History of Sicily
The history of Sicily has been influenced by numerous ethnic groups. It has seen Sicily controlled by powers, including Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Vandal and Ostrogoth, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, Spanish, Austrians, but also experiencing important periods of independence, as under the indigenous Sicanians, Elymians, Sicels, the Greek-Siceliotes, and later as County of Sicily, and Kingdom of Sicily. The Kingdom was founded in 1130 by Roger II, belonging to the Siculo-Norman family of Hauteville. During this period, Sicily was prosperous and politically powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe. As a result of the dynastic succession, the Kingdom passed into the hands of the Hohenstaufen. At the end of the 13th century, with the War of the Sicilian Vespers between the crowns of Anjou and Aragon, the island passed to the latter. In the following centuries the Kingdom entered into the personal union with the Spaniard and Bourbon crowns, while preserving effective independence until 1816. Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
Although today an Autonomous Region, with special statute, of the Republic of Italy, it has its own distinct culture.
Sicily is both the largest region of the modern state of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Its central location and natural resources ensured that it has been considered a crucial strategic location due in large part to its importance for Mediterranean trade routes. Cicero and al-Idrisi described respectively Syracuse and Palermo as the greatest and most beautiful cities of the Hellenic World and of the Middle Ages.
Prehistory
The indigenous peoples of Sicily, long absorbed into the population, were tribes known to ancient Greek writers as the Elymians, the Sicanians and the Sicels. Of these, the last was the latest to arrive and was related to other Italic peoples of southern Italy, such as the Italoi of Calabria, the Oenotrians, Chones, and Leuterni, the Opicans, and the Ausones. It has been proposed that the Sicani were originally an Iberian tribe. The Elymi, too, may have distant origins from outside Italy, in the Aegean Sea area. The recent discoveries of dolmens dating to the second half of the third millennium BC, provide new insights to the composite cultural panorama of prehistoric Sicily.The late prehistory of Sicily was simple and involved interactions between multiple ethnic groups. However, the impact of two influences remains clear: the Europeans coming from the north-west – for example, the peoples of Bell Beaker culture, and that from the eastern Mediterranean. Complex urban settlements become increasingly evident from around 1300 BC.
The Phoenicians
From the 11th century BC, Phoenicians begin to settle in western Sicily, having already started colonies on the nearby parts of North Africa. Within a century, we find major Phoenician settlements at Soloeis, present day Palermo and Motya. Others included Drepana and Mazara del Vallo.As Phoenician Carthage later grew in power, these settlements sometimes came into conflict with them, as at Motya, and eventually came under Carthage's direct control.
The Phoenicians integrated with the local Elymian population as shown in archaeology as a distinctive “West Phoenician cultural identity”.
Classical Age
Greek period
Sicily began to be colonised by Greeks in the 8th century BC. Initially, this was restricted to the eastern and southern parts of the island. The most important colony was established at Syracuse in 734 BC. Other important Greek colonies were Naxos, Gela, Akragas, Selinunte, Himera, Kamarina and Zancle or Messene. These city-states became an important part of classical Greek civilisation; both Empedocles and Archimedes were from Sicily.As the Greek and Phoenician communities grew more populous and more powerful, the Sicels and Sicanians were pushed further into the centre of the island. The Greeks came into conflict with the Punic trading communities, by now effectively protectorates of Carthage, with its capital on the African mainland nearby. The dividing line between the Carthaginian west and the Greek east moved backwards and forwards frequently in the ensuing centuries.
The Greek city-states enjoyed long periods of democratic government, but in times of social stress, in particular during wars against Carthage, tyrants occasionally usurped the leadership such as: Gelo, Hiero I, Dionysius the Elder and Dionysius the Younger.
Sicilian politics was intertwined with politics in Greece itself, leading Athens, for example, to mount the disastrous Sicilian Expedition in 415 BC during the Peloponnesian War.
Pyrrhus of Epirus replied to Sicilian Greek cities' appeal for assistance, landing at Taormina in 278 BC, welcomed by the tyrant Tyndarion. His large army and 200 ships succeeded in neutralising both the Carthaginian and Mamertine threats, but he was unable to take the Carthaginian stronghold at Lilybaeum and returned to Greece.
By the 3rd century BC, Syracuse was the most populous Greek city in the world.
