HISTORY

It's difficult to understand Sicily without knowing its history, which sunk in the fog of prehistory and myth.

The Hellenic invasions | The Norman conquest | Modern Sicily

 

The story of Sicily reflects the story of mankind in the Mediterranean, from the first evidence of the human ability to think, to the current problems of Europe. The oldest remains are the cave paintings in the Addaura Caves on Monte Pellegrino north of Palermo, reputed to be around 10000 years old. There are remains of a prehistoric village on Panarea, one of Lipari Island. Every subsequent period in human history has left its mark in some form, much of it finding expression in art, myth or legend. It was from the eastern shore that the Cyclops Polyphemus hurled vast rocks to sink the boat of Ulysses, and the Roman poet Virgil brought his hero, Aeneas. In Syracuse, you can still see the fountain the nymph Arethusa was turned into in order to escape the river-god Alpheus.

  The Hellenic invasions 

About 700 BC Semitic Carthaginians from north Africa established colonies on Sicily, but it was the Greek, those consummate sailors endlessly curios about the world around them, who brought civilization to the island. Countiously feeling their way westward towards the Pillars of Hercules and the vast Atlantic Ocean beyond, they encountered the island. Some continued north, braving the terrors of the monster Scylla and Charybdis (whirlpools and rocks in the Strait of Messina), to the coast of mainland Italy where they settled, but most were content to settle on the amazingly fertile eastern and southern coasts of the island, gradually spreading out all around the coast. The Greek remains on Sicily today probably outclass in quantity, if not in quality, the remains on mainland Greece. The Greek brought civilization but certainly not peace, importing instead the jealousies and hatreds between cities that were part of Greek mainland culture. The city of Corinth, deadly enemy of Athens, founded the city of Syracuse on the eastern coast, which prospered amazingly. Alarmed by the growing power of the Tyrant of Syracuse, as the ruler was known, Athens dispatched an immense fleet, but it was totally defeated and some 7000 Athenians finished up as slaves in the quarries of Syracuse. Syracuse ruled undisputed until, unwisely allying itself with the Carthaginians against Rome during the Second Punic War, the city was sacked in 211 BC, inaugurating 700 years of Roman rule. Rome regarded the island as a convenient granary, organizing the land in a series of enormous estates, the latifundia, which continued almost into our own time. Wealthy Romans set up 'holiday homes' on the island, thus launching the city of Taormina on its 2 000-year career as a seaside resort. After the fall of the Roman empire in the 5C, for the next 400 years Sicily came under the control of the Byzantine emperors who ruled in Constantinople. Meanwhile, Arabs or Saracens from North Africa were settling on the island, first as peaceful traders and then, in the early 9C, as outright invaders. By the end of the century they were in entire control, with their capital at Palermo. As in Spain, Arab rule was beneficial, their skill in agriculture, irrigation and architecture adding to the Roman and Greek legacies.

The Norman conquest

All the previous conquerors of Sicily had at least shared a common Mediterranean background, but the Normans came like a thunderbolt from the north, led by two brothers, Robert and Roger de Hauteville, who had already worked their way down the length of Italy. They crossed the Strait of Messina in strength in 1061 (just five years before their fellow Normans crossed the English Channel for the conquest of England) and, after some 30 years of bitter fighting, eventually dominated all Sicily. They established a monarchy with the capital in Palermo, which endured, under five successive kings, until the last decade of the 12C. Sicily's position, tucked away at the southern extremity of Europe, meant that it was always rather peripheral to mainstream politics. Nevertheless, over the next 700 years Germans, French and Spanish battled for possession of the island. The last Norman king, William Il, died without an heir but his aunt had married the later Hohenstaufen emperor, Henry VII, and he established his tenuous claim with violence. His son Frederick, who succeeded him as emperor in 220, is one of the great figures of European history. A multi-talented man centuries in advance of his time, running his essentially Germanic empire from this outpost in the Mediterranean, he earned for himself the sobriquet Stupor Mundi (The Wonder of the World). He clashed with the Pope and was excommunicated. After his death in 1250 legend told how he was seen riding at the head of a vast army into the mouth of Etna. Thereafter the Papacy interfered directly in Sicilian affairs. In 1268 a French Pope bestowed the title of King of Sicily on a Frenchman, Charles of Anjou. The Angevin reign was characterized by brutality towards native Sicilians, culminating in Sicily's only truly national rebellion, the Sicilian Vespers. A French soldier insulted a Sicilian woman and the signal for the uprising was the ringing of the bell for Vespers in Palermo, on Easter Monday 1282. The Sicilians appealed to the King of Aragon in Spain for aid, triggering a long-drawn-out war between Angevins and Aragonese which involved both Spain and mainland Italy. Throughout the 17C and 18C Sicily declined, as sovereignty passed confusingly, and all too often bloodily, from Angevins to Aragonese, to the Hahsburgs of Austria, to Bourbons ruling from Naples. Napoleon failed to take the island, which finally fell under British influence, the British admiral Horatio Nelson playing a major role. In 1860 the guerrilla leader Giuseppe Garibaldi defeated the Bourbon army, and in the same year an overwhelming majority voted for union with the newly-born kingdom Italy. Throughout all the years of oppression, it was the ordinary people, the peasantry in particular, who suffered. The dawning of the 20C showed them a means of escape: emigration. Between 1900 and 1914 a million Sicilians abandoned their homes, most making for the US.

Modern Sicily

In the 1920s and 1930s Mussolini's decree that the Mediterranean was Mare Nostrum (Our Sea), together with his African adventures, brought Sicily again into mainland politics. The island suffered badly in the Second World War, when the Allies used it as a springboard to enter Italy from Africa. The immediate post-war years were a time of confusion and feuding with considerable violence, in which the Mafia played a leading   role. In 1946 the island was granted regional autonomy its own president and parliament but, along with the rest of the Mezzogiorno (Italy south of Rome) gained relatively little from Italy's economic progress. Although Sicilians still emigrate in their thousands, land reform, the determined attack upon organized crime and a burgeoning tourist industry all give hope for the future.