Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/28

 14 S I B S I C Hamburg, 1839-40), the oldest collection of Sibylline oracles appears to have been made about the time of Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida in the Troad it was attributed to the Sibyl of Marpessus and was pre- served in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythne, where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would appear, which found its way to Cumte and from Cumae to Home. The collection of so-called Sibylline oracles which has descended to us is obviously spurious, bearing marks of Jewish and Christian origin. Ewald assigns the oldest of them to about 124 B.C. and the latest to about 668-672 A.D. They have been edited by Fried- lieb (Leipsic, 1852) and Alexandra (2d ed., Paris, 1869). For an examination of the different lists of Sibyls, see E. Maass, DC Sibyl- larum Indicibus, Berlin, 1879. SIBYLLINE BOOKS. See APOCALYPTIC LITERA- TURE, vol. ii. p. 177. SICILY PART I. HISTORY. SICILY, slightly surpassed by Sardinia in superficial extent, is, in its geographical and historical position, Geogra- phical pos ,ion. t j ie g rea t es t i s i an d 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 prse-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 Mediter- ranean, 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 king- doms. 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 Roman 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 Roman 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 Roman 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 Phoenician, 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 Romans 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