Sicyon

“ The fine arts have never flourished in states not commercial; in this respect, presenting a marked contrast to the origin and progress of poetry and music; a fact singularly exemplified in the condition of those cities where arose the primitive schools in Greece. Sicyon, Ægina, [Pg 36] Corinth, and Athens, were the first seats of commerce and of sculpture. Sicyon, with its small but important territory, extending a few miles along the south-eastern extremity of the Corinthian gulf, was the most ancient of the Grecian states, and probably the oldest city of Europe. ”

“ In Sicyon also the art of painting was supposed to have been “invented.” After the fall of the tyrants their institutions survived till the end of the 6th century, when the Dorian supremacy was re-established, perhaps by the agency of Sparta, and the city was enrolled in the Peloponnesian League. Henceforth its policy was usually determined either by Sparta or by its powerful neighbour Corinth. During the Persian wars Sicyon could place 3000 heavy-armed men in the field ”

“ Again in the Corinthian war Sicyon sided with Sparta and became its base of operations against the allied troops round Corinth. In 369 it was captured and garrisoned by the Thebans in their successful attack on the Peloponnesian League. On this occasion a powerful citizen named Euphron effected a democratic revolution and established himself tyrant by popular support. His deposition by the Thebans and subsequent murder freed Sicyon for a season, but new tyrants arose with the help of Philip II. of Macedon. ”

“ ARATUS, Greek statesman, was born at Sicyon in 271 B.C., and educated at Argos after the death of his father, at the hands of Abantidas, tyrant of Sicyon. When twenty years old Aratus delivered Sicyon from its tyrant by a bold coup de main. ”

“ He was supported by Euphron, tyrant of Sicyon, with two thousand mercenaries. The attack was again made from the hills on the east of the town. On 236the neck of land which joins the citadel of Phlius with the hills a detachment of Sicyonians and Pellenians was posted, to prevent the Phliasians from ascending the hills and taking their enemies in the rear. The rest of the army then descended from the hills in the direction of a sanctuary of Hera, meaning to ravage the corn-fields and vineyards in the valley. ”

“ The ascent is by a road which—well, try it for yourself. But the town, once reached, pays for the climb in its magnificent views. It is the navel (umbilicus Siciliæ) of Sicily, and from the loftiest tower of the former citadel there sweeps away a mountain cyclorama such as not even Switzerland can excel—Ætna, peaks without number, range on range and tier on tier, melting into the haze of heaven. Towns, thousands of feet in the air, cling desperately to the steep, unfriendly sides, or perch precariously on the tops of needle-pointed mountains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first of the Greek settlers brought their home legends with them to Sicily, where they found a friendly soil, attaining their fullest perfection in the sympathetic hands of the Latin poets. Some of the most beautiful weave through the story of Syracuse, and the most delightful walk in the city—one you will want to take often—leads you straight along the edge of the Great Harbor, on a wide, tamarind-bordered esplanade, with the town wall rising behind, to the picturesque, papyrus-fringed little pool accounted for by one especially gracious tale, and called the Fountain of Arethusa. ”

“ If ever you visit Sicily, go to Girgenti, on the Southern coast, the ancient Greek acragas, and Roman Agrigentum, "the most beautiful city of mortals," as Pindar says. The modern city stands on the site of the ancient Acropolis, from which the hills slope down to the coast. On a ridge which fronts the sea-shore you see the line of the old walls that fenced the city, and there still stand in ruin some of the finest Greek temples in the world. ”

“ Indeed, the city of Syracuse, founded in 734 B. C. by Dorians from Corinth, eventually became the rival and peer of Athens in wisdom, beauty and strength.
Though the various independent cities of Sicily fought bitterly and continuously, their strife seemed only to develop genius and bring forth wonders in architecture, art and letters. The lofty purity of Greek civilization found its highest expression in magnificent temples which for grandeur and simplicity have never been excelled. ”

“ Sicily is the rarest flower of the great midland sea. Built up on the North in a series of beetling cliffs, the island slopes gently down through mountain chains and undulating plains to the golden Southern shore. An enormous triangle it is, spiny with lofty peaks—Ætna towers more than ten thousand feet in the air—spangled with flowering meads and dells where Nature loads the air with fragrance; pierced with infernal caverns, whence choking workers extract a large part of the world’s sulphur from the palaces of the former gods of the nether world ”

“ The view of Sicily apparent at this time, though not without beauty, is kept in complete subjection to the rich and lofty magnificence of the Italian shore, whose mountains, topped with cliff and clothed with wood and vine, come steep from sky to sea, with nought between but a border of golden sand, interrupted here and there by peaks and masses of rock for ever washed by the sapphire sea. ”

“ The first modes of organized life which make their appearance in these remotest ages of Sicily, are of course fabulous modes,—fabulous, but like all fables, symbolical of truth; and what is better than mere truth, of truths poetical. The mythic portion of the history of Sicily is like its region—small, rich, lovely, and terrible. It may be said to consist wholly of the stories of Typhœus, of Polyphemus and the Cyclopes, of Scylla and Charybdis, of the Sirens, of the Rape of Proserpine, of Alpheus and Arethusa, of Acis and Galatea—names, which have become music in the ears of mankind. ”

