Part 25

The towns in the interior of Sicily were originally partly Siculian and partly Sicanian, though it is now impossible to draw a line of demarcation between them. In the north, about mount Aetna as far as Henna, all the towns, such as Henna, Centuripa, Agyrion, Halesa, Aluntion, and many others, were probably Siculian. The Siculians, even after the time of Gelo, formed distinct states and had their own kings. Diodorus compiled his history in a most unsystematic manner: when he is engaged with the history of a nation, and it occurs to him, that he has dwelt upon it long enough, and that he has neglected another, he all at once breaks off and begins to discuss the latter. Such is the case in his history of Sicily: he is often very minute, relating the events of a nation year after year, but then he is for a time quite silent about it. After the time of Gelo and Hiero, we find a Siculian kingdom, under a prince called Ducetius, which was very dangerous to the Siceliots.[61] Afterwards we see the Siculians broken up into many small states, some of which were hellenised at a very early period. The power of the Greek tyrants often extended very far into the interior; and those of Syracuse at times ruled almost over the whole island; during such times, Greeks settled in all parts of it. These things are often mentioned only accidentally, as for example, in the case of Diodorus himself, who is called a Siceliot, though he belonged to a Siculian town. At that time the Siculian and Sicanian languages no longer existed and Greek was spoken everywhere.

HENNA, situated in the centre of the country, was the most important of all the Siculian towns. Henna, and not Enna, is the correct spelling, for so we find it on a very ancient Greek coin; and only later Latin ones have Enna, whereas all the good Latin MSS., such as the Codex Puteanus of Livy, as well as the inscriptions, have the H, as in _ordo populusque Hennensis_; in after-times the pronunciation was modified. I do not, however, mean to say, that if you find Enna in a poet, you must at once correct it into Henna, for such things depend upon authority; the ancients often pronounced a word with an aspiration, which we cannot accurately imitate, and which, therefore, has disappeared in Italian and other modern languages. Henna is celebrated as the central seat of the worship of Demeter and Persephone, which spread thence into Italy, and was also adopted by the Greeks. It was probably different from the worship of Demeter at Eleusis; but we cannot speak positively about this matter, and in my opinion, it is a mere waste of learning and ingenuity to institute inquiries about it.

CENTURIPA (_Centuripini_, Κεντόριπα), near the slope of mount Aetna, was the greatest town of the interior at the time of the Romans. In the age of Cicero, its citizens were the wealthiest in all Sicily. In the first Punic war, they had been enabled by circumstances, about which we have no information, to put themselves in an extremely favourable relation to the Romans; this had been done at a time when the other Siculian places had allowed themselves to be tempted to rise against Rome; and in consequence of this, Centuripa was honoured with great privileges. It derived special advantages from the extensive confiscations which were often made of whole districts. On such occasions, the Roman equites speculated to acquire large estates, and the Centuripans undertook as farmers (_aratores_), or agricultural speculators, the cultivation of large districts; the existence of such aratores is known from Cicero’s Verrine orations. Centuripa then remained the centre of Sicilian agriculture, probably until a very late period. _Agyrion_ was situated in the neighbourhood of Centuripa.

I have already said in general how Sicily became a desolate country. When many towns had already been destroyed in the wars of Agathocles, the first Punic war, which lasted twenty-four years, was extremely destructive, because it was carried on at the expense of that small country; the Syracusan kingdom alone, which was in the enjoyment of order and protection, was exempted. Then followed the second Punic war, and the senseless insurrection of the Syracusans and of nearly all the inhabitants of the island. They were punished by the Romans in such a manner, that all cultivation disappeared from the greater part of the island; the towns perished and were changed into large estates; the corn-fields in the interior were changed into pastures, on which large numbers of cattle and hosts of slaves were kept, while the free population was almost entirely extirpated. Hence the insurrection of Eunus, in the year of Rome 620; a war was then carried on with great exertion for years, and was not brought to a close until several Roman armies had been defeated. Thirty years later, a second similar Servile war broke out, which, though it did not last quite as long as the first, yet completely ruined several towns: the slaves took possession of the fortified places, and annihilated the free population. As regards the period of the Roman emperors, we only know that Augustus established colonies in some places, but the rest of the island was quite desolate, there being only some large estates and stations for post horses. The Regestum of pope Gregory the Great, which contains the last accounts of Sicily before it fell into the hands of barbarians, shows the island in this wretched condition. The Roman see possesses large estates in Sicily, and the correspondence with their stewards reveals to us the condition of the island and the nature of such estates: we see that the country was in a state of utter decay.

SARDINIA.

