Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/29

 HISTORY.] SICILY 15 life gradually died out. But Koman 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 Roman dominion ; the work of assimilation went on still faster. The question now comes, Who were the original inhabit- an t s O f Sidly 1 The island itself, 2iKeAta, Sicilia, plainly takes its name from the Sikels (St/ctAot, 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 llth century B.C. They found in the island a people called Sikans (ZiKavoi, 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., J2n., 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. But, as we have already seen, the Greeks were not the ^ rst co l omz i n g people who were drawn to the great island. As in Cyprus and in the islands of the vEgsean, the 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. Phoe- nician 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 Phcenicians 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, colouizo- Both races appear as given to the buying and selling of lon ' 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 1 50 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 Rhodian 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 ^Eolian 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- AUOTCU), 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