To Selinunte:

Thursday, 16 June 2011

Today we have a long drive ahead of us. Antonia suffers to get up this early but keeps her promise. We will have coffee and biscuits before we leave. The sun is already shining and we hope the clouds will stay behind as we move west.
We have a quick stop at the “scala dei Turchi”, which has nice beaches with an aqua blue sea and is a wonderful place to wander around and make photo’s, but we have no time and are in a hurry to reach Selinunte.

Selinunte   website: www.selinunte.net

Before reaching the ruins of Selinunte, you see three temples, named E, F and G as it has not been possible to identify the deity to whom the temple was dedicated. Temple E has been recently reconstructed with 38 columns and part of the cella walls. The sun is perfect and makes the temple stones glow. We first have a look at the three temples which are a few kilometers before the old city.

Temple E - Selinunte

Selinunte (Selinus, Σελινoϋς), which gets its name from selinon, wild parsley, was founded by some of the settlers of nearby Megara Hyblaea, and lies in an extensive fertile plain. Diodorus dates its foundation at 651 BC and indeed some Corinthian (middle and late proto Corinthian) pottery was found in the Manuzza necropolis. Thucydides dates its foundation to 628 BC.
It prospered quickly; it embarked in the first half of the 6th century on an ambitious street layout which embraced not only the acropolis and the Manuzza hills but also the flanking valleys on either side as well. Selinus was conceived as a megalopolis on the truly grand scale, which is also reflected in the massive temple building spree of the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

As the westernmost Greek city it was in an uncomfortable proximity to both the Phoenicians and the Elymians. A pro Punic policy aligned selinus with Carthago in 480. The longstanding enmity with Segesta brought on the Athenian intervention in Sicily in 415BC, followed by the Carthaginian invasion in 409 BC, when Hannibal sacked Selinus.
It got populated again soon after by refugees, the city took on a distinctly Punic flavor, and remained firmly within Carthaginian control until the site was abandoned in 250 BC.

Selinunte, a work in progress

Then we drive to the old city by car. I am surprised at what little has been dug up. The largest part of the city is still lying under the rubble. We see a group of archeologist doing some restoration, but it will take a couple of centuries more before this city will get its former glory back.

Segesta

Continuing our drive, we stop at a local supermarket to buy some food for a picnic which we have when we arrive at Segesta. A sad looking stray dog gets most of our salami & provolone, but when we return from our walk we see the dog doing the same trick with other people on a picnic.

Segesta, in the middle of nowhere now

In the late bronze age the minoian cretenzians must have visited Sicily and so did the the Mycian Greek, as the found pottery suggests. The First inhabitants were called Sicani and are thought to be related with the Iberians, a people of Spain, but nothing is known about their ethnical and lingustical identity.
Another Group, the Siculi settled themselves in Eastern Sicily around 1200 BC. They were most likely Indo-European and closely related to the Italic tribe. Maybe they were part of the Seapeople the Egyptians called the Sheklesh, who were part of the failed attack on the Nile delta?
Then there were the Elymians. According to Thucydides the defeated Phrygians left Troy, adapted the name elymi and went to Sicily to establish Segesta and Erice.
Apollonius of Athens (2th century BC) wrote” chronicle” (Xpovikά) in comic trimeters (which makes it easy to memorize),  from the earliest times (the fall of Troy in 1184) down to 119 B.C. According to this Segesta was founded by Egesto and some friends of the Achaean hero Filotette.
As to Virgil in his Aeneas,  the Troyan hero landed at Drepanum (Trapani) after abandoning his lover dido at Carthage. Here, following a fire that destroyed a part of the ships, the disappointment and exhaustion of many of his friends was so high that they no longer wanted to continue the journey. So they remained in sicily with Aceste. Aceste (Acesta – Segesta) is the son of a Troyan mother Egesta and the Sicilian river god Crimisus. According to Virgil it is not Aceste but Aeneas who founded Segesta (Aen. 5.36-41, 708 ff.)

In the fifth century BC it was the biggest rival to Selinus (Selinunte). The First conflict between the two cities erupted in 580 BC due to a land dispute. Never the less both cities had a treatise of Epigamia.

Epigamia (Gr.: Επιγαμια), designated the legal right to contract a marriage. In particular it strongly regulated the right of intermarrying between different states. Traditionally, intermarriage between different states was not allowed, and only a special authorization (a decree of the popular assembly) could permit it.
Epigraphs show there was a treaty with Athens in 485 BC, which enabled Athens to enlarge its economic and political interest. In 416 BC yet another conflict with Selinus forced Segesta to ask for help with Syracuse and Agrigento as well as from its allied Carthaginian colonies. When this did not work they made an alliance with Leontini, Catania, Naxos and Kamarina. This invoked the Athenians to send a fleet of 200 ships and 70.000 men to Sicily, under the pretext to help Segesta against Selinus, but the real goal was to wage war against the powerful syracuse.
This Athenian expedition in Sicily ended in a  disasterous defeat for Athens and Segesta went to Carthago for help who accepted and in 409 BC, after having assured the neutrality of Syracuse, they destroyed Selinus. Segesta did not enjoy peace for long as in 397 Dionysus, tyrant of Syracuse, besieged and destroyed the city during his carthaginian campaign.

At the beginning of the First Punic wars in 262 BC, Segesta surrendered freely to the Romans. This gave the the status of “libera et immunis”, thanks in part by their boasted and shared Trojan origins.
Suffering heavily by the slave revolts in 139 and 103 BC, it suffered Verres oppressions and cruelty in 73BC.