Sardinia fully confirms the observation regarding the identity of the physical character of countries on two sides of the same sea. There does not exist a more senseless notion than to imagine that rivers form the natural boundaries between two countries; the same physical features appear on both sides of a river: rivers are lines of communication, but mountains separate countries from one another. The Suabian and Bavarian races are separated by the range of the Vorarlberg. Sardinia, in its physical structure, belongs to Africa, if not wholly, at least its southern part as far as the mountains. This character shows itself both in the vegetation and in the animal life of the country: the _musimon_, an animal foreign to all the rest of Europe, is not found anywhere out of Africa except in Sardinia.[62] The character of the population also is African, whence Cicero, in his speech for Scaurus, says: _Afer aut Sardus sane, si ita se isti malunt nominari_. The island is not, like Sicily, traversed by lofty mountains; it is only in the northern part that the mountains reach any considerable height; the rest is only a hilly country; many parts of the coast are plains, extensive and low marshy districts, which may be termed savannahs, whence great quantities of salt are obtained there. The physical identity with Africa manifests itself also in another very important point: the opposite coasts of Sardinia and Africa are celebrated for their banks of coral, while they are not found near Sicily, Spain, or the Balearian islands.[63]

According to the most ancient tradition, the inhabitants of Sardinia were Tyrrhenians, who appear in various forms and personifications, in the story about Aristaeus, in the Iolai, and in many other ways. If Tyrrhenians did exist there, they can only have been settlers on the coasts, for a part of the inhabitants, such as the _Noraces_ and _Balari_, were certainly of Iberian origin, and belonged to the same race as the inhabitants of the Balearian islands. In regard to others again, it is equally certain that they were of Libyan origin, for they are stated to have resembled the Berbers in language, in bodily structure, complexion, and hair. The _Sardi Montani_, perhaps a mixture of Iberians and Libyans, were in later times confined to the mountains. These mountains, however, must not be conceived as Alps, for heights of a less lofty character were sufficient for those people to maintain themselves in them. The highlands of Scotland also do not contain any high mountains, they are only inaccessible, and yet the population has maintained itself there throughout all the changes of nations. The sea-coast was occupied at an early time by Punic colonies, which afterwards became masters of the island, with the exception of the interior, over which they exercised no other influence than that which a powerful nation on the coast always possesses over the other inhabitants. In like manner the Dutch did not rule over the interior of Ceylon, the prince of Candy being sovereign, though he was obliged to comply with the wishes of the Dutch whenever they insisted upon it. Such was the condition of Sardinia during the second Punic war, when we meet with Hampsicora and Hiostus as Sardinian princes. The Punic settlements consisted for the most part of Carthaginians mixed with Libyans, as the Carthaginians themselves were a mixed race (Λιβυφοίνικες), or with Greeks from Sicily and Magna Graecia. The Libyans must not be conceived as negroes: in their physical features they are not very unlike Europeans, and scarcely differ at all from southern Europeans, so that the mixture could take place without any difficulty. The mixture of the Libyphoenices with the Sardinians is attested by Cicero in an interesting fragment of his speech for Scaurus. The Punic language accordingly predominated everywhere on the coast, and all the known names of the Sardinians are Punic, e.g., _Aris_, genitive _Arinis_, which is nothing else than the Hebrew Aaron; so also Caralis and others. I said before, that Sardinia, near the coast, has extensive low grounds, which are, for the most part, marshy and unhealthy: this peculiarity, (_aër gravis_), which is still the reason of the scanty population of the island, was known even to the historians of antiquity; the country was very dangerous to the Roman soldiers, many of whom died there of fevers. This we see from Tacitus’ annals[64] to have been the case in the time of Tiberius, and such it continues to be at the present day; in most parts it is impossible to remove the unhealthy character of the land by cultivation.

There are still many Punic remains in Sardinia; but there also are a few Cyclopean walls, which can neither be ascribed to the Punians nor to the Sardinians of the interior, but must be Greek. They are minutely discussed in Millot’s description of Sardinia, which is a bad book, but contains valuable information about those Cyclopean walls. Timaeus spoke of ruins which were referred to the Iolai, the alleged ancient Greek colonists. Most of the antiquities that have been dug out of the ground, belong to the Roman period, but some also are Punic and have Punic inscriptions. Many belong to the rude barbarians of the interior, especially certain hideous and deformed idols resembling those of the Wends and American Indians.

There were no towns in the interior of Sardinia, the mountaineers living either in villages or caves; their dress consisted, as at present, of skins of the musimon (_mastrucae Sardorum_), forming a sort of fur jackets. They were very poor mountaineers, and the only booty the Romans made there consisted of slaves. In a letter of pope Gregory the Great, in his Regestum, a people of the name of _Barbaricini_ is mentioned in the interior, and this confirms the identity of the Sardinians with the Libyans, for Barbaricini is only a derivative form of Barbari, a name by which the Greeks and Romans designated more particularly the Berbers in Africa. During the Punic period there were, properly speaking, only three towns that were of any importance, viz., Caralis, Sulci, and Nora.

