Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/378

3G2 HISTORY OF GREECE. mediately overhanging the sea (whereon was established four centuries afterwards the town of Tauromenium, after Naxos had been destroyed by the Syracusan despot Dionysius) ; for they had to make good their position against the Sikels, who were in occu- pation of the neighborhood, and Avhom it was requisite either to dispossess or to subjugate. After they had acquired secure pos- session of the territory, the site of the city was transferred to a convenient spot adjoining ; but the hill first occupied remained ever memorable, both to Greeks and to Sikels. On it was erect- ed the altar of Apollo Archegetes, the divine patron who (through his oracle at Delphi) had sanctioned and determined Hellenic colonization in the island. The altar remained permanently as a sanctuary common to all the Sicilian Greeks, and the Theors or sa- cred envoys from their various cities, when they visited the Olympic and other festivals of Greece, were always in the habit of offer- ing sacrifice upon it immediately before their departure. To the autonomous Sikels, on the other hand, the hill was an object of durable but odious recollection, as the spot in which Grecian con quest and intrusion had first begun ; and at the distance of thrcf 1 centuries and a half from the event, we find them still animated by this sentiment in obstructing the foundation of Tauromenium. 1 At the time when Theokles landed, the Sikels Avere in pos- session of the larger half of the island, lying chiefly to the east of the Herasan mountains, 2 a chain of hills stretching in southerly direction from that principal chain, called the Neurode or Nebrode mountains, which runs from east to west for the most part parallel with the northern shore. West of the Heroean hills were situated the Sikans ; and west of these latter, Eryx and Egesta, the possessions of the Elymi : along the western portion of the northern coast, also, were placed Motye, Soloeis, and Pan ormus (now Palermo), the Phenician or Carthaginian seaports. The formation, or at least the extension, of these three last- mentioned ports, however, was a consequence of the multiplied 1 Thucyd. vi, 3 ; Diodor. xiv, 59-88. 2 Mannert places the boundary of Sikels and Sikans at these mountains Otto Siefert (Akragas und sein Gebiet, Hamburg, 1845, p. 53) places it al the Gemelli Colles, rather more to the westward, thus contracting tlw domain of the Sikans . compare Diodor. iv, 82-83.