Punic Wars
The constant warfare between Carthage and the Greek city-states eventually opened the door to an emerging third power. In the 3rd century BC, the Messanan Crisis motivated the intervention of the Roman Republic into Sicilian affairs, and led to the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. The Carthaginians sent forces to Hiero II, the military leader of the Greek city-states. The Romans fought for the Mamertines of Messina, and Rome and Carthage declared war on each other for the control of Sicily. This led to a war based mainly on the water, which served as an advantage to the Carthaginians, as they were led by Hamilcar, a general who earned his surname Barca due to his fast attacks on Roman supply lines. Romans attempted to hide the weakness in their navy by using large moveable planks to invade enemy ships and forcing hand-to-hand combat, but they still struggled due to the lack of a talented general. Hamilcar and his mercenaries struggled to receive additional aid and reinforcements, as the Carthaginian government hoarded their wealth due to greed and belief that Hamilcar could win on his own. His victory at Drepana in 249 BC was his last, as he was forced to withdraw. In 241 BC, after the Romans adapted better to battle at sea, the Carthaginians surrendered. By the end of the war in, and with the death of Hiero II, all of Sicily except Syracuse was in Roman hands, becoming Rome's first province outside of the Italian peninsula.Roman Period
The success of the Carthaginians in Italy during the Second Punic War encouraged many of the Sicilian cities to revolt against Roman rule in 215 BC. Rome sent troops to put down the rebellions in 213 BC. Carthage briefly took control of parts of Sicily, but in the end was driven off. Many Carthaginian sympathisers were killed and in 210 BC the Roman consul M. Valerius told the Roman Senate that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".For the next 600 years, Sicily was a province of the Roman Republic and later Empire. It was something of a rural backwater, important chiefly for its grain fields, which were a mainstay of the food supply for the city of Rome until the annexation of Egypt after the Battle of Actium largely did away with that role. The empire made little effort to Romanize the region, which remained largely Greek. One notable event of this period was the notorious misgovernment of Verres, as recorded by Cicero in 70 BC in his oration, In Verrem. Another was the Sicilian revolt under Sextus Pompeius, which liberated the island from Roman rule for a brief period.
A lasting legacy of the Roman occupation, in economic and agricultural terms, was the establishment of the large landed estates, often owned by distant Roman nobles.
Despite its largely neglected status, Sicily was able to make a contribution to Roman culture through the historian Diodorus Siculus and the poet Calpurnius Siculus. The most famous archeological remains of this period are the mosaics of a nobleman's villa in present-day Piazza Armerina. An inscription from Hadrian's reign lauds the emperor as "The Restorer of Sicily", although it is not known what he did to earn this accolade.
It was also during this period that we find one of the first Christian communities in Sicily. Amongst the earliest Christian martyrs were the Sicilians Saint Agatha of Catania and Saint Lucy of Syracuse.
Early Middle Ages
Germanic and Byzantine period
In 440 AD the Vandals under their king Genseric took Sicily after crossing over from Africa.The Vandal attempt of 440 failed but another in 469 succeeded and they ruled the whole island for 7 years, J.B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, 1958 edition, pp. 254, 327.
In 476 Odoacer gained most of Sicily for the payment of tribute to the Vandals. In 491 Theodoric gained control over the entire island after repulsing a Vandal invasion and seizing their remaining outpost Lilybaeum on the western tip of the island.
In the Gothic War Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken under general Belisarius who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor Justinian I. Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan and the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna falling within five years. However, a new Ostrogoth king, Totila, drove down the Italian peninsula, plundering and conquering Sicily in 550. Totila, in turn, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Taginae by the Byzantine general Narses in 552.
When Ravenna fell to the Lombards in the middle of the 6th century, Syracuse became Byzantium's main western outpost. Latin was gradually supplanted by Greek as the national language and the Greek rites of the Eastern Church were adopted.
The Byzantine Emperor Constans II decided to move from the capital Constantinople to Syracuse in Sicily in 663, the following year he launched an assault from Sicily against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which then occupied most of Southern Italy. The rumours that the capital of the empire was to be moved to Syracuse, along with small raids probably cost Constans his life as he was assassinated in 668. His son Constantine IV succeeded him, a brief usurpation in Sicily by Mizizios being quickly suppressed by the new emperor.
From the late 7th century, Sicily joined with Calabria to form the Byzantine Theme of Sicily.