Sicels

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with the Székelys, also called Siculi in Latin.
Sicily in the 6th century BC; the Sicels are referred to as Sikeloi. Their neighbors to the west were the Sicani.

The Sicels (

Indo-European tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily, their namesake, during the Iron Age. They spoke the Siculian language. After the defeat of the Sicels at the Battle of Nomae in 450 BC and the death of Sicel leader Ducetius in 440 BC, the Sicel state broke down and the Sicel culture merged into Magna Graecia
.

History

Ruins of Castiglione di Ragusa, near Ragusa, a Sicel town founded in the 7th century BC.

Archaeological excavation has shown some

Sicania, but makes no distinctions: "they were (from) a faraway place and a faraway people and apparently they were one and the same" for Homer, Robin Lane Fox notes.[1]

It is possible that the Sicels and the

Sabine tribes and finally crossed into Sicily. Their social organization appears to have been tribal, economically and agriculturally. According to Diodorus Siculus,[5] after a series of conflicts with the Sicani, the river Salso
was declared the boundary between their respective territories.

The common assumption[

eleventh century BC.[6]

The Sicel necropolis of Pantalica, near Syracuse, is the best known, and the second-largest one is the Necropolis of Cassibile, near Noto. Their elite tombs a forno, or oven-shaped, take the form of beehives.

The chief Sicel towns were Agyrium (Agira); Centuripa or Centuripae (Centorbi but now once again called Centuripe); Henna (later Castrogiovanni, which is a corruption of Castrum Hennae through the Arabic Qasr-janni but, since the 1920s, once again called Enna); and three sites named Hybla: Hybla Major, called Geleatis or Gereatis, on the river Symaethus; Hybla Minor, on the east coast north of Syracuse (possibly pre-dating the Dorian colony of Hyblaean Megara); and Hybla Heraea in the south of Sicily.

With the coming of Greek colonists—both

siege of Syracuse of Sicels who had "previously been allies of Syracuse, but had been harshly governed by the Syracusans and had now revolted". (Thucydides 3.103.1) Aside from Thucydides, the Greek literary sources on Sicels and other pre-Hellenic peoples of Sicily are to be found in fragmentary scattered quotes from the lost material of Hellanicus of Lesbos and Antiochus of Syracuse
.

There is some evidence that the Sicels had several matriarchal customs, which is unattested in other Indo-European groups of the region.[9]

Language

Main article: Siculian

Linguistic studies have suggested that the Sicels may have spoken an Indo-European language[10] and occupied eastern Sicily as well as southernmost Italy[11] whereas the Elymi (Greek Elymoi) and Sicani (Greek: Sikanoi) inhabited western and central Sicily, respectively. It is likely that the Sicani spoke a non-Indo-European language, the classification of their language remains uncertain. Conversely, the Elymian language is generally accepted to have been an Indo-European language, though its exact classification within the family is unclear.[12] Some consider it related to Ligurian,[13] while others to the Italic languages.[14]

Of the Sicel language the little that is known is derived from glosses of ancient writers and from a very few inscriptions, not all of which are demonstrably Sicel.[15] It is thought that the Sicels did not employ writing until they were influenced by the Greek colonists. Several Sicel inscriptions have been found to date: Mendolito (Adrano), Centuripe, Poira, Paternò‑Civita, Paliké (Rocchicella di Mineo), Montagna di Ramacca, Licodia Eubea, Ragusa Ibla, Sciri Sottano, Monte Casasia, Castiglione di Ragusa, Terravecchia di Grammichele, Morgantina, Montagna di Marzo (Piazza Armerina), and Terravecchia di Cuti.[16][17] The first inscription discovered, of ninety-nine Greek letters, was found on a spouted jug found in 1824 at Centuripe;[18] it uses a Greek alphabet of the 6th or 5th century BC. It reads:

"nunustentimimarustainamiemitomestiduromnanepos duromiemtomestiveliomnedemponitantomeredesuino brtome…"

There have been various attempts at interpreting it (e.g. V. Pisani 1963, G. Radke 1996) with no sure results. Another long Sicel inscription was found in Montagna di Marzo:[19]

"tamuraabesakedqoiaveseurumakesagepipokedlutimbe levopomanatesemaidarnakeibureitamomiaetiurela"

The best evidence for Sicel having been of Indo-European derivation is the verb form pibe "drink", a second-person singular present imperative active exactly cognate with Latin bibe (and Sanskrit piba, etc.).

