of the Italian diocese. It was now ruled by a corrector (see the letter of Constantine, which stands first in the Codex Diplomaticus Sicilix of Johannes), afterwards by a consular under the authority of the vicar of the Boman city (Not. Imp., 14, 5). Few emperors visited Sicily; Hadrian was there, as every-where, and Julian also (CD., 10). In its provincial state Sicily fell back more than some other provinces. Ausonius could still reckon Catina and fourfold Syracuse (" quad-ruplices Syracusas ") among noble cities ; but Sicily is not, like Gaul, rich in relics of later Boman life, and it is now Egypt rather than Sicily that feeds Borne. The island has no internal history beyond a very characteristic fact, a third slave war in the days of Gallienus. External history there could be none in the central island, with no frontier open to Germans or Persians. Sicilian history begins again when the wandering of the nations planted new powers, not on the frontier of the empire, but at its heart.
The powers between wThich Sicily now passes to and Teutonic fro are Teutonic powers. The earlier stages of Teutonic Piasters, advance could not touch Sicily. Alaric thought of a Sicilian expedition, but a storm hindered him. Sicily was to be reached only by a Teutonic power which made its way through Gaul, Spain, and Africa. The Vandal now dwells at Carthage instead of the Canaanite. Gaiseric (429-477) subdued the great islands for which Boman and Phoenician had striven. Along with Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles, Sicily is again a possession of a naval power at Carthage. Gaiseric, at Bome more than a Hanni-bal, makes a treaty with Odowakar (Odoacer) almost like that which ended the First Punic War. He gave up (Victor Vitensis, i. 4) the island on condition of a tribute, which was hardly paid by Theodoric. Sicily was now ruled by a Gothic count, and the Goths claimed to have treated the land with special tenderness (Procopius, Bell. Goth., iii. 16). The island, like the rest of Theodoric's dominions, was certainly well looked after by the great king and his minister; yet we hear darkly of disaffection to Gothic rule (Cass., Var., i. 3). Theodoric gave back Lilybaion to the Vandal king Thrasamund as the dowry of his sister Anala-frida (Proa, Bell. Vand., i. 8). Yet Lilybaion was a Gothic possession when Belisarius, conqueror of Africa, demanded it in vain as part of the Vandal possessions (Proa, Bell. Vand., ii. 5 ; Bell. Goth., i. 3). In the Gothic war Sicily was the first land to be recovered for the empire, and that with the good will of its people (535). Panormus alone was stoutly defended by its Gothic garrison. In 550 Totila took some fortresses, but the great cities all withstood him, and the Goths were driven out the next year.
Sicily was thus won back to the Roman dominion, but the seat of the Roman dominion was now at Constantinople. Belisarius was Pyrrhos and Marcellus in one. For 430 years some part of Sicily, for 282 years the whole of it, again remained a Boman province. To the Gothic count again succeeded, under Justinian, a Roman prmtor, in Greek o-rpar-tjyos. That was the official title; we often hear of a, patrician of Sicily, but patrician was in strictness a personal rank. In the later mapping out of the empire into purely military divisions, the theme (depa) of Sicily took in both the island and the nearest peninsula of the main-land, the oldest Italy. The island itself was divided for financial purposes, almost as in the older times, into the two divisions of Syracuse and Lilybaion. The revolutions of Italy hardly touched a land which looked steadily to the eastern Rome as its head. The Lombard and Frankish masters of the peninsula never fixed themselves in the island. When the Frank took the imperial crown of the West, Sicily still kept its allegiance to the Augustus who reigned at Constantinople, and was only torn away piecemeal from the empire by the next race of conquerors.
This connexion of Sicily with the eastern division of the empire no doubt largely helped to keep up Greek life in the island. This was of course strengthened by union with a power which had already a Greek side, and where the Greek side soon became dominant. Still the connexion with Italy was close, especially the ecclesiastical connexion. Some things tend to make Sicily look less Greek than it really was. The great source of our knowledge of Sicily in the century which followed the recon-quest by Belisarius is the Letters of Pope Gregory the Great, and they naturally show the most Latin side of things. The merely official use of Latin was, it must be remembered, common to Sicily with Constantinople. Gregory's Letters are largely occupied with the affairs of the great Sicilian estates held by the Roman Church, as by the churches of Milan and Ravenna. But they deal with many other matters (see the collection in Johannes, CD., where the letters bearing on Sicily are brought together, or the usual collection of his letters). Saint Paul's visit to Syracuse naturally gave rise to many legends ; but the Christian Church undoubtedly took early root in Sicily. We hear of Manichaeans (CD., 163); Jews were plentiful, and Gregory causes compensation to be made for the unlawful destruction of synagogues. Of paganism we find no trace, save that pagan slaves, doubt-less not natives of the island, were held by Jews (CD., 127). Herein is a contrast between Sicily and Sardinia, where, according to a letter from Gregory to the empress Constantina, wife of Maurice (594-595), praying for a lightening of taxation in both islands, paganism still lingered (CD., 121). Sicily belonged to the Latin patriarchate; but we already (CD., 103) see glimmerings of the coming disputes between 477-829. the Eastern and Western Churches. Things were changed when, in the early days of the iconoclast controversy, Leo the Isaurian confiscated the Sicilian and Calabrian estates of the Boman Church (Theoph., i. 631).
In the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries the old drama of Sicily was acted again. The island is again disputed between Europe and Asia, transplanted to Africa between Greek and Semitic dwellers on her own soil. Panormus and Syracuse are again the headquarters of races and creeds, of creeds yet more than of races. The older religious differences—not small certainly when the choice lay between Zeus and Moloch—were small compared with the strife for life and death between Christendom and Islam. Gregory and Mahomet were contemporaries, and, though Saracen occupation did not begin in Sicily till more than two centuries after Gregory's death, Saracen inroads began much sooner. In 655 (Theoph., Early i. 532) part of Sicily was plundered, and its inhabitants Saracen carried to Damascus. Then came the strange episode of mroads' the visit of Constans the Second (641-668), the first emperor, it would seem, who had set foot in Sicily since Julian. After a war with the Lombards, after twelve days' plunder of Borne, he came on to Syracuse, where his oppressions led to his murder in 668. Sicily now saw for the first time the setting up of a tyrant in the later sense. Meketios, commander of the Eastern army of Constans, revolted, but Sicily and Boman Italy kept their allegiance to the new emperor Constantine Pogonatos, who came in person to destroy him. Then came another Saracen inroad from Alexandria, in which Syracuse was sacked (Paul. Diac., v. 13). Others followed, but there was as yet no lasting settlement. Towards the end of the 8th century, though Sicily itself was untouched, its patricians and their forces play a part in the affairs of southern Italy as enemies of the Frankish power. Charles himself was believed (Theoph., i. 736) to have designs on Sicily; but, when it came to Saracen invasion, the sympathies of both pope and Cassar lay with the invaded Christian land (Mon. Car., 323, 328).
In 813 a peace for ten years was made between the Saracen Saracens and the patrician Gregory. A few years after it conquest, expired Saracen settlement in the island begins. This was a special time of Saracen inroad on the islands belonging to the Eastern empire. Almost at the same moment Crete was seized by a band of adventurers from Spain. But the first Saracen settlers in Sicily were the African neighbours of Sicily, and they were called to the work by a home treason. The story has been tricked out with many romantic details (Chron. Salem., 60, ap. Pertz, iii. 498; Theoph. Cont., ii. 272; George Kedrenos, ii. 97); but it seems plain that Euphemios or Euthymios of Syracuse, supported by his own citizens, revolted against Michael the Stammerer (820-829), and, when defeated by an imperial army, asked help of Ziyadet Allah, the Aghlabite prince of Kairawan, and offered to hold the island of him. The struggle of 138 years now began. Euphemios, a puppet emperor, was led about by his Saracen allies much as earlier puppet emperors had been led about by Alaric and Ataulf, till he was slain in one of the many sieges. The second Semitic conquest of Sicily began in 827 at Mazzara on the old border of Greek and Phoenician. But the land had a brave defender in the patrician Theodotos, and the invaders met with a stout resistance both in the island and from armies both from Constantinople and from Byzantine Italy. The advance of the invaders was slow. In two years all that was done was to occupy Mazzara and Mineum _—the old Menai of Douketios—strange points certainly to begin with, and seemingly to destroy Agrigentum, well used to destruction. Attacks on Syracuse failed; so did attacks on Henna—Castrum Ennx, now changing into Castrum Joliannis (perhaps Kao-Tpoiavvn), Castrogiovanni. The actual gain was small; but the invaders took seizin alike of the coast and of the island.
