Page 562 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

wars continued throughout the rest of the island, attracting the attention of the

Carthaginians, who responded to attacks on their territory by sacking in turn Selinus,
Himera, Akragas and Gela. A massive counterattack was launched by the Syracusan
tyrant Dionysius I, or “the Elder” (405–367 BC). That culminated in the complete
destruction of the Phoenician base at Motya; its survivors founded a new centre at

Lilybaeum, modern Marsala, on the western tip of the island.
The general devastation in Sicily caused by these wars was to some extent reversed

by Timoleon (345–336 BC), who rebuilt many of the cities and re-established
democratic institutions. But the carnage continued under the tyrant Agathocles (315–
289 BC), who was unrivalled in his sheer brutality. Battles were fought on the Italian
mainland and North Africa, and the strife he engendered back in Sicily didn’t end until

Hieron II (265–215 BC) opted for a policy of peacekeeping, and even alliance, with
the new power of the day, Rome.

The First Punic War – which broke out in 264 BC after the mercenary army in
control of Messina, the Mamertines, appealed to Rome for help against their
erstwhile Carthaginian protectors – left Syracuse itself untouched. It did however once

again lead to the ruin of much of the island, before the final surrender of the
Carthaginian base at Lilybaeum in 241. For Syracuse and its territories, though, this
was a period of relative peace, and Hieron used the breathing space to construct some
of the city’s most impressive monuments.

Roman Sicily

Roman rule in Sicily can be said to have begun with the fall of Syracuse. That
momentous event became inevitable when the city, whose territory was by now the

only part of Sicily still independent of Rome, chose to side with Carthage in the
Second Punic War, provoking a two-year siege that ended with the sacking of
Syracuse in 211 BC. For the next seven hundred years, Sicily was a province of
Rome, though in effect a subject colony, since few Sicilians were granted citizenship
until the third century AD, when all inhabitants of the empire were classified as
Romans. The island became Rome’s granary or, as Cato had it, “the nurse at whose
breast the Roman people is fed”. As a key strategic province, Sicily suddenly became

susceptible to age-old Roman political intrigue, notably during the civil war between
Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, and Sextus Pompey, who seized Sicily in 44
BC. For eight years the island’s crucial grain exports were interrupted, and the final
defeat of Sextus – in a sea battle off Mylae, or Milazzo – was followed by harsh
retribution.

Once Octavian was installed as emperor, in 27 BC, Sicily entered a more peaceful

period of Roman rule, with isolated instances of imperial splendour, notably the