page_title: Sicily
section_title: Antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Sicily / History / Antiquity
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Concordia Tempel in Agrigent * Italiano: Tempio della Concordia ad Agrigento. * English: Agrigento (Sicily, Italy). Temple of Concordia. * Français&#160;: Temple de la Concorde, Agrigento, Sicile. == Tempio di Giunone (Temple de Junon), Agrigento , Sicile, Italie == English: The ancient Greek Temple of Hera in Selinunte, also knowns as "temple E", at Castelvetrano, in Sicily, Italy. Italiano: Tempio dorico greco di Era, a Selinunte (a Castelvetrano, in provincia di Trapani), noto anche come "Tempio E". == Segesta (Trapani, Sicilia), Tempio greco
context_page_description: Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is officially referred to as Regione Siciliana. It has 5 million inhabitants.
  Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,329 m high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate.
  The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and a dozen Greek colonies and it was later the site of the Sicilian Wars and the Punic Wars. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily. The Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sicily, which was subsequently ruled by the Hohenstaufen, the Capetian House of Anjou, Spain, and the House of Habsburg.
context_section_description: The Phoenician settlements in the western part of the island predate the arrival of Greek colonists. From about 750 BC, the Greeks began to live in Sicily (Ancient Greek: Σικελία – Sikelia), establishing many significant settlements. The most important colony was in  Syracuse; others grew up at Akragas, Selinunte, Gela, Himera and Zancle. The native Sicani and Sicel peoples became  absorbed into the  Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area became part of Magna Graecia - along with the coasts of the  south of the Italian peninsula, which the Greeks had also colonised. Sicily had very fertile soils, and the successful introduction of olives and grape vines fostered a great deal of profitable trading. Greek culture significantly included Greek religion, and the settlers built many  temples throughout Sicily, including several in the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.
  Politics on the island became intertwined with those of Greece;  Syracuse became desired by the Athenians who set out on the Sicilian Expedition (415–413 BC) during the Peloponnesian War. Syracuse gained Sparta and  Corinth as allies and, as a result, defeated the Athenian expedition. The victors destroyed the Athenian army and their ships, selling most of the survivors into  slavery.
  Greek Syracuse controlled eastern Sicily while Carthage controlled the West. The two cultures began to clash, leading to the Greek-Punic wars (between 580 and 265 BC). The Greek states had begun to make peace with the Roman Republic in 262 BC, and the Romans sought to annex Sicily as their republic's first  province. Rome attacked Carthage's holdings in Sicily in the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC) and won, making Sicily the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula by 242 BC.
  In the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), the Carthaginians attempted to recapture Sicily. Some of the Greek cities on the island sided with the Carthaginians. Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse, helped the Carthaginians, Roman troops killed him after they invaded Syracuse in 213 BC. The Carthaginian attempt failed, and Rome was even more unrelenting in its annihilation of the invaders this time; Roman consul  M. Valerian told the Roman Senate in 210 BC that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".
  As the Roman Republic's granary, Sicily ranked as an important province, divided into two quaestorships: Syracuse to the east and Lilybaeum to the west. Some attempt was made under Augustus (Roman Emperor from 27 BC to 14 AD) to introduce the Latin language to the island, but Sicily was allowed to remain largely Greek in a cultural sense. The once prosperous and contented island went into sharp decline when Verres became governor of Sicily (73 to 71 BC). In 70 BC noted figure Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration In Verrem.
  Various groups used the island as a power base at different times: slave insurgents occupied it during the First  (135−132 BC) and  Second (104−100 BC) Servile Wars, and Sextus Pompey had his headquarters there during the Sicilian revolt of 44 to 36 BC. Christianity first appeared in Sicily during the years following AD 200; between this time and AD 313, when Emperor  Constantine the Great finally lifted the prohibition on Christianity, a significant number of Sicilians had become martyrs, including  Agatha,  Christina,  Lucy, and Euplius. Christianity grew rapidly in Sicily over the next two centuries.  Sicily remained a Roman province for around 700 years.
  The Western Roman Empire began falling apart after the great invasion of Vandals, Alans, and Sueves  across the Rhine on the last day of 406. Eventually the Vandals, after roaming about western and southern Hispania (present-day Iberia) for 20 years, moved to North Africa in 429. They occupied Carthage in 439. (The Franks moved south from present-day Belgium. The Visigoths moved west and  eventually settled in Aquitaine in 418; the Burgundians settled in present-day Savoy in 443). The Vandals found themselves in a position to threaten Sicily - only 100 miles away from their North African bases. After t
caption: Clockwise from top: temples of Concordia and Hera Lacinia in Agrigento, the temple of Segesta, and the Temple E in Selinunte.
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