A far greater conquest followed when new invaders came from Spain and when Theodotos was killed in 830. The next year Panormus passed away for ever from Roman, for 230 years from Christian, rule. Syracuse was for fifty years, not only, as of old, the bulwark of Europe, but the bulwark of Christendom. By the conquest of Panormus the Saracens were firmly rooted in the island. We hear dimly of treasonable dealings with them on the part of the strategos Alexios, son-in-law of the emperor Theophilos; but we see more clearly that Saracen advance was largely hindered by dissensions between the African and the Spanish settlers. In the end the Moslem con-quests in Sicily became an Aghlabite principality owning at best a formal superiority in the princes of Kairawan. With the Saracen occupation begins a new division of the island, which becomes convenient in tracing the progress of Saracen conquest. This is into three valleys, known in later forms of language as Val di Mazzara or Mazza in the north-west, Val di Noto in the south-east, and Val Demone (a name of uncertain origin) in the north-east (see Amari, Musulmani in Sicilia, i. 465). The first Saracen settlement of Val di Mazzara answers roughly to the old Carthaginian possessions. From Panormus the emir or lord of Sicily, Mohammed ibn Abdallah, sent forth his plunderers through-out Sicily and even into southern Italy. There, though they made no lasting settlements, they often occupied par-ticular points. A consul or duke of Naples in 836 even asked for Saracen help against the Lombards, which he is said to have repaid by help against his fellow-subjects in Sicily (Johan. Diac, 57; Amari, i. 314).
The chief work of the next ten years was the conquest of the Val di Noto, but the first great advance was made elsewhere. In 843 the Saracens won the Mamertine city, Messana, and thus stood in the path between Italy and Sicily. Then the work of conquest, as described by the Arabic writers, went on, but slowly. At last, in 859, the very centre of the island, the stronghold of Henna, was taken, and the main part of Val di Noto followed. But the divisions among the Moslems helped the Christians; they won back several towns, and beat off all attacks on Syracuse and Tauromenium. It is strange that the reign of Basil the Macedonian (867), a time of such renewed vigour in the empire, was the time of the greatest of all losses in Sicily. In Italy the imperial frontier largely advanced; in Sicily imperial fleets threatened Panormus. But in 875 the accession of Ibrahim ibn Ahmed in Africa changed the face of things. The emir in Sicily, Ja'far ibn Ahmed, received strict orders to act vigorously against the eastern towns. In 877 began the only successful Semitic siege of Syracuse. The next year the city, which for 1600 years had been the seat of Greek, Boman, and Christian life, passed for the first time under the yoke of strangers to the fellowship of Europe.
Thus in fifty-one years the imperial and Christian terri-tory in Sicily was cut down to a few points on or near the eastern coast, to the Val Demone in short without Messana. But between Moslem dissension and Chris-tian valour the struggle had still to be waged for eighty-seven years. Henna had been the chief centre of Christian resistance a generation earlier; its place was now taken by the small fort of Bametta not far from Messina. The Moslems of Sicily were busy in civil wars; Arabs fought against Berbers, both against the African overlord. In 900 Banormus had to be won by a son of Ibrahim from Moslem rebels provoked by his father's cruelty. But when Ibrahim himself came into Sicily, renewed efforts against the Christians led to the first taking of Tauromenium (908), of Bametta, and of other points. The civil war that followed his death, the endless revolutions of Agrigentum, where the weaker side did not scruple to call in Christian help, hindered any real Saracen occupation of eastern Sicily. The emperors never gave up their claims to Sicily or their hopes of recovering it. Besides the struggle with the Christians in the island, there was often direct warfare between the empire and the Saracens; but such warfare was more active in Italy than in Sicily. In 956 a peace or truce was made by the emperor Constantine Borphyro-genitus. A few years later, Otho the Great, the restorer of the Western empire, looked to Sicily as a land to be won back for Christendom. It had not yet wholly passed away; but the day soon came. Strange to say, as Syracuse fell in the reign of Basil the Macedonian, the Saracen occupa-tion was completed in the reign of Nikephoros Phokas (Nicephorus Phocas), the deliverer of Crete. In the very year of his accession (963) Tauromenium was taken for the second time, and became for a hundred years a Mohammedan possession. Bametta alone held out. A fleet and army from Constantinople went in vain to its help; the last stronghold of Christendom was taken (965), and for a season all was over.
Thus in 138 years the Arab did what the Canaanite had never done. The whole island was a Semitic, that is now a Mohammedan, possession. The Greek-speaking Boman of Sicily was a bondman in his own land, like the Latin-speaking Boman of Spain. Yet the complete Saracen possession of Sicily may seem a thing of a moment. Its first and longest period lasted only 73 years. In that time Mohammedan Sicily was threatened by a Westem.Kecon-emperor; the Arabic writers claim the Saracen army byluest by which Otho the Second was beaten back in 982 as a Sicilian East
army. A mightier enemy was threatening in the East. Basil the Second planned the recovery of Sicily in good earnest. In 1027 he sent a great army; but his death stopped their progress before they reached the island. But the great conqueror had left behind him men trained in his school, and eleven years later the eagles of the new Bome again marched to Sicilian victories. The ravages of the Sicilian Saracens in the Greek islands were more frightful than ever, and George Maniakes, the first captain of his time, was sent to win back the lost land. He too was helped by Saracen dissensions. The emir Abul-afar became a Boman vassal, and, like Alaric of old, became magister militum in the Boman army. His brother and rival Abu-hafas brought help from Africa; and finally all joined against the Christians. Four years of Christian victory (1038-1042) followed. In the host of Maniakes were men of all races,—Normans, who had already begun to show them-selves in south Italy, and the Warangian guard, the best soldiers of the empire, among whom Harold Hardrada himself is said to have held a place. Town after town was delivered, first Messana, then Syracuse, then a crowd of others. The exact extent of the reconquest is uncertain; Byzantine writers claim the deliverance of the whole island; but it is certain that the Saracens never lost Banormus. But court influence spoiled everything: Maniakes was recalled; under his successor Stephen, brother-in-law of the emperor Michael, the Saracens won back what they had lost. Messana alone held out, for how long a time is uncertain. But it could not have been again under the yoke for many years when a conqueror came who had no empresses to thwart him. The second Saracen occupation of all Sicily was short indeed. In 1060 began the thirty years' work of the first Boger.