Varro states that Sicel was strictly allied to Latin as many words sounded almost identical and had the same meaning, such as oncia, lytra, moeton (Lat. mutuum).[21]

Religion

Their characteristic cult of the

titan, Tityos, grew so large that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He came to the attention of later Greek mythographers only when he attempted to waylay Leto near Delphi. If such a mytheme is set into action as ritual, it is usual to see a pair of sacrificial children laid in the earth to encourage the green growth. [citation needed
]

In the temple to Adranus, father of the Palici, the Sicels kept an eternal fire. A god

Syracuse
is due to Greek influence.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Fox, Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer, 2008:115; Homer's references are in Odyssey 20,383; 24.207-13, 366, 387-90.
  2. ISBN 0674033140
    . Most scholars now believe that the Sicans and Sicels, as well as the inhabitants of southern Italy, were basically of Illyrian stock superimposed on an aboriginal "Mediterranean" population".
  3. ^ The concern of Thucydides is to acquaint his Athenian audience with the cultural and historical background to Athenian invention in Sicilians affairs, beginning in 415 BC, in his book vi, sections 2.4-6.
  4. Servius' commentary on Aeneid VII.795; Dionysius of Halicarnassus
    i.9.22.
  5. ^ Diodorus Siculus V.6.3-4.
  6. ^
    OCLC 760889060
    .
  7. ^ Cline, Eric. 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed [video], 2016, 1h10'17. See 5'41 for the invasion of the Sea People in the 8th yr of Ramses III's reign; 6'19 for the incertitude on the dates; 4'30 for the start of the Late Bronze Age collapse "on either side of 1200 BC".
  8. ISBN 0-472-08795-9
    .
  9. OCLC 760889060
    .
  10. ^ The basic study is Joshua Whatmough in R.S. Conway, J. Whatmough and S.E. Johnson, The Prae-Italic Dialects of Italy (London 1933) vol. 2:431-500; a more recent study is A. Zamponi, "Il Siculo" in A.L. Prosdocimi, ed., Popoli e civiltà dell'Italia antica, vol. 6 "Lingue e dialetti" (1978949-1012.)
  11. ^ Thucydides reported that there were still Siculi in Italia, which only referred approximately to the modern Calabria in his time; he derived Italia from an eponymous Italos, a Sicel king (Histories, vi.4.6), cf. Name of Italy.
  12. ISBN 9781139248938
    . All scholars agree that Elymian is a language of the Indo-European family (p. 96).
  13. ISBN 978-88-7062-809-8
    .
  14. ^ "Elimo".
  15. ^ Price 1998.
  16. doi:10.6092/2037-4488/1940
    .
  17. doi:10.6092/2037-4488/1942
    .
  18. ^ Now in the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe (Price 1998)
  19. ^ Martzloff, Vincent (2011). "Variation linguistique et exégèse paléo-italique. L'idiome sicule de Montagna di Marzo". La variation linguistique dans les langues de l’Italie préromaine (in French). Lyon. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02.
  20. ISBN 978-1-4051-8895-1
    .
  21. ^ Varro, De Lingua Latina V, 105 and 179.
  22. ISBN 978-0-595-00380-8
    .

Sources

  • Thucydides, vi.2 and vi.4.6
  • Price, Glanville Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe s.v. "Sicel (Siculan)"

Further reading

Library resources about
Sicels
  • Archaic Italy: the Siculi (URL Checked 2006-03-26)
  • Sicilian Peoples: The Sicels by Vincenzo Salerno [1]

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