Edward A. Freeman, George G. Chisholm, Gaetano Mosca and Thomas Ashby

“ Charles, crowned by the pope in 1266, marched to take possession of his lord's grant. Manfred was defeated and slain at Benevento. 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 Palermo, was the head of the new power; Sicily was again a province. But a province Sicily had no mind to be. In the continental lands Charles founded a dynasty; the island he lost after sixteen years. ”

“ 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 quasi-continental character of Sicily causes Syracuse, with its havens and its island, to be looked on, in comparison with Athens, as a land power (ἠπειρῶται, Thuc. vii. 21) . That is to say, the Siceliot 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 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 Catana, though Acragas, if she would not help the invaders, at least gave no help to her own rival. But after the Spartan Gylippus came, almost all the other Greek cities of Sicily were on the side of Syracuse. The war is instructive in many ways. ”

“ On the other hand, Sicily has been more than once made the road to African conquest and settlement, bath 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. ”

“ 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 seacoast 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 Phoenician became more insular. Neither people ever occupied the whole island, 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 inhabitants 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. ”

“ Intensive agriculture in Sicily is limited to fruit trees and fruitbearing plants, and is not combined with the culture of cereals and vegetables, as in central and parts of northern Italy. Originally the Sicilian system was perhaps due to climatic difficulties, but now it is recognized in most cases to be more rational than combined culture. Large extents of land along the coasts are therefore exclusively cultivated as vineyards, or as olive, orange, and lemon groves. ”

“ 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 ascendancy did not affect Greeks and Phoenicians in the same way. Phoenician life gradually died out. But Roman ascendancy 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 peaceful conquest of it. ”

“ They could grow only within the island; they could gain no strength from outside. 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. ”

“ Far more important are our notices of the earlier inhabitants. For now comes the great Sicel movement under Ducetius, who, between force and persuasion, came nearer towards uniting his people into one body than had ever been done before. From his native hill-top of Menae, rising above the lake dedicated to the Palici, the native deities whom Sicels and Greeks alike honoured, he brought down his people to the new city of Palicae in the plain. His power grew, and Acragas could withstand him only by the help of Syracuse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The falling-off in the exportation of cereals is not a consequence of any decadence in Sicilian agriculture, but rather of the increase of population, which nearly doubled within the 19th century. Two types of agriculture prevail in Sicily—the extensive and the intensive. The former covers mainly the interior of the island and half the southern coast, while the latter is generally adopted on the eastern and northern coasts. Large holdings of at least 500 hectares (a hectare equals about 22 acres) are indispensable to the profitable pursuit of extensive agriculture. ”

“ 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 Norman conquest.the centre of a dominion which stretched far beyond it. The conquest was the work of one man, Count Roger of the house of Hauteville (see Roger I.) . The conquests of the Normans in Italy and Sicily form part of one enterprise ”

“ In the later mapping out of the empire into purely military divisions, the theme (thema) of Sicily took in both the island and the nearest peninsula of the mainland, the oldest Italy. The island itself was divided for financial purposes, almost as in the older times, into the two divisions of Syracuse and Lilybaeum. 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. ”

“ The more advanced Sicels 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 Sicel and Sican towns; [5] 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. They were therefore partly subdued, partly assimilated, without much effort.
The investigations of Professor Orsi, director of the museum at Syracuse, have thrown much light on the primitive peoples of south-eastern Sicily. ”

“ Hitherto they had been one element in the land, keeping their own civilization 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. ”

“ A far greater conquest followed when new invaders came from Spain and when Theodotus was killed in 830. The next year Panormus pased 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. It became the seat of the amir or lord of Sicily. We hear dimly of treasonable dealings with them on the part of the strategos Alexius, son-in-law of the emperor Theophilus ”

“ The minuter account of Dionysius 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 championship 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 Sicels more and more within the Greek pale. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The north coast is generally steep and cliff-bound, and abundantly provided with good harbours, of which that of Palermo is the finest. In the west and south, and in the south part of the east side, the hills are much lower and recede farther from the sea. 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 opposite the plain of Catania. ”

“ Sicily in truth never had a more hopeful champion than Hiero II. 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 Agyrium and Centoripa. The Mamertines leagued with other Campanian freebooters who had forsaken the service of Rome to establish themselves at Rhegium. But a new Syracusan power was growing up to meet them. ”

“ Their lands were given to Locri; their citizens were taken to Syracuse, sometimes as slaves, sometimes as citizens. The master of the barbarians fell below the lowest Hellenic level when he put the brave Rhegine general Phyton to a lingering death, and in other cases imitated the Carthaginian 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 Adriatic he helped Hellenic extension, desiring no doubt to secure the important trade route into central Europe. ”

“ With such a deliverer, deliverance meant submission. Pyrrhus is said to have dreamed of kingdoms of Sicily and of Italy for his two sons, the grandsons of Agathocles, 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.
The Greek king, on his way back to fight for Tarentum against Rome, had to cut his way through Carthaginians and Mamertines in Roman alliance. His saying that he left Sicily as a wrestlingground for Romans and Carthaginians was the very truth of the matter. ”

“ The quantity consumed in Italy is far greater than that exported abroad.
Another flourishing Sicilian industry carried on by a large number of small houses is that of preserving vegetables in tins. Artichokes and tomato sauce are the principal of these products, of which several dozen million tins are annually exported from Sicily to the Italian mainland, to Germany and to South America. Manufactories of furniture, carriages, gloves, matches and leather exist in large number in the island. ”

“ A small but comparatively wealthy class—composed principally of the owners of latifondi—resides habitually in the large cities of the island, or even at Naples, Rome or Paris. Yet even if all the wealthy landowners resided on their estates, their number would not be sufficient to enable them to play in local public life a part corresponding to that of the English gentry. On the other hand, the class which would elsewhere be called the middle class is in Sicily extremely poor. ”

“ But Sicily never became thoroughly Roman; no roads were constructed, so that not a single Roman milestone has been found in the whole island. In the division of provinces between Augustus and the senate, Sicily fell to the latter. Under the empire it has practically no history. Few emperors visited Sicily; Hadrian was there, as everywhere, in A.D. 126, and ascended Etna, and Julian also (C.D. 10) . In its provincial state Sicily fell back more than some other provinces. Ausonius could still reckon Catana and fourfold Syracuse ("quadruplices Syracusas") among the noble cities ”