Thus for 263 years the Christian people of some part or other of Sicily were in subjection to Moslem masters. But that subjection differed widely in different times and places. The land was won bit by bit. One town wTas taken by storm; another submitted on terms harsher or more favourable. The condition of the Christians varied from that of personal slaves to that of communities left free on the payment of tribute. The great mass were in the intermediate state usual among the non-Mohammedan sub-jects of a Mohammedan power. The dhimmi of Sicily were in essentially the same case as the rayahs of the Turk. While the conquest was going on, the towns that remained unconquered gained in point of local freedom. They be-came allies rather than subjects of the distant emperor. So did the tributary districts, as long as the original terms were kept. But, as ever, the condition of the subject race grew worse. After the complete conquest of the island, while the mere slaves had turned Mohammedans, there is nothing more heard of tributary districts. At the coming of the Normans the whole Christian population was in the state of rayahs. Still Christianity and the Greek tongue never died out; churches and monasteries received and held property; there still are saints and men of learning. Panormus was specially Saracen; yet a Christian religious guild could be founded there in 1048 (Tabularium Regisc Cap. Panorm., p. 1). We have its Greek foundation deed. It would be rash to deny that traces of other dialects may not have lingered on; but Greek and Arabic were the two written tongues of Sicily when the Normans came. The Sicilian Saracens were hindered by their internal feuds from ever becoming a great power; but they stood high among Mohammedan nations. Their advance in civili-zation is shown by their position under the Normans, and above all by their admirable style of architecture (see PALERMO). Saracens are always called in for any special work of building or engineering. They had a literature which Norman kings studied and promoted. The Normans in short came into the inheritance of the two most civilized nations of the time, and they allowed the two to flourish side by side.
Norman conquest. The most brilliant time for Sicily as a power in the world begins with the coming of the Normans. Never before or after was the island so united or so independent. Some of the old tyrants had ruled out of Sicily ; none had ruled over all Sicily. The Normans held all Sicily as the centre of a dominion which stretched far beyond it. The conquest was the work of one man, Count Boger of the house of Hauteville, brother of the more famous Bobert Wiscard (Guiscard). That it took him thirty years was doubtless owing to his being often called off to help his brother in Italy and beyond Hadria. The conquests of the Normans in Italy and Sicily form part of one enterprise ; but they altogether differ in character. In Italy they over-threw the Byzantine dominion; their own rule was perhaps not worse, but they were not deliverers. In Sicily they were everywhere welcomed by the Christians as deliverers from infidel bondage.
As in the Saracen conquest of Sicily, as in the Byzantine recovery, so in the Norman conquest, the immediate occasion was given by a home traitor. Count Boger had already made a plundering attack, when Becumen of Catania, driven out by his brother, urged him to serious invasion. Messina was taken in 1060, and became for a while the Norman capital. The Christians everywhere welcomed the conqueror. But at Traina they presently changed their minds, and joined with the Saracens to besiege the count in their citadel. At Catania Becumen was set up again as Soger's vassal, and he did good service till he was killed. Boger soon began to fix his eye on the Saracen capital. Against that city he had Pisan help, as the inscription on the Pisan duomo witnesses (cf. Geoff. MaL, ii. 34). But Palermo was not taken until 1071, a,nd then only by the help of Duke Bobert, who kept the prize to himself.
Still its capture was the turning-point in the struggle. 1060-1090. Taormina (Tauromenium) was won in 1078. Syracuse, under its emir Benarvet, held out stoutly. He won back Catania by the help of a Saracen to whom Boger had trusted the city, and whom he himself punished. Catania was won back by the count's son Jordan. But progress was delayed by Jordan's rebellion and by the absence of Boger in his brother's wars. At last, in 1085, Syracuse was won. Next year followed Girgenti and Casrvogiovanni, whose chief became a Christian. Noto, the Saracen Ba-metta, held out till 1090. Then the whole island was won, and Boger completed his conquest by a successful expedition to Malta.
Like the condition of the Greeks under the Saracens, so Saracens the condition of the Saracens under the Normans differed nnder in different places according to the circumstances of each J^™3,11 conquest. The Mohammedan religion was everywhere tolerated, in many places much more. But it would seem that, just as under the Moslem rule, conversions from Christianity to Islam were forbidden. On the other hand, conversions from Islam to Christianity were not always encouraged; Saracen troops were employed from the begin-ning, and Count Boger seems to have thought them more trustworthy when unconverted. At Balermo the capitula-tion secured to the Saracens the full enjoyment of their own laws ; Girgenti was long mainly Saracen ; in Val di Noto the Saracens kept towns and castles of their own. On the other hand, at Messina there were few or none, and we hear of both Saracen and Greek villains, the latter doubtless abiding as they were in Saracen times. But men of both races were trusted and favoured according to their deserts. The ecclesiastical relations between Greeks and Latins are harder to trace. At the taking of Palermo the Greek bishop was restored; but his successors were Latins, and Latin prelates were placed in the bishoprics which Count Boger founded. Urban the Second visited Sicily to promote the union of the church, and he granted to the count those special ecclesiastical powers held by the counts and kings of Sicily as hereditary legates of the Holy See which grew into the famous Sicilian monarchy (Geoff. Mai., iv. 29). But Greek worship went on; at Messina it lingered till the 14th and 15th centuries (Pirro, Sicilia Sacra, i. 420, 431, 449), as it has been since brought back by the Albanian colonists. But the Greeks of Sicily have long been united Greeks, admitting the authority of the see of Rome.
In its results the Norman conquest of Sicily was a Latin conquest far more thorough than that which had been made by the Boman commonwealth. The Norman princes protected all the races, creeds, and tongues of the island, Greek, Saracen, and Jew. But new races came to settle Lin-alongside of them, all of whom were Latin as far as their guistic official speech was concerned. The Normans brought the Pl9?l™t's French tongue with them; it remained the court speech during the 12th century, and Sicily was thrown open to all speakers of French, many of whom came from England. There was constant intercourse between the two great islands, both ruled by Norman kings, and many natives of England filled high places in Sicily. But French was only a language of society, not of business or literature. The languages of inscriptions and documents are Greek, Arabic, and Latin, in private writings sometimes Hebrew. The kings understood Greek and Arabic, and their deeds and works were commemorated in both tongues. Hence comes the fact, at first sight so strange, that Greek, Arabic, and French have all given way to a dialect of Italian. But the cause is not far to seek. The Norman conquest opened Sicily to settlers from Italy, above all from the Norman possessions in Italy. Under the name of Lombards, they became an important, in some parts a dominant, element.
Thus at Messina, where we hear nothing of Saracens, we hear much of the disputes between Greeks and Lombards. The Lombards had hardly a distinct language to bring with them. At the time of the conquest, it was already found out that French had become a distinct speech from Latin; Italian hardly was such. The Lombard, element, during the Norman reign, shows itself, not in whole documents or inscriptions, but in occasional words and forms, as in some of the mosaics at Monreale. And, if any element, Latin or akin to Latin, had lingered on through Byzantine and Saracen rule, it would of course be attracted to the new Latin element, and would help to strengthen it. It was this Lombard element that had the future before it. Greek and Arabic were antiquated, or at least isolated, in a land which Norman conquest had made part of Western Europe and Latin Christendom. They could grow only within the island ; they could gain no strength from out-side. Even the French element was in some sort isolated, and later events made it more so. But the Lombard element was constantly strengthened by settlement from outside. In the older Latin conquest, the Latin carried Greek with him, and the Greek element absorbed the Latin. Latin now held in western Europe the place which Greek had held there. Thus, in the face of Italian, both Greek and Arabic died out. Step by step, Christian Sicily became Latin in speech and in worship. But this was not till the Norman reigns were over. Till the end of the 12th century Sicily was the one land where men of divers creeds and tongues could live side by side, each in his own way.
Hence came both the short-lived brilliancy of Sicily and its later decay. In Sicily there were many nations all protected by the Sicilian king; but there was no Sicilian nation. Greek, Saracen, Norman, Lombard, and Jew could not be fused into one people; it was the boast of Sicily that each kept his laws and tongue undisturbed. Such a state of things could live on only under an en-lightened despotism ; the discordant elements could not join to work out really free and national institutions. Sicily had parliaments, and some constitutional principles were well understood. But they were assemblies of barons, or at most of barons and citizens; they could only have represented the Latin elements, Norman and Lombard, in the island. The elder races, Greek and Saracen, stand outside the relations between the Latin king and his Latin subjects. Still, as long as Greek and Saracen were pro-tected and favoured, so long was Sicily the most brilliant of European kingdoms. But its greatness had no ground-work of national life; for lack of it the most brilliant of kingdoms presently sank below the level of other lands.
