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SICILIAN PEOPLES - Prehistory

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Bianca
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« on: December 13, 2007, 11:16:24 am »








The Elymians remain an interesting, though perhaps arcane, footnote to central Mediterranean history.

We do not know how many Elymians were alive when the Greeks arrived, but theirs was clearly the smallest population of the three native societies of Sicily, and this doubtless contributed to the speed of their assimilation and amalgamation.

Their religious cults were similar to those of the Greeks. The worship of the Greeks' Aphrodite probably shared its affinity with an earlier Elymian cult, also associated with the Phoenicians' goddess Astarte.

They appear to have venerated the dog, probably as a symbol of some particular trait or physical condition, and the name of Eryx (Erice) is based on that of a mythical Elymian king and hero.

We do not know with certainty what kind of government prevailed in Elymian cities and towns, but their society appears to have been a pacific one prior to the arrival of the Carthaginians and Greeks, whose complex Mediterranean politics brought the Elymians (and their Elymo-Greek descendants) into several particularly bloody wars.

Theories about the Elymians abound but by 700 BC, when the Phoenicians and Greeks arrived, there was little to distinguish their bronze-age society from those of the other Sicilians.

Except for observations based on discovery of a few artefacts, the archeological record offers little conclusive information about this most ancient civilization which shaped the earliest culture of northwestern Sicily.
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