It slowly died out, like the rest of the island suffering from the barberic invasions. First the Vandals and the Ostrogoths came, followed by the Byzantine occupation (535 AD) and then arab conquest.

Trapani

In the late afternoon we arrive at our hotel “due badie”  in Trapani. This turns out to be a perfect hotel with the biggest bed room ever, a kitchen, dining place and lounge. And all for only 80 euro, so I cannot recommend it enough.

Trapani, a quiet little town near the sea

The only annoying part of having a hotel in the city center is parking. In Trapani there are a few large and free parking areas and luckily it is not too far from our hotel.

In the evening we decide to treat ourselves after all this hard travel with a delicious dinner at the  Cantina Siciliana in the old Jewish ghetto. We break our bank and have the “Rosso del Conte” wine for 30 euro’s and which is still 5 euro cheaper than we can buy that same bottle in our enoteca in Belgium. Go figure! It goes perfectly well with the spada we have.
Stuffed with the cassata we slowly walk back to the hotel when we hear some music in the park. We walk over and there is a podium on which the last years of the local high school have some sing and dance acts put together. We feel their enthusiasm and I remember how indestructible I was at that age. Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus!

Trapani is a small but nice city and one of those places I would not mind staying a bit longer.

To Erice:

Friday, 17 June 2011

The ancient name of Erice was Eryx, and it was an Elmian settlement on the mountain San Guiiano at 751 meters high. It was dependend on Segesta in the 5th century BC. Eryx was occupied later by the Carthaginians and temporarily seized by Pyrrhus in 278/277 BC.  Phoenician masons Marks have been found on the defensicve walls and Punic legends appear on the coinage from the 4th century. Phoenician associations are also indicated by the rite of the sacred prostitution in the cult of Astarte ( Aphrodite or Venus) on the acropolis rock. The elymian settlement was evacuated in 259 during the First punic war, and the inhabitants were transferred to drepana. The Romans stressed the Elymian-Troyan associations of the cult. Virgil (Aen. 5.759f.) makes aeneas visit Eryx and found the temple.

Eryx was conquered by Aghlabides in 831 and was renamed as Cebel Hamid (In Western sources Gebel Hamed, meaning Mountain of Hamid). It was ruled by Arabs over 3 centuries until Norman conquest in 1167. Normans renamed it Monte San Giuliano.

In the morning we drive to Erice. From the car park we walk slowly up via the ramparts to the castle of the Normans (Castello di venere) which was the hill of Venus before the castle stood there. Roger I destroyed the ancient temple of Venus when he captured the city in the 12th century. No idea what happened to the prostitutes. For photography, there is the famous mist that encloses the city and is called “il velo di Venus” or the veil of Venus.

The well of Venus

We continue to stroll around the hilltop village but cannot escape from the impression that this is one big tourist trap. All the (beautifully) restored houses have shops selling local products and little of the village life remains. Still we fall in the trap and have a Cous Cous Pesce (a fish couscous, a leftover from the Saracen days) and today one of those typical local dishes.

The entrance to Erice

We have enough of the over restored village with a Disney feel and decide to visit the good old salt road “the via del Sale”. We first have a stop at Nubia, but then continue to Mozia to see what the Romans forgot to destroy and with a small boat we get dropped off on the island which has a small museum and some nice paths to wander around the island.

Mozia (Mothia – Motya)

The Phoenicians (Φοίνίκες), a people rather than a nation, who came from the city states of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos on the Syrian – Palestinian coast were famous in the production of purple dye, hence their name purple (Φίνίξ).  How they called themselves is unknown, but in the Amarna letters (14th century BC, found in Amarna, Egypyt) they are referred to as Kenaani (Canaanites).

With the wood from their homeland in Lebanon they spread out in galleys over the mediterenean. From Gades (Cadiz) in Spain and Utica in Tunisa, but their major colony was Carthage! A pain in the but of Cato the elder, who ended his speeches with a variation on “ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam”  (Furthermore,  I think Carthage must be destroyed). This actually  happened during the Punic wars and the city was indeed razed to the ground by the Romans in 146 BC, sowing the ground with salt and its entire population sold into slavery

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Windmills used to grind the sea salt

The frustrated Romans erased Carthago from the face of the earth which is what Moiza makes so interesting.
The island of San pantaleo, once ancient Mozia, lieas about 10km from marsala on the Western and is about 45 hectares in seize. It is located in a lagoon, along a coast with salt pans. The windmills are used to grind the salt.

Some information about the island:

The settlement dates back to the end of the 8th century BC, but there are also remains of a middle bronze age. The Phoenician town covered the whole island and was surrounded by a fortified wall and Gates. It had civilian and military quarters, sanctuaries and necropoli. A submerged road used to link to the mainland was still in use  until the late 20th. Century. The name of the town (MTW), Motue in Greek is tought to come from the accadian word metu’ meaning stagnat water is found on coins.

Dionysus I of Syracuse sacked Mozia in 397 BC (Diodorus XIV 47-54) after a long siege and it was not ressurected afterwards. Its survivors took refuge to the mainland and created lilybaeum later known as marsala (Marsa Allah – gods Harbour).
An interesting tought is that the Phoenician presence in Sicily is similar to the Arab expansion which took place one thousand years later.

In 1979 the statue of the “Young boy of Mozia” was found. The white marble represents a young man with an athletic body. Most likely it was made by a Greek artist in Pythagoras workshop in Reggio and is thought to be dated  around the fifth century BC. The statue can represent a chariot driver saluting a victory, but other ideas have been raised (priest, divinity, …)
We have a nice, albeit pricey dinner at a beach restaurant and finish the evening with some nice sundown photography of the salt plaines and the watermills.

Sunset at the salt road – Mozia

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