Four generations only span the time from the birth of Count Roger, about 1030, to the death of the emperor Frederick the Second in 1250. Boger, great count of Sicily, was, at his death in 1101, succeeded by his young son Simon, Roger I. and he in 1105 by the second Boger, the first king. He inherited all Sicily, save half Palermo—the other half had been given up—and part of Calabria. The rest of Palermo was soon granted; the Semitic capital became the abiding head of Sicily. On the death of Duke William of Apulia, Boger gradually founded (1127-40) a great Italian domi-nion. To the Apulian duchy he added (1136) the Norman principality of Capua, Naples (1138), the last dependency of the Eastern empire in Italy, and (1140) the Abruzzi, an undoubted land of the Western empire. He thus formed a dominion which has been divided, united, and handed over from one prince to another, oftener than any other state in Europe, but whose frontier has hardly changed at all. In 1130 Boger was crowned at Palermo, by authority of the antipope Anacletus, taking the strange title of "king of Sicily and Italy." This, on his recon-cilation with Pope Innocent the Second, he exchanged for " king of Sicily and of the duchy of Apulia and of the prin-cipality of Capua." By virtue of the old relations between the popes and the Normans of Apulia, he held his kingdom in fief of the Holy See, a position which on the whole strengthened the royal power. But his power, like that of Dionysios and Agathokles, was felt in more distant regions. His admiral George of Antioch, Greek by birth and creed, warred against the Eastern empire, won Corfu (Korypho ; the name of Korkyra is forgotten) for a season, and carried off the silk-workers from Thebes and Peloponnesos to Sicily. But Manuel Konmenos (Comnenus) ruled in the East, and, if Boger threatened Constantinople, Manuel threatened Sicily. In Africa the work of Agathokles was more than renewed ; Mahadia and other points were won and kept as long as Boger lived. These exploits won him the name of the terror of Greeks and Saracens. To the Greeks, and still more to the Saracens, of his own island he was a protector and something more.
Roger's son William, surnamed the Bad, was crowned William in his father's lifetime in 1151. Boger died in 1154, andI-an<in-William's sole reign lasted till 1166. It was a time of domestic rebellions, chiefly against the king's unpopular ministers, and it is further marked by the loss of Boger's African conquests. After William the Bad came (1166-1189) his son William the Good. Unlike as were the two men in themselves, in their foreign policy they are hardly to be distinguished. The Bad William has a short quarrel with the pope ; otherwise Bad and Good alike appear as zealous supporters of Alexander the Third, and as enemies of both empires. The Eastern warfare of the Good is stained by the frightful sack of Thessalonica ; it is marked also by the formation of an Eastern state under Sicilian supremacy (1186). Corfu, the possession of Agathokles and Boger, with Durazzo, Cephalonia, and Zante, was granted by William to his admiral Margarito with, the strange title of king of the Epeirots. He founded a dynasty, though not of kings, in Cephalonia and Zante. Corfu and Durazzo were to be more closely connected with the Sicilian crown.
The brightest days of Sicily ended with William the Good. His marriage with Joanna, daughter of Henry of Anjou and England, was childless, and William tried to procure the succession of his aunt Constance and her husband, King Henry the Sixth of Germany, son of the emperor Frederick the First. But the prospect of German rule was unpopular, and on William's death the crown passed to Tancred, an illegitimate grandson of King Boger, Tancred. who figures in English histories in the story of Bichard's crusade. In 1191 Henry, now emperor, asserted his claims ; but, while Tancred lived, he did little, in Sicily nothing, to enforce them. On the death of Tancred (1194) and the accession of his young son William the Third, the William emperor came and conquered Sicily and the Italian posses-_1-sions, with an amount of cruelty which outdid any earlier war or revolution. First of four Western emperors who wore the Sicilian crown, Henry died in 1197, leaving the kingdom to his young son Frederick, heir of the Norman kings through his mother.
The great days of the Norman conquest and the Norman reigns have been worthily recorded by contemporary his-torians. For few times have we richer materials. The oldest is Aimé or Amato of Monte Cassino, who exists only in an Old-French translation. We have also for the Norman conquest the halting hexameters of William of Apulia, and for the German conquest the lively and par-tial verses of Peter of Eboli. Of prose writers we have Geoffrey Malaterra, Alexander abbot of Telesia, Romuald archbishop of Salerno, Falco of Benevento, above all Hugo Falcandus, one of the very foremost of mediaeval writers.
Not one of these Latin writers was a native of the island, and we have no record from any native Greek. Occasional notices we of course have in the Byzantine writers, and Archbishop Eustathios's account of the taking of Thessa-lonica is more than occasional. And the close connexion between Sicily and England leads to many occasional refer-ences to Sicilian matters in English writers.
The relations between the various races of the islands are most instructive. The strong rule of Roger kept all in order. He called himself the defender of Christians; others, on account of his favour to the Saracens, spoke of him as a pagan. He certainly encouraged Saracen art and literature in every shape. His court was full of eunuchs, of whom we hear still more under William the Bad. Under William the Good the Saracens, without any actual oppres-sion, seem to be losing their position. Hitherto they had been one element in the land, keeping their own civiliza-tion alongside of others. By a general outbreak on the death of William the Good, the Saracens, especially those of Palermo, were driven to take shelter in the mountains, where they sank into a wild people, sometimes holding points of the island against all rulers, sometimes taking military service under them. The Jews too begin to sink into bondmen. Sicily is ceasing to be the land of many nations living side by side on equal terms. Emperor The Germans who helped Henry to win the Sicilian Freder- crown did not become a new element in the island, but ick II. only a source of confusion during the minority of his son. Frederick—presently to be the renowned emperor Freder-ick the Second, "Fridericus stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis"—was crowned at Palermo in 1198; but the child, deprived of both parents, was held to be under the protection of his lord Pope Innocent the Third. During his minority the land was torn in pieces by turbulent nobles, revolted Saracens, German captains seeking settlements, the maritime cities of Italy, and professed French deliverers. In 1210 the emperor Otho the Fourth, who had overrun the continental dominions, threatened the island. In 1212, just when Frederick was reaching an age to be of use in his own kingdom, he was called away to dispute the crown of Germany and Bome with Otho. Eight years more of disorder followed ; in 1220 the emperor-king came back. He brought the Saracens of the mountains back again to a life in plains and cities, and presently planted a colony of them on the mainland at Nocera, when they be-came his most trusty soldiers. His necessary absences from Sicily led to revolts. He came back in 1233 from his crusade to suppress a revolt of the eastern cities, which seem, like those of Italy, to have been aiming at repub-lican independence. A Saracen revolt in 1243 is said to have been followed by a removal of the whole remnant to Nocera. Some however certainly stayed or came back; but their day was over.
Under Frederick the Italian or Lombard element finally prevailed in Sicily. Of all his kingdoms Sicily was the best-beloved. He spoke all its tongues; he protected, as far as circumstances would allow, all its races. He legis-lated for all in the spirit of an enlightened and equal des-potism, jealous of all special privileges, whether of nobles, churches, or cities. The heretic alone was persecuted; he was the domestic rebel of the church; Saracen and Jew were entitled to the rights of foreigners. Yet Frederick, patron of Arabic learning, suspected even of Moslem belief, fails to check the decline of the Saracen element in Sicily. The Greek element has no such forces brought against it. It is still a chief tongue of the island, in which Frederick's laws are put forth as well as in Latin. But it is clearly a declining element. Greek and Saracen were both becom-ing survivals in an island which was but one of the many kingdoms of its king. No wonder that the Italian element advanced at the cost of all others. Frederick chose it as 1197-1282. the court speech of Sicily, and he made it more than a court speech, the speech of a new-born literature. Sicily, strangely enough, became the cradle of Italian song.
