Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/36

 22 SICILY [HISTORY. 210 B.C.- 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 praitor, 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, St/ceAoi is now sometimes used instead of 2iKe/Uu>Tcu. All the persons spoken of by Cicero came to have Greek names save a most speaking exception Gains 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- reTolts. 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 Verres o" 1 ?, in (73-70 B.C.). Besides the light which the great impeach- 1C1 y ' 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 Roman 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 Roman like Gaul and Spain. The dictator Caesar designed the Roman, 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 Roman 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 Roman name no small gift on all Roman 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, Rtetia (Rhsetia), and western Illyricum, it became part of the Italian prefecture; 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 Sicilian of Johannes), afterwards by a consular under the authority of the vicar of the Roman city (Not. Imp., 14, 5). Few emperors visited Sicily ; Hadrian was there, as every- where, and Julian also (C.D., 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 Roman life, and it is now Egypt rather than Sicily that feeds Rome. 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 which Sicily now passes to and Teutonic fro are Teutonic powers. The earlier stages of Teutonic mas ters. 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 Roman 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 Rome more than a Hanni- bal, makes a treaty with Odowakar (Odoacer) almost like that which ended the First Punic War. He gave up (Victor