CARALIS, the modern Cágliari (not Cagliári, as it is commonly pronounced, for the inhabitants themselves say Cágliari), was the Carthaginian capital with an excellent harbour.

SULCI and NORA, likewise of Phoenician origin, are mentioned indeed in history, but were places of no particular importance. Considerable ruins of the Roman period are still found at Nora, and Caralis has what is called a beautiful ancient theatre. In the accounts I have seen of it, it is called so, but owing to the uncritical manner in which the subject is treated, I cannot say whether it is a real theatre or an amphitheatre.

Sardinia is still the country in which European civilisation and the change of manners resulting from it, have taken less root than in any part of Europe: those who regard civilisation as an evil, must consider Sardinia to be a paradise. In no country have witches been burnt at so recent a period, and the practice, perhaps, still prevails; the government has not yet been able to suppress the custom of taking revenge for bloodshed. The villages make war upon one another, and no one can travel with safety along the high roads, unless he purchase the protection of a party or a village, as in the East, or else he must acquire the rights of hospitality. According to the accounts we have of the condition of the island, we may imagine it to be something like that which certain persons call the golden period of the middle ages. But with all this barbarism, the greatest immorality prevails, especially among the priests. The country is in a perfect state of anarchy, being governed according to ancient privileges, which have never been changed at all; the country population is in a state of complete dissolution. When the island has an able governor, he can keep order only by the utmost rigour, without which he can do absolutely nothing. It is deplorable that, in these circumstances, the administration of the island is not entrusted to able men, the propriety of which I have often urged. I sometimes desired natives of Sardinia to come to me that I might examine their language, which is very peculiar; you cannot say that it is Italian, it contains indeed very much Latin, but much also that is quite foreign. The Sardinian mountaineers are said to have many words in their dialect which are radically different from all other European languages. As much information has at present been collected about the Berber language, my object was to question the natives and to examine their words to see whether they were Berber or Basque. But I could not succeed, the people were too timid and did not come. I have now placed my hope upon a friend, Count Castiglione, of Milan, a great linguist, who has studied the language of the Berbers; he may perhaps be more successful. The island, from the earliest times, always made the impression of a wild and ungenial country, which, poor as it was, was severely treated by the Carthaginians, for they are said to have forbidden the cultivation of grain, in order to compel the Sardinians to import their supplies from Spain and Africa. In like manner Spain, for a long time, would not tolerate the cultivation of European grain in her American possessions, and when at length she allowed it, she forbade the planting of olives and vines.

It was the universally established opinion among the ancients, that Sardinia was the largest island, and larger than Sicily. This opinion, though erroneous, is found in all ancient writers, and we cannot say what may have given rise to it.

CORSICA.

Whether _Corsica_ and the Greek name Κύρνος are etymologically connected with each other, must be left undecided; I for my part believe, that the resemblance of the first syllable in the two names is only accidental. Corsica was regarded by the ancients as still more wild, uninhabitable, unhealthy, and barbarous than Sardinia; it was inhabited partly by Ligurians and partly by Iberians, and its inhabitants maintained their independence till about the time of the first Punic war, when the Carthaginians seem to have established themselves in the island, at least near its magnificent harbours. It would indeed be inconceivable, if they had overlooked a harbour like that of S. Lorenzo. It is self-evident, however, that the inhabitants of the interior remained quite independent, for even the Genoese, though they lived so much nearer the island, were never able entirely to subdue them. At present it is, properly speaking, in a state of anarchy, though it is connected with the powerful monarchy of France; what, therefore, must have been its condition under the Carthaginians, whose dominion did not last long! At an earlier time the Phocaeans had attempted to settle at Alalia (Aleria), but had not succeeded. The Romans undertook an expedition to it as early as the first Punic war; but the only result of it was, that they expelled the Carthaginians, without they themselves being able to take possession of the island. It was not till a much later period that they subdued it, but they seem to have felt that it was not worth while to spend so much money and blood for the purpose of enabling themselves to remain there.

MARIANA and ALERIA are the only two towns of Corsica deserving to be noticed; both were Roman military colonies, the former founded by Marius, and the latter by Sulla. At the time of the Roman emperors, Corsica, like several islands in the Archipelago, served as a place to which condemned persons were exiled, _relegatio in insulam_.

Corsica is altogether a mountainous island, with the exception of a narrow tract of coast, which forms unhealthy lowlands with small rivers. The mountains are not high, and form one of the ramifications of the Apennines, but are very impassable and intricate.

HISPANIA.