Two emperors had now held the Sicilian crown. On Frederick's death in 1250 the crown passed to his son Conrad, not emperor indeed, but king of the Bomans. He was nominally succeeded by his son Conradin. The real ruler under both was Frederick's natural son Manfred. Manfred. In 1258, on a false rumour of the death of Conradin, Manfred was himself crowned king at Palermo. He had to found the kingdom afresh. Pope Innocent the Fourth had crossed into Sicily, to take advantage of the general discontent. The cities, whose growing liberties had been checked by Frederick's legislation, strove for practical, if not formal, independence, sometimes for dominion over their fellows. The 5th century B.C. seemed to have come back. Messina laid waste the lands of Taormina, because Taormina would not obey the bidding of Messina. Yet, among these and other elements of confusion, Manfred succeeded in setting up again the kingly power, first for his kinsmen and then for himself. His reign continued that of his father, so far as a mere king could continue the reign of such an emperor. The king of Sicily was the first potentate of Italy, and came nearer than any prince since Louis the Second to the union of Italy under Italian rule. He sought dominion too beyond Hadria: Corfu, Durazzo, and a strip of the Albanian coast became Sicilian possessions as the dowry of Manfred's Greek wife. But papal enmity was too much for him. His overlord claimed to dispose of his crown, and hawked it about among the princes of the West. Edmund of England bore the Sicilian title for a moment. More came of the grant of Urban the Fourth (1264) to Charles, count of Anjou, and through his wife sovereign count of Frovence. Charles, crowned Charles by the pope in 1266, marched to take possession of his of Anjou. lord's grant. Manfred was defeated and slain at Bene-vento. The whole Sicilian kingdom became the spoil of a stranger who was no deliverer to any class of its people. The island sank yet lower. Naples, not Balermo, was the head of the new power; Sicily was again a province. But a province Sicily had no mind to be. In the con-tinental lands Charles founded a dynasty; the island he lost after sixteen years. His rule was not merely the rule of a stranger king surrounded by stranger followers; the degradation of the island was aggravated by gross oppres-sion, grosser than in the continental lands. The conti-nental lands submitted, with a few slight efforts at resist-ance. The final result of the Angevin conquest of Sicily was its separation from the mainland.
Sicilian feeling was first shown in the support given to the luckless expedition of Conradin in 1268. Frightful executions in the island followed his fall. The rights of the Swabian house were now held to pass to Peter (Pedro), king of Aragon, husband of Manfred's daughter Constance. The connexion with Spain, which has so deeply affected the whole later history of Sicily, now begins. Charles held the Greek possessions of Manfred and had designs both on Epeiros and on Constantinople. The emperor Michael Palaiologos and Peter of Aragon became allies against Charles ; the famous John of Procida acted as an agent be-tween them ; the costs of Charles's Eastern warfare caused great discontent, especially in an island where some might still look to the Greek emperor as a natural deliverer. Peter and Michael were doubtless watching the turn of things in Sicily; but the tale of a long-hidden conspiracy between them and the whole Sicilian people has been set aside by Amari. The actual outbreak of 1282, the famous Sicilian Vespers, was stirred up by the wrongs of the moment. A gross case of insult offered by a Frenchman to a Sicilian woman led to the massacre at Palermo, and the like scenes followed elsewhere. The strangers were cut off; Sicily was left to its own people. The towns and districts left without a ruler by no means designed to throw off the authority of the overlord; they sought the good will of Pope Martin. But papal interests were on the side of Charles; and he went forth with the blessing of the church to win back his lost kingdom.
Angevin oppression had brought together all Sicily in a common cause. There was at last a Sicilian nation, a nation for a while capable of great deeds. Sicily now stands out as a main centre of European politics. But the land has lost its character; it is becoming the plaything of powers, instead of the meeting-place of nations. The tale, true or false, that Frenchmen and Provencals were known from the natives by being unable to frame the Italian sound of c shows how thoroughly the Lombard tongue had overcome the other tongues of the island. In Palermo, once city of threefold speech, a Greek, a Saracen, a Norman, who clave to his own tongue must have died with the strangers.
Peter of Charles was now besieging Messina; Sicily seems to Aragon. have put on some approach to the form of a federal com-monwealth. Meanwhile Peter of Aragon was watching and preparing. He now declared himself. To all, except the citizens of the great cities, a king would be acceptable ; Peter was chosen with little opposition in a parliament at Palermo, and a struggle of twenty-one years began, of which Charles and Peter saw only the first stage. In fact, after Peter had helped the Sicilians to relieve Messina, he was very little in Sicily; he had to defend his kingdom of Aragon, which Pope Martin had granted to another French Charles. He was represented by Queen Constance, and his great admiral Roger de Loria kept the war away from Sicily, waging it wholly in Italy, and making Charles, the son of King Charles, prisoner. In 1285 both the rival kings died. Charles had before his death been driven to make large legislative concessions to his subjects to stop the tendency shown, especially in Naples, to join the re-volted Sicilians. By Peter's death Aragon and Sicily were separated; his eldest son Alphonso took Aragon, and his James, second son James took Sicily, which was to pass to the third son Frederick, if James died childless. James was crowned, and held his reforming parliament also. With the popes no terms could be made. Charles, released in 1288 under a deceptive negotiation, was crowned king of Sicily by Honorius; but he had much ado to defend his continental dominions against James and Boger. In 1291 James succeeded Alphonso in the kingdom of Aragon, and left Frederick not king, according to the entail, but only his lieutenant in Sicily.
Frederick was the real restorer of Sicilian independence. He had come to the island so young that he felt as a native. He defended the land stoutly, even against his brother. For James presently played Sicily false. In 1295 he was reconciled to the church and released from all French claims on Aragon, and he bound himself to restore Sicily Freder- to Charles. But the Sicilians, with Frederick at their ick- head, disowned the agreement, and in 1296 Frederick was crowned king. He had to defend Sicily against his brother and Boger de Loria, who forsook the cause, as did John of Procida. Hitherto the war had been waged on the mainland ; now it was transferred to Sicily. King James besieged Syracuse as admiral of the Boman Church; Charles sent his son Bobert in 1299 as his lieutenant in Sicily, where he gained some successes. But in the same year the one great land battle of the war, that of Falconaria, was won for Sicily. The war, chiefly marked by another great siege of Messina, went on till 1302, when both sides were thoroughly weakened and eager for peace. By a treaty, confirmed by Pope Boniface the next year, Frederick was acknowledged as king of Trinacria for life. He was to marry the daughter of the king of Sicily, to whom the island kingdom was to revert at his death. The terms were never meant to be carried out. Frederick again took up the title of king of Sicily, and at his death in 1337 he was succeeded by his son Peter. There were thus two Peter, Sicilian kingdoms and two kings of Sicily. The king of the mainland is often spoken of for convenience as king of Naples, but that description was never borne as a formal title save in the 16th century by Philip, king of England and Naples, and in the 19th by Joseph Buonaparte and Joachim Murat. The strict distinction was between Sicily on this side the Pharos (of Messina) and Sicily beyond it.
Thus the great island of the Mediterranean again became an independent power. And, as far as legislation could make it, Sicily became one of the freest countries in Europe. By the laws of Frederick parliaments were to be regularly held, and without their consent the king could not make war, peace, or alliance. The treaty of 1302 was not confirmed by parliament, and in 1337 parliament called Peter to the crown. But Sicily never rose to the greatness of its Greek or its Norman days, and its old character had passed away. Of Greeks and Saracens we now hear only as a degraded remnant, to be won over, if it may be, to the Western Church. The kingdom had no foreign pos-sessions ; yet faint survivals of the days of Agathokles and Boger lingered on. The isle of Gerba off the African coast was held for a short time, and traces of the connexion with Greece went on in various shapes. If the kings of Sicily on this side the Bharos kept Corfu down to 1386, those beyond the Pharos became in 1311 overlords of Athens, when that duchy was seized by Catalan adventurers, disbanded after the wars of Sicily. In 1530 the Sicilian island of Malta became the shelter of the Knights of Saint John driven, by the Turk from Bhodes, and Sicily has received several colonies of Christian Albanians, who have replaced Greek and Arabic by yet another tongue.
