Sicilians

“ They resemble the Sicilians in character and habits—in their passionate natures, their jealous dispositions, their vendetta and love of revenge, but they are a sober, industrious, generous-hearted people, whose most sacred fetich is hospitality. They never turn a stranger, even a tramp, from the door. ”

“ Naples and Catania alike, the men are hugely fat, with great macaroni paunches, they are expansive and in a perfect drip of casual affection and love. But the Sicilians are even more wildly exuberant and fat and all over one another than the Neapolitans. They never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody, emitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a volcano. ”

“ It is an important matter. Do you wish the Sicilians, both in their public and private capacity, to be considered friends to you, or enemies? If enemies, what is to become of you? Whither will you free for refuge? On what will you depend? Just now you repudiated the greater part of the agriculturists, most honourable and wealthy men, both Sicilians and Roman citizens. Now, what will you do about the Sicilian cities? Will you say that the Sicilians are friendly to you? ”

“ Sicilians always want to speak English, especially those of the lower orders who invariably consider it as a master-key that will open every door leading to wealth. Sometimes what they say is, of course, nothing more than otiose compliment; sometimes they are merely introducing the subject of their want of money in an artistic manner in the hope of anything from a soldo to a promise to take them into service as valet, courier, coachman, or whatever it may be—a sort of shaking of Fortune’s bag to see what will come out. ”

“ While this man governed in that island, the Sicilians had neither the benefit of our laws, nor their own, nor even of common right. In Sicily, no man now possesses more than what the governor's lust and avarice have overlooked, or what he was forced to neglect, out of mere weariness and satiety of oppression. ”

“ The Sicilians are not courageous, but they are desperate. The regiment of Highlanders which carried the day on the Heights of Abraham, and so won Quebec and won Canada, could defeat the whole population of Sicily on a level plain. But the knowledge that they have this power, and that their vengeance would come like an act of God on the following day, would not deter a Sicilian from slaughtering stragglers. [Pg 323] An army of Sicilians would not stand for a moment against the vehement bayonets and claymores; but the Sicilian will always strike when he has the power, undeterred by consequences. ”

“ In truth, as no two things are so closely united as the traders are with the Sicilians, by habit, by interest, by reason, and by community of sentiment; and as the Sicilians have all their affairs in such a state that it is most desirable for them to be at peace; and as they are so attached to the sway of the Roman people that they would be very sorry that its power should be diminished or altered; and as ever since the servile war all such dangers as these have been provided for, both by the regulations of the praetors, and by the discipline of the masters ”

“ The tendency is marked in all primitive peoples—a large part of the Sicilians are still primitive—to tell an inquirer the thing they suppose he most wishes to know; and the Saracenic blood in the Sicilian has doubtless left him a certain heritage of poetic imagination and exaggeration for the most utter commonplaces of life. At any rate, this inclination is found throughout the island, and it does not, except to the flustered tourist-in-a-hurry, seem a peculiar drawback or fault. Indeed, it rather adds to the fascination of the people, who appear to fit perfectly into their environs. ”

“ The sister kingdom of Sicily had long shared the lot of Naples, in all the distresses which the tyrannical and impolitic government of Spain could inflict upon the people. The Sicilians were only more fortunate than their continental neighbours, as the inferior wealth and resources of their island rendered them a less inviting prey to the insatiable necessities of Spain, to the drain of her wars, and the rapacity of her ministers. ”

“ Sicilians differ from Italians. You notice distinct types, Greek, African, Roman, and Norman. They are graver people, and I am told their songs show this. In their churches their reverence is noticeable, but they are intensely superstitious. Fortune-tellers abound, and are taken seriously. One Sunday morning, after Mass, in an open space in front of the Cathedral at Palermo, a large crowd gathered round a well-dressed woman, blindfolded, sitting in a chair. ”

“ While this man was praetor the Sicilians enjoyed neither their own laws nor the decrees of our senate, nor the common rights of every nation. Every one in Sicily has only so much left as either escaped the notice or was disregarded by the satiety of that most avaricious and licentious man. ”

“ They who cultivate single acres, who never cease from personal labour, of which class there were a great number, and a vast multitude among the Sicilians before you came as praetor,—what are they to do? When they have given to Apronius all he has demanded, are they to leave their allotments? to leave their own household gods? to come to Syracuse, in order while you, forsooth, are praetor, to prosecute, by the equal law which they will find there, Apronius, the delight and joy of your life, in a suit for recovery of their property? ”

“ Sicilians vie with Cantonese as the most migrating people in the world. Sicily, like Canton, is overpopulated and poverty-ridden. Another, more important factor, appears to be that at every change of government, Mafistas were forced into flight and exile in droves. They settled and colonized all over the earth. There are huge Sicilian colonies spread around Europe, in England, South America, North Africa, the Orient and the United States. ”

“ Sixteen years later, in 1282, the French paid dearly for their oppression in the terrible massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, when they were exterminated throughout the island.
Then the Sicilians invited Don Pedro de Aragón, the son-in-law of Manfred, their last Norman king, to rule them; and the Aragonese dynasty, with varying fortunes, lasted until 1409, when it became extinct, and Sicily was attached to Spain and governed by Spanish viceroys. Never did a government care less for its subjects ”

“ The great houses of Sicily were greater in the present than in the past, and the poet may probably have felt that, in dwelling upon their magnificent present position and calling attention to the glorious associations of their Olympian victories, he was paying them a more welcome as well as a more sincere compliment, than he could have done by referring to family or national antecedents, which had been eclipsed by more recent glories. Still we must not suppose that all allusion to ancestral legends is excluded from the Odes addressed to Sicilians. ”

