The Siculi were the native inhabitants of the eastern regions of the island of Sicily south of the italian Peninsula; the island takes its name from the tribe. The Greeks encountered them when they colonized Sicily in the eighth century B. C.E. Modern archaeologists have had difficulty differentiating the Siculi from the Sicani, another group of natives the Greeks encountered. Ancient accounts assert that the Siculi and Sicani were distinct, however.
ORIGINS
Both the Siculi and Sicani are similar in physical culture to the third native population of Sicilians, the Elymi. The physical remains of Sicilian settlements tie them to the Late Bronze Age Fossa Grave culture of the mainland of southern Italy, which is characterized by trench graves lined with stone slabs and a certain kind of ax called the shaft-hole ax. The pottery of the Fossa Grave culture is handmade, plain, dark, and burnished with forms similar to those of the Apennine culture from which developed the Italic tribes, such as the Samnites.
Origin Myth
The archaeological evidence lends credence to the legendary history of the migration of the Siculi to Sicily in 1050 b. c.e., about 300 years before the arrival of the Greeks, as told by Thucydides in the fifth century B. C.E. and other Greek historians. The Siculi supposedly took their name from their ancestral king, Siculus, brother of the king Italus from whom Italy took its name. At the time the Siculi were said to live in Campania and northern Calabria but were supposedly driven south and west by Italics, and further pushed by Greek colonization until they crossed the Strait of Messina on rafts. Legend has it that the Siculi met the Sicani and defeated them in a large pitched battle.
LANGUAGE
Evidence of the Siculi language comes is the fifth or sixth century b. c.e. Possibly a drinking song, the incomplete inscription in the Greek alphabet from a wine vessel, as well as small fragments preserved as glosses by ancient writers show an Indo-European language—perhaps related to the Italic languages (see Italics)— which has yet to be deciphered.
HISTORY
By the eighth century B. c.E. the Siculi were restricted to eastern and southern Sicily, though there were isolated settlements on the Aeolian islands to the north of Sicily, notably Lipari, which was reported by the first-century B. c.E. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus to have a population of about 500 Siculi when the Greeks arrived in 580 b. c.e. The Siculi lived in completely independent towns. The main Siculi settlements were Agyrium, Centuripa, Henna, and three cities named Hybla—Hybla Major on the Symaethus River; Hybla Minor on the east coast, north of modern Syracuse; and Hybla Heraea in southern Sicily.
Greek colonization drove the Siculi into the central regions of Sicily The battle between the Greeks and Carthaginians for control of Sicily in the fifth century b. c.e. further squeezed the Siculi until they, along with the Sicani, had been completely absorbed.
CULTURE
The three cities called Hybla were named for one of the principal deities of the Siculi. Siculi gods were primarily of the underworld, perhaps resulting from the dependence of the Sicilians on agriculture for sustenance and from the heavy volcanic activity on the island. The divinities called Palici, protectors of agriculture and sailors, had a temple and a lake, devoted to them along the Symaethus River, as well as a temple to Hybla. Adranus, another god, a volcanic god, like the Greek Hephaestus, who had in his temple a constantly lit flame. The cult of the goddess Phersephatta, combining elements of the worship of Demeter and of Persephone, found at the Greek settlements of Syracusa, Naxos, and Selinus, was probably adopted from the Siculi and ties them to the same cults on the Italian mainland in Calabria, at Locri, Medma, and Hipponion.
Because the Siculi defeated the Sicani, legend has it, their island home bears the name Sicily instead of Sicania.
World History