There is no need to dwell at length on the Sicilian Subse-history of the last five hundred years. The descendants quent of Frederick did not form a great dynasty. Under him and history, after him Sicily played a part in Italian affairs, invading and being invaded on behalf of the Ghibelline cause. But it was torn by dissensions between Spanish and Italian fac-tions, and handed to and fro between one Spanish king and another. At last Ferdinand the Catholic (1479-1515), king by inheritance of Aragon and of Sicily beyond the pharos, conquered the continental Sicily, and called himself king of the Two Sicilies. Both were now ruled by Spanish viceroys. In Charles the First (1516-1555)—Charles of Anjou is not reckoned—Sicily had a third imperial king, and once more became the starting-point for African war-fare. Philip, already king of Naples, became king of the Two Sicilies at the abdication of his father, and the two crowns passed along with Castile and Aragon till the division of the Spanish dominions. Under the foreign rule the old laws were trampled under foot. Three risings took place, that of Messina in 1672, with pretended French help, which led to deeper subjection. At the death of Charles the Second in 1700, Sicily acknowledged the French claimant Philip; but the peace of Utrecht made it the kingdom of Victor Amadeus of Savoy (1713-1720). He was crowned at Palermo ; but he had to withstand Spanish invasion, and to exchange Sicily for the other insular crown of Sardinia. Both Sicilies now passed to the emperor Charles the Sixth, the fourth imperial king, who also is passed by in Sicilian reckoning. Charles the Third is the Spanish prince of the house of Bourbon who won both Sicilies from the Austrian and who was the last king crowned at Palermo (1735).
The wars of the French Eevolution again parted the Two Sicilies. In 1798 Ferdinand the Fourth (1759-1825) withdrew to the island before the French armies. In 1805 he withdrew again, while Joseph Buonaparte and Joachim Murat reigned on the mainland as kings of Naples. Under the Bourbon rule, besides the common grievances of both kingdoms, Sicily had specially to complain of being treated as subordinate to Naples. But from 1806 to 1815 Sicily, practically a separate kingdom under British pro-tection, enjoyed a measure of wellbeing such as it had not had for some ages, and in 1812 a constitution was estab-lished. The European settlement of 1815 brought back the Bourbon to his continental kingdom. Ferdinand the First became a constitutional king over the United Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This was equivalent to the suppression of the separate constitution of the island, and before long all constitutional order was trodden under foot. In 1820, and also in 1836 under Francis the First, Sicily rose for freedom and separation. This last time the island was bound yet more firmly to continental rule. In the general stir of 1848 Sicily again proclaimed her independence, and sought for herself a king in the house of Savoy. Again were the liberties of Sicily trodden under foot; and, in the last change of all, the deliverance wrought by Garibaldi in 1860, if not her liberties, her ancient memories were forgotten. Sicily became part of a free kingdom; but her king does not bear her style, and he has not taken the crown of Roger. The very name of Sicily has been wiped out; and the great island now counts only as seven provinces of an Italian kingdom.
The literature bearing on Sieily, old and new, is endless. It is something for a land to have had part of its story told by Thucy- dides and another by Hugo Falcandus. Of modern books Holm's Geschichle Sicilians im Alterthum (down to the accession of the second Hieron) is of great value. So are the works of Michele Amari for the Moslem occupation and the War of the Vespers. The old local historian Fazzello must not be passed by, nor the collections of Carusio, Pirro, and Giovanni. But a history of Sicily and the cycles of its history from the beginning is still lacking. The writers on particular branches of the subject are infinite. Gaily Knight's Normans in Sicily has probably led many to their first thoughts on the subject; and, as a guide for the traveller, that of Gsel-fels can hardly be outdone. (E. A. F.)
PART II.—GEOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS.
The island of Sicily (Ital. Sicilia) belongs to the kingdom of Italy, being separated from the mainland only by the narrow (about 2 miles wide) but deep Straits of Messina. It is nearly bisected by the meridian of 14° E., and by far the greater part lies to the south of 38° N. Its southernmost point, however, in 36° 40' N. is 40' to the north of Point Tarifa, the southernmost point of Spain and of the continent of Europe. In shape it is triangular, whence the ancient poetical name of Trinacria, referring to its three promontories of Pelorum (now Faro) in the north-east, Pachynum (now Passaro) in the south-east, and Lilybseum (now Boeo) in the west. Its area, exclusive of the adjacent small islands belonging to the compartimento, is, according to the recent planimetrical calculation of the Military Geographical Institute of Italy, 9860 square miles, —considerably less than one-third of that of Ireland; that of the whole compartimento is 9935 square miles.
The island occupies that part of the Mediterranean in which the shallowing of the waters divides that sea into _________ which there are numerous indications of frequent changes in a recent geological period. The channel between Cape Bon in Tunis and the south-west of Sicily (a distance of 80 miles) is, on the whole, shallower than the Straits of Messina, being for the most part under 100 fathoms in depth, and exceeding 200 fathoms only for a very short interval, while the Straits of Messina, which are at their narrowest part less than 2 miles in width, have almost everywhere a depth exceeding 150 fathoms. The geological structure in the neighbourhood of this strait shows that the island must originally have been formed by a rupture between it and the mainland, but that this rupture must have taken place at a period long antecedent to the advent of man, so that the name Bhegium cannot be based even on the tradition of any such catastrophe. The mountain range that runs out towards the north-east of Sicily is composed of crystalline rocks precisely similar to those forming the parallel range of Aspromonte in Calabria, but both of these are girt _ about by sedimentary strata belonging in part to an early Tertiary epoch. That a subsequent land connexion took place, however, by the elevation of the sea-bed there is abundant evidence to show; and the occurrence of the remains of African Quaternary mammals, such as Elephas meridionalis, E. antiquus, Hippopotamus pentlandi, as well as of those of still living African forms, such as Elephas africanus and Hysena crocuta, makes it probable that there was a direct post-Tertiary connexion also with the African continent.
The north coast is generally steep and cliffy and abun- Coasts, dantly provided with good harbours, of which that of Palermo is the finest. In the west and south the coast is for the most part flat, more regular in outline, and less favourable to shipping, while in the east, where the sea-bottom sinks rapidly down towards the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, steep rocky coasts prevail except op-posite the plain of Catania. In the northern half of this coast the lava streams of Mount Etna stand out for a distance of about 20 miles in a line of bold cliffs and promontories. At various points on the east, north, and west coasts there are evidences of a rise of the land having taken place within historical times, at Trapani on the west coast even within the 19th century. As in the rest of the Mediterranean, tides are scarcely observable ; but at several points on the west and south coasts a curious oscillation in the level of the waters, known to the natives as the marrobbio (or marobia), is sometimes noticed, and is said to be always preceded by certain atmospheric signs. This consists in a sudden rise of the sea-level, occasionally to the height of 3 feet, sometimes occurring only once, some-times repeated at intervals of a minute for two hours, or even, at Mazzara, where it is most frequently observed, for twenty-four hours together.
