Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/387

THi: SIKELS ARE GRADUALLY IIELLENIZED. 37] ganization, which wrought so powerfully upon the whole contem- poraneous world. To understand the action of these superior emigrants upon the native but inferior Sikels, during those three earliest centuries (730-430 B. c.) which followed the arrival of Archias and Theokles, we have only to study the continuance of the same action during the three succeeding centuries which pre- ceded the age of Cicero. At the period when Athens undertook the siege of Syracuse (B. c. 415), the interior of the island was occupied by Sikel and Sikan communities, autonomous, and re- taining their native customs and language ;' but in the time of Verres and Cicero (three centuries and a half afterwards) the interior of the island, as well as the maritime regions had become Hellenized : the towns in the interior were then hardly less Greek chan those on the coast. Cicero contrasts favorably the character of the Sicilians with that of the Greeks generally (*. e. the Greeks out of Sicily), but he nowhere distinguishes Greeks in Sicily from native Sikels ;- nor Enna and Centuripi from Katana and Agrigentum. The little Sikel villages became gradual!} semi-IIellenized and merged into subjects of a Grecian town during the first three centuries, this change took place in the re- gions of the coast, during the following three centuries, in the regions cf the interior ; and probably with greater rapidity and effect in the earlier period, not only because the action of the Grecian communities was then closer, more concentrated, and 1 Thucyd. vi, 62-87 ; vii, 13. 3 Cicero in Verrem, Act ii, lib. iv, c. 26-51 ; Diodor. v, 6. Contrast the manner in which Cicero speaks of Agyrium, Centuripi, anl Knna, with the description of these places as inhabited hy autonomous Sikels, B. c. 396, in the wars of the elder Dionysius (Diodor. xiv, 55, 58, 78). Both Sikans and Sikels were at that time completely distinguished from the Greeks, in the centre of the island. 0. Milller states that Syracuse, seventy years after its foundation, colonized Akra?, also Enna, situated in the centre of the island," (Hist, of Dorians, i, 6, 7). Enna is mentioned by Stcphanus Byz. as a Syracnsan foundation, but without notice of the date of its foundation, which must have been much later than Miillcr here affirms. Serra di Falco (Antichitk di Sicilia, Introd. t. i, p. 9) gives Enna as having been founded later than Akroe, but earlier than Kasmcnre ; for which date I find no authority. Talaria (see Steph. Byz. ad eoc.) is also mentioned as another Syracnsan city, of which we dc not know either the date or the particulars of foundation.