“ Palermo is a prosperous city, doing much business in the export of wine, oranges, lemons, and sulphur. Its prosperity is due to the enterprise of some Scotch merchants. Left to themselves the Sicilians would do little. "Our people are not like yours," said a Sicilian to me, "they have no courage." He meant business enterprise. Sicily has come through many changes and suffered from the domination of many masters. In Roman days it was the granary of Italy. ”

“ Thro' tyrants' hearts, and bade them seek a home
In other climes?—Hark! from its depths e'en now
What hollow moans are sent!
Enter Montalba, Guido, and other Sicilians.
Pro. Welcome,my brave associates!—We can share
The wolf's wild freedom here!—Th' oppressor’s haunt
Is not midst rocks and caves. Are we all met?
Sicilians. All, all! ”

“ The rising spread to the city, where the republic was proclaimed, and then through the rest of the island; thousands of French men, women and children were butchered (there may be some exaggeration in the wholesale character of the slaughter) , and by the end of April the whole of Sicily was in the hands of the rebels. Charles at once led an expedition against the Sicilians and besieged Messina ”

“ I suppose the reason why Sicilians explain it badly is that they understand it too well. The inquiring outsider cannot see the trees for the wood, and the explaining insider cannot see the wood for the trees. ”

“ However, it is not improbable that the evidence contained no small number of exaggerations. A Sicilian friend of mine, an eminent politician and a man with a profound knowledge of his native island, is constantly reminding me that, even at the present day, the Sicilians throw so much passion into their political struggles that great circumspection is required in sifting the accusations hurled by one side against the other, when rivalry and party animosity come into play. ”

“ The Sicilians are quite simple about it. They just tell you they were frightened to death, and it made them ill. The q-b, woman-like, loves them for being so simple about it. I feel angry somewhere. For they expect a full-blown sympathy. ”

“ The importance of the affair will not allow me to pass over the atrocity of his guilt with brevity.
48 106It is an old opinion, O judges, which can be proved from the most ancient records and monuments of the Greeks, that the whole island of Sicily was consecrated to Ceres and Libera. Not only did all other nations think so but the Sicilians themselves were so convinced of it, that it appeared a deeply rooted and innate belief in their minds. ”

“ The absence of roads on the island enabled the different groups of its population to maintain their distinct idioms and character during a very long period. The Lombards whom the Romans transplanted to Benevento and Palermo spoke their native dialect long after it had become extinct in Lombardy. Even now there are about 50,000 Sicilians who speak this ancient Lombard tongue. At San Fratello, on a steep hill on the northern coast, this idiom is spoken with the greatest purity. Nor has the Italian wholly supplanted the vulgar Sicilian in the interior of the island. ”

“ Erasistratus. Most excellent. But, if you please, let us first sit down ; for I am tired with my yesterday's journey from Megara.
Soc. Gladly, if that is your desire.
Eras. What would you wish to hear first ? he said. What The troublesome Sicilians. the Sicilians are doing, or how they are disposed towards our city? To my mind, they are very like wasps: so long as you only cause them a little annoyance they are quite unmanageable; you must destroy their nests if you wish to get the better of them. ”

“ After an heroic struggle, the islanders were subjugated in the spring of 1849.
So stout a fight for independence must win admiration, if not approval. The political reasons against the course taken by the Sicilians have been suggested in a former chapter. In separating their lot from that of Naples, in rejecting even freedom unless it was accompanied by disruption, they hastened the ruin of the Neapolitans and of themselves, and surely played into the hands of the crafty tyrant who desired nothing better than to fish in the troubled waters of his subjects' dissensions. ”

“ At home, of course, one does not go to the theatre with the waiter, but when in Sicily, though one does not perhaps do altogether as the Sicilians, one does not do as one does in England. I know a Palermitan barber with whom I should be proud to be seen walking p. ”

“ And they go on to regret that Giovanni Grasso should have so much success with his plays in foreign countries, because they contain a great deal of mafia and mala vita which he presents with so much realism that foreigners are encouraged in the idea that all Sicilians are for ever sleeplessly going about with knives in their belts seeking to execute vendettas. But most theatre-goers know by this time that melodramas are not made up of the events of ordinary life. ”

“ I ask you, Metellus, what is corrupting the course of justice, if this is not,—to seek to frighten witnesses, and especially Sicilians, timid and oppressed men, not only by your own vate influence, but by their fear of the consul, and by the power of two pretors? What could you do for an innocent man or for a relation, when for the sake of a most guilty man, entirely unconnected with you, you depart from your duty and your dignity, and allow what he is constantly saying to appear true to any one who is not acquainted with you? ”

“ If a Roman citizen makes a claim on a Sicilian, a Sicilian judge is assigned; if a Sicilian makes a claim on a Roman citizen, a Roman citizen is assigned as judge: in all other matters judges are appointed selected from the body of Roman citizens dwelling in the place. In law-suits between the farmers and the tax collectors, trials are regulated by the law about corn, which they call Lex Hieronica. 33All these rights were not only thrown into disorder while that man was praetor, but indeed were openly taken away from both the Sicilians and from the Roman citizens. ”

“ Carven slabs from the temple friezes—what a story they tell of the primitive and ardent culture of the early Greeks perched upon their twin hills at Selinus, beside the sounding deep! One whole hall is lined with them, arranged symmetrically in series, speaking even to-day with the voice of that mystic lore which, to understand, reveals ancient Sicily. And though individual carvings excel them in precision and beauty, as a series denoting the exact progress of Greek Sicilian art from its crudest to its most perfected form, the metopes are unsurpassed. ”