The surface of Sicily lies for the most part more than Surface. 500 feet above the level of the sea. Caltanissetta, which occupies the middle point in elevation as well as in respect of geographical situation, stands 1900 feet above sea-level. Considerable mountains occur only in the north, where the lower slopes of all the heights form one continuous series of olive-yards and orangeries. Of the rest of the island the greater part forms a plateau varying in eleva-tion and mostly covered with wheat-fields. The only plain of any great extent is that of Catania, watered by the Simeto, in the east; to the north of this plain the active volcano of ETNA (q.v.) rises with an exceedingly gentle slope to the height of 10,868 feet from a base 400 square miles in extent. This is the highest elevation of the island. The steep and narrow crystalline ridge which trends north-eastwards, and is known to geographers by the name of the Peloritan Mountains, does not reach 4000 feet. The Nebrodian Mountains, a limestone range con-nected with the Peloritan range and having an east and west trend, rise to a somewhat greater height, and farther west, about the middle of the north coast, the Madonie (the only one of the groups mentioned which has a native name) culminate at the height of nearly 6500 feet. From the western end of the Nebrodian Mountains a lower range (in some places under 1500 feet in height) winds on the whole south-eastwards in the direction of Cape Passaro. With the exception of the Simeto, the principal perennial streams—the Salso, the Platani, and the Belici—enter the sea on the south coast. Geology. Of the sedimentary rocks of Sicily none are earlier than the Secondary period, and of the older Secondary rocks there are only comparatively small patches of Triassic and Jurassic age—most abundant in the west but also occurring on the flanks of the mountains in the north-east. Cretaceous rocks are very sparingly represented (in the south-east), and by far the greater part of the island is occupied by Tertiary (mainly Eocene and Miocene) lime-stones. The Nebrodian Mountains are mainly composed of com-pact limestones of Oligocene date, but are flanked by Eocene rocks including the nummulitic limestone. Quaternary deposits border many of the bays, and the plain of Catania is wholly covered with recent alluvium. Basalts and basaltic tufas border this plain on the south, as the ancient and modern lavas of Etna do on the north. Climate. The climate of Sicily resembles that of the other lands in the extreme south of Europe. As regards temperature, it has the warm and equable character which belongs to most of the Mediterranean region. At Palermo (where continuous observations have been made since 1791) the range of temperature between the mean of the coldest and that of the hottest month is little greater than at Greenwich. The mean temperature of January (514° Fahr.) is nearly as high as that of October in the south of England, that of July (77° Fahr.) about 13° warmer than the corresponding month at Greenwich. During the whole period for which observations have been made the thermometer has never been observed to sink at Palermo below the freezing-point; still frost does occur in the island even on the low grounds, though never for more than a few hours. On the coast snow is seldom seen, but it does fall occasion-ally. On the Madonie it lies till June, on Etna till July. The annual rainfall except on the higher mountains does not reach 30 inches, and, as in other parts of the extreme south of Europe, it occurs chiefly in the winter months, while the three summer months (June, July, and August) are almost quite dry. During these months the whole rainfall does not exceed 2 inches, except on the slopes of the mountains in the north-east. Hence most of the streams dry up in summer. The chief scourge is the sirocco, which is experienced in its most characteristic form on the north coast, as an oppressive, parching, hot, dry wind, blowing strongly and steadily from the south, the atmosphere remaining through the whole period of its duration leaden-coloured and hazy in conse-quence of the presence of immense quantities of reddish dust. It occurs most frequently in April, and then in May and September, but no month is entirely free from it. Three days are the longest period for which it lasts. The same name is sometimes applied to a moist and not very hot, but yet oppressive, south-east wind which blows from time to time on the east coast. Locally the salubrity of the climate is seriously affected by the occurrence of malaria, regarding which important evidence was furnished to a Government commission of inquiry by officials of the Sicilian rail-ways. From this it appears that the whole of the north-east coast from Catania to Messina is perfectly free from malaria, and so also is the line on the north coast from Palermo to Termini; and, singularly enough, while these parts of the low ground are free, malarial regions are entered upon in certain places as soon as the railway begins to ascend to higher levels. Such is the case with the line which crosses the island from Termini to Girgenti; and on the line which ascends from Catania to Castrogiovanni it is found that the stations become more and more unhealthy as the line ascends to Leonforte, and at that station so unhealthy are the nights that it is necessary to convey the employes by a special train every evening to Castrogiovanni (at the height of more than 3000 feet), and to bring them back by another train in the morning. Flora. The flora of Sicily is remarkable for its wealth of species ; but, comparing Sicily with other islands that have been long separated from the mainland, the number of endemic species is not great. Tho orders most abundantly represented are the Composites, Cruciferee, Labiatm, Caryophyllaceee, and Scrophulariacex. The Rosacea are also abundantly represented, and among them are numerous species of the rose. The general aspect of the vegetation of Sicily, however, has been greatly affected, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, by the introduction of plants within historical times. Being more densely populated than any other large Mediterranean island, and having its population dependent chiefly on the products of the soil, it is necessarily more extensively cultivated than any other of the larger islands referred to, and many of the objects of cultivation are not originally natives of the island. Not to mention the olive, which must have been introduced at a remote period, all the members of the orange tribe, the agave, and the prickly pear, as well as other plants highly characteristic of Sicilian scenery, have been introduced since the beginning of the Christian era. With respect to vegetation and cultivation three zones may be distinguished. The Erst reaches to about 1600 feet above sea-level, the upper limit of the members of the orange tribe; the second ascends to about 3300 feet, the limit of the growth of wheat, the vine, and the hardier ever-greens ; and the third, that of forests, reaches from about 3300 feet upwards. But it is not merely height that determines the general character of the vegetation. The cultivated trees of Sicily mostly demand such an amount of moisture as can be obtained only on the mountain slopes, and it is worthy of notice that the structure of the mountains is peculiarly favourable to the supply of this want. The limestones of which they are mostly composed act like a sponge, absorbing the rain-water through their innumerable pores and fissures, and thus storing it up in the interior, afterwards to allow it to well forth in springs at various elevations lower down. In this way the irrigation which is absolutely indispensable for the members of the orange tribe during the dry season is greatly facilitated, and even those trees for which irrigation is not so indispensable receive a more ample supply of moisture during the rainy season. Hence it is that, while the plain of Catania is almost treeless and tree-cultivation is comparatively limited in the west and south, where the extent of land under 1600 feet is consider-able, the whole of the north and north-east coast from the Bay of Castellamare round to Catania is an endless succession of orchards, in which oranges, citrons, and lemons alternate with olives, almonds, pomegranates, figs, carob trees, pistachios, mulberries, and vines. Oranges are specially important as an export crop, and the value of this product has enormously increased since steamers began to traverse the Mediterranean. Olives are even more extensively cultivated, but more for home consumption. The limit in height of the olive is about 2700 feet, and that of the vine about 3500. A considerable silk production depends on the cultivation of the mulberry in the neighbourhood of Messina and Catania. One of the most striking features in the commerce of the island is the very large proportion of southern fruits sent to the United States, whence petroleum is chiefly imported. Among other trees and shrubs of importance may be mentioned the deep-rooted sumach, which is adapted to the driest regions, the manna ash (Fraxinus ornus), the American Opuntia vulgaris or prickly pear and the agave—the former of which yields a favourite article of diet with the natives, and both of which thrive on the driest soil—the date-palm, the plantain, various bamboos, cycads, and the dwarf-palm, the last of which grows in some parts of Sicily more profusely than anywhere else, and in the desolate region in the south-west yields almost the only vegetable product of importance. The Arundo Donax, the tallest of European grasses, is largely grown for vine-stakes. The forests on the higher slopes of the mountains are chiefly of oak, with which are associated large numbers of the fruit-trees of central Europe, and on Etna and the Madonie chestnuts.