The name Hispania, as Bochart correctly states, is in all probability of Punic origin, derived from ‎‏צפן‏, _Sapan_, _Span_, from which, an _i_ being prefixed, _Ispania_, or _Hispania_, was formed. In southern as well as eastern languages, the pronunciation of an _s_, followed by a consonant, is facilitated by prefixing a vowel, whence _Scipio_, in ordinary life, is called _Iscipio_. You recollect the notion of the Greeks about the four parts of the world, according to which Hesperia was the western and Europe the northern part; in this division, Spain was a part of Hesperia. The Greeks called the people _Iberians_, the country _Iberia_, and the river _Iberus_. This name of the river must have been of native origin or have been used by the Carthaginians, for the Romans also employed it, though they called the people _Hispani_ and the country _Hispania_. We do not know by what name the people called themselves; it is possible that the Basque language may throw light upon it; but in the masterly treatise on that language by Baron Humboldt, nothing is said about this point. Afterwards, and in the Acts of the Apostles, the country was called _Spania_, and it may have borne this name generally among the Alexandrians and in the unjustly decried Hellenistic language. The Byzantine writers also call it so, unless they employ the correct name Iberia.

Spain is destined by nature, almost more than Italy, to form one compact state; no one can have a doubt about this, when looking at the three seas by which it is surrounded. Nevertheless, however, it did not become united as one whole till a late period, though this happened before the time of which we have written records; for there can be no doubt that previously it was divided into two distinct countries. On the one side, the Pyrenees formed its natural boundary towards Gaul (in the course of time, however, they were crossed, and the Iberians ruled over the country from the Garonne to the Rhone); but at an earlier period another natural boundary line was formed by the Sierra Morena, an extensive range of mountains, which, for a couple of centuries, formed the boundary between the Christian and Mahommedan parts of Spain. These same mountains, no doubt, also separated the Iberians from the Celts. The heights in the north of Spain, whence the Tagus, Durius, and Minius, flow towards the sea, and whence, on the other side, smaller rivers carry their waters towards the Ebro, were inhabited by Celts, who are also called _Celtiberians_. Other Celts bearing the name _Celtici_ dwelt in Algarbia and the Portuguese Estremadura, and others again inhabited the province Entre Douro e Minho in the north of Portugal. These three Celtic nations were quite isolated in Spain. The Celtiberians were not pure Celts, but as even their name indicates, a mixture of Celts and Iberians; but the Celts in Portugal are expressly stated to have been pure Celts. These latter attracted the attention even of the ancients, especially of the excellent Posidonius, who made so many correct observations, but allowed himself in this instance to be misled. He is of opinion that the Celts had immigrated into Spain, for he reasoned thus: as the Celts could migrate into Italy and across the Danube as far as the Dniepr, it was far less difficult for them to enter the neighbouring country of Spain. But such isolated parts of a nation cannot have arrived in a country by immigration; on the contrary, the Iberians appear extending themselves and in possession of Aquitania and Languedoc at a very early period; how then could the Celts, not being able to maintain the Pyrenees, have spread over the whole peninsula? It is probable, nay almost evident, that it was the Iberians that migrated and extended themselves, and this opinion agrees with the most ancient traditions of the Celts in Ammianus Marcellinus, according to which they were once masters of all the west of Europe, but were expelled from many parts. If we suppose that the Celts dwelt as far as the Sierra Morena, and that the Iberians, perhaps reinforced by their kinsmen from Africa, pressed them forward, this supposition would account for some Celtic ruins which are still extant, and the Celts may have capitulated in a manner similar to that described in the book of Joshua. As one part of England was occupied by Germans so completely as to destroy every trace of the ancient inhabitants, while elsewhere, as e.g., in Devonshire, the Britons, in large numbers, lived among the Germans and became mixed with them; so the Iberians expelled the ancient Celtic population, wherever the nature of the country did not protect it; but the Celts maintained themselves in the mountains between the Tagus and the Iberus, and the Iberians only subdued them, and then settled among them. In the course of time the two nations became amalgamated, and thus formed the Celtiberians, whose character, however, is essentially Iberian.

Spain may be naturally divided into four main parts. The first is Andalusia, which is formed by the Sierra Morena, which separates the valley of the Baetis (Guadalquivir) from that of the Guadiana. This part is a compact country by itself, being separated from Murcia by the heights in the east. The second part is bounded on the south by the range of Orospeda, and in the north by that of Idubeda, which extends in an eastern direction towards the sea. These mountains separate the river basins of the Tago and Douro from that of the Ebro, and run at a right angle with the Sierra Morena. This division comprises the greater part of Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia, that is, the whole river basin of the Ebro. The third division consists of the mountainous countries of Galicia, Asturias, and Cantabria. The fourth, lastly, consists of the river basin of the Tago. These divisions are so completely founded on the natural features of the country, that throughout the history of Spain they appear with perfect distinctness, and hence they may also be taken as a guide in ancient history.