“ The name of Sicily is illustrious in history. If the reputation of a people had for sole foundation and measure the number of inhabitants, the extent of its territory, the duration of its influence, the Sicilians, impoverished by continual revolutions, decimated by sucessive tyrannies, more isolated from the general progress by their internal organisation, than from the mainland by their geographical position, would hold, perhaps, in the annals of the world, no more room than their island occupies on the map of Europe. ”

“ He is still there, and the Sicilians silently sigh over their inability against the superior force of Naples. The people are of a nobler type than the Neapolitans and regard themselves as of a nobler race, they are also more industrious and earnest, and still greater lovers of freedom. But the want of independence breeds in the cities frivolity and immorality, especially in Palermo, and that amongst all classes. Sicily is still rich and beautiful, as in ancient times, and is still worthy to be called the gem of the Mediterranean. ”

“ AROUND THE ISLAND FASCINATION and Palermo are synonymous; the subtle charm of the city works into one’s very blood. Day after day and week after week roll by, until with a start of surprise that is akin to consternation one realizes that unless he has a year to devote to the island he must seek fresh vistas soon or leave Sicily, having seen nothing but the capital. Regretting is as vain as it is foolish. ”

“ Sicily now stands out as a main centre of European politics. But the land has lost its character; it is becoming the plaything of powers, instead of the meeting-place of nations. The tale, true or false, that Frenchmen and Provencals were known from the natives by being unable to frame the Italian sound of c shows how thoroughly the Lombard tongue had overcome the other tongues of the island. In Palermo, once city of threefold speech, a Greek, a Saracen, a Norman who spoke his own tongue must have died with the strangers. ”

“ There has never been a Sicilian nation. Perhaps that is the reason the story of the island is so hard to follow, it’s all snarled up with the history of first one, then another nation. The most obvious way of learning something about Sicily is to read what historians have to say about it; a pleasanter way is to listen to what the poets from Homer to Goethe have sung of it, paying special heed to Theocritus—he knew Sicily better than anybody else before his time or since! ”

“ Thus at last a single man put the period to the island’s troubled history, ended definitely her ambitions for individual greatness and made her an important part of a greater and more powerful whole.
So it is clear that there has never been a Sicilian nation, nor has there ever been even a Sicilian language; but every great race that dwells about the Mediterranean at some time has had a part in Sicily’s story, and each race in its turn has left an indelible imprint upon language and customs, upon architecture and people. Here one sees a pure Greek face of classic beauty ”

“ Real civilization in Sicily dates from neither of those races, but from Dorian and Ionic Greeks, who came perhaps as early as the founding of Rome—that is, in the seventh or eighth century B.C. The great cities of the Sicilian Greeks were Syracuse, Segesta and Girgenti, where still survive colossal remains of their genius. In military and political senses, the island for 3,000 [Pg ix] years has been overrun, plundered and torn asunder by every race known to Mediterranean waters. ”

“ 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. 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, Africa and Spain; but its closest connexion has been with Italy. Still 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. ”

“ Its mountains, which rise at their highest point in the majestic volcano of Aetna, nearly eleven thousand feet above sea level, are a continuation of those of Italy. The greater part of Sicily is remarkably productive, containing rich grainfields and hillsides green with the olive and the vine. Lying in the center of the Mediterranean and in the direct route of merchants and colonists from every direction, Sicily has always been a meeting place of nations. In antiquity Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans contended for the possession of this beautiful island. ”

“ The Whitakers of Palermo, to whom he gave us an introduction, at once became our friends, and told us all we ought to see and all we ought to do in the island. On that trip we paid fairly exhaustive visits to Palermo, Taormina, Syracuse, Girgenti, Marsala, Trapani, Selinunte, and Segesta, and flying visits to Catania and Messina.
Sicily is an adorable country. Grass, flowers and fruit-trees grow right down to the edge of the sea, where there is any soil, for half the island is rock. There are no brigands on the sea-coasts, and nearly every monument worth visiting is in sight of the sea. ”

“ Scylla, the ancient village at the foot of the purple Calabrian mountains, was not forgotten, nor Reggio, nor the white fishing hamlets that line the tawny shores of Sicily and Calabria on either side of the restless straits. The people of the coast were soonest reached and soonest helped by the sailors of the passing ships, for the navies of the world flew on the wings of love and pity to succor the stricken ports. ”

“ The real danger of the island, these early adventurers said, was not the Sicans—they were a quiet agricultural people, no match for the clever Greeks—but Polyphemus, the Laestrygones, and Hephaestus. They were right; Sicily’s real danger now as then is the terrible volcanic force, to account for whose havoc the ancients created those dear giants and monsters, the Cyclops, the Titans, and a hundred others.
In the lovely crescent-shaped harbor that once was called Zancle (sickle) , then Messana, now Messina, two large deserted fruit steamers lay swinging idly at their moorings. ”

“ Whether they have lived in Sicily for ten centuries or twenty, the reeds still spring in slender, graceful stalks of tender green, without leaf or gnarl, from the moist earth, nodding their powder-puff heads lazily over the sparkling water and dreaming—if plants ever dream—of their sun-steeped home of eld beside placid Father Nile. ”

“ Palermo, or Panormus, never amounted to much in the old Greek time when Syracuse was mistress of Sicily. It’s so alive now, because, like Rome, it has lived a long life and is still vigorous. Its greatness really began when, in the ninth century of our era, the Saracens came, saw, and conquered the island and made Palermo their capital. First the Saracen, then the Norman, last the Spaniard, have held and loved Palermo ”