Outside of the tree region wheat is by far the most important Cereals, product. At the present day Sicily is still a rich granary, as it was in ancient times when Greek colonies flourished in the south and east, and later under the supremacy of Rome. In all three-fourths of the cultivated surface are estimated to be covered with cereals, and it is the cultivation of wheat more particularly which determines in most places the character of the Sicilian landscape throughout the year. The maquis, or thick-leaved stunted ever-greens, which on the other Mediterranean islands withstand this summer drought, have been almost banished from Sicily by the extent of the wheat cultivation. Oats and barley are also grown, but maize scarcely at all, for, being a summer crop, it is almost entirely excluded from cultivation by the extreme drought of that season. Beans form in spring the chief food of the entire popula-tion. Flax is grown for its seed (linseed), and the Crocus sativus for the production of saffron. On the plain of Catania cotton is grown along with wheat, and among other sub - tropical products sugar (probably introduced by the Arabs about the 10th century) and tobacco are still of some importance; but the cultivation of rice has greatly declined, in consequence of its tendency to produce malaria.
The native fauna of Sicily is similar to that of Southern Italy. Among domestic animals mules and asses are very important as beasts of burden. At the enumeration of 10th January 1876 mules numbered in Sicily 112,115 out of a total of 293,868 belong-ing to the kingdom of Italy ; the number of asses at the same date was 82,702 out of a total of 674,246 in the kingdom. The horses, sheep, and cattle are all of indifferent quality. Tunny and sardine fisheries are carried on round the coasts.
Manufacturing industry is little developed in the island, and Industry besides agriculture mining is the only important occupation of the and people. The chief mineral is sulphur, Sicilian sulphur being indeed mining, the most valuable mineral product of Italy. There are about 300 mines in operation in the provinces of Girgenti, Caltanissetta, Catania, and Palermo, employing about 27,000 people. The sulphur is found in a particular formation of the Upper Miocene, and is separated from the ore by fusion in a primitive kind of furnace called calcaroni, in most of which part of the sulphur is used as fuel. With the exception of a small quantity, which is used in the island for the vineyards, all the sulphur is exported, chiefly to England, France, Belgium, and the United States, and the produc-tion goes on increasing, notwithstanding the lowering of the price,
due to the extraction of sulphur from iron pyrites obtained elsewhere. Before 1860 the annual production did not exceed 150,000 tons, while in 1880 it exceeded 300,000 tons, and in 1884 almost reached 400,000 tons. It is estimated that at least 50,000,000 tons are still available in the island. Besides sulphur, rock salt, the annual production of which is about 3000 tons, is the only important mineral product of the island ; but not less than 170,000 tons of bay salt are made in the salt-pans of Trapani and other parts of the west coast. The rock salt is principally excavated near Bacal-muto, Casteltermini, and Trabona.
Administrative________. The compartimento of Sicily is divided into seven provinces, the area and population of which are given in the following table :—
== TABLE ==
The areas here given are those of Strelbitsky for 1881, these giving a total which agrees better than the old official figures with the total calculated by the Military Geographical Institute, which has not yet made any calculations for the individual provinces. The volcanic Lipari or iEolian Islands to the north of Sicily are included in the province of Messina ; the island of Ustica to the north-west in that of Palermo ; the iEgadie group (Lat. Insula? yEgates), con-sisting of a number of limestone islands in the west, in that of Trapani, from which the nearest is separated by a channel not more than nine fathoms in depth ; and to the same province belongs also Pantelleria, midway between Sicily and Africa. Popula- The prosperity of the island, due chiefly to the stimulation of tion. the cultivation of southern fruits by the extension of commerce in recent years, is shown by the fact that since 1861 the population has increased more rapidly than that of any other part of the king-dom. In 1861 the total population was 2,392,414, and in 1871 2,584,099. Thus the annual rate of increase was 7'74 per thousand as against 6'91 for the whole kingdom ; while between 1871 and 1881 the annual increase was at the rate of 12'62 per thousand for Sicily as against 6'02 for the whole kingdom. The number of emigrants is small. In 1882 the number of emigrants proper (those who declared their intention of remaining out of the country for more than one year) was 2261 out of 65,748 for the whole king-dom, that of the temporary emigrants 954 as compared with 95,814.
The population, which in consequence of the chequered history of the island is necessarily a very mixed one, is said to be on the whole well disposed and industrious. The lawlessness indicated by the continued existence of the secret society called the Mafia, which, like the Camorra of the Neapolitan provinces of the main-land, overrides the law in taking vengeance on those who have rendered themselves obnoxious to it, is a relic of former misrule, and is diminishing under the present Government. The condition of the peasantry still shows some of the injurious results of Spanish rule, under which the feudal system was introduced in its worst form. The nobles, who then acquired large landed properties, col-lected their serfs or retainers round their own castles, so that a number of considerable towns grew up, and the country districts were to a large extent deserted. The cultivators of the soil had often to walk 10 or 12 miles from their homes to their fields. It is chiefly from this cause that even at the present day the people of the island are mainly congregated in towns containing not less than 5000 inhabitants each. The three principal towns of Sicily and the chief seats of its foreign commerce are Palermo (population, with suburbs, 244,991 in 1881), Catania (100,417), and Messina (81,049), and the next in size are Marsala (40,251), Acireale (38,547), Trapani (38,231 ; the headquarters of the coral-fishers of Italy), Caltanissetta (25,027), Syracuse (23,507), Sciacea (22,195), Girgenti (20,008; the centre of the trade in sulphur), Castrogiovanni (18,981), Licata (17,565), Terranova (17,173).
Education. The backward state of education is another consequence of former misrule. In 1881 61 '59 per cent of the inhabitants above twelve years of age were still unable to read and write (analfabcti), and in 1880-81 the number of pupils in the elementary public schools was only 101,724, or nearly 1 in 29 of the whole population, as against about 1 in 15 for the wdiole kingdom. Here, however, as in other parts of Italy, improvement is going on in this respect, for the percentage of the people of Sicily above twelve years old unable to read and write was 67'59 in 1871 and 73'12 in 1861.
Communication. The system of roads and railways is still defective. One line of railway proceeds along the east coast from Messina to Syracuse, and a branch ascends from it to join one of the lines which cross the middle of the island from north to south. Of these there are two,—one from Licata and one from Porto Empedocle, both on the south coast; these lines meet before touching the north coast a little to the east of Termini ; thence the railway proceeds along the north coast to Palermo and Castellamare, whence it recrosses the island again to Mazzara, and afterwards follows the west coast northwards to Trapani. A project is now (1886) entertained for the connexion of the railways of Sicily with those of the mainland by a tunnel under the Straits of Messina.
[Further Reading] See W. H. Smyth, Sicily and its Islands, London, 1824 ; Theo. Fischer, Beitr. z. phys. Geogr. d. Mittelmeerländer, besonders Siciliens, Leipsic, 1877 ; Id., " Das Klima der Mittelmeerländer," in Ergänzungsband xiii. of Petermann's Mittheilungen, Gotha, 1S79. A complete account of Etna is given in Arnold von Lasaulx's edition of Der Aetna, by W. Sartorius von "Wangershausen, Leipsic, 2 vols., 1880. The best topographical map of Sicily is that based on Govern- ment surveys on the scale of 1:50,000; and on a small scale (1:800,000) that in Baedeker's Italy is of peculiar excellence. The geology of the island is shown in a single sheet in the Carta Geologica delta Swilia nella Scala di 1:500,000, and in more detail on the scale of 1:100,000 in twenty-seven sheets (not yet completed). See also for the geology and currents of the Straits of Messina the " Schizzo Geologieo dello Stretto di Messina colla Indicazione delle Correnti Marine," in the Bolletino del R. Comitate Geologieo d'ltalia, 13th year, Rome, 1882. Regarding the minerals, see the third vol. of I Tesori soiterranei dell' Italia by W. Jervis, Turin, 1881. (G. G. C.)
The above article was written by:
(a) Introduction and History
E. A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford,
(b) Geography and Statistics
George G. Chisolm, M.A., B.Sc.