328 Corinne Bonnet
trying to establish a line of demarcation between what may be “Phoenician” and what
“Punic,” whether in purely chronological or geographic terms, or in cultural and linguis-
tic terms. The foundation of Carthage, at the end of the ninth centuryBC, did not sound
the death knell of Phoenician civilization, far from it. These two “realities” coexisted and
remained deeply entwined. A linear periodization between Phoenician and Punic does
not hold up any more than syncretistic terminology such as “Phoenico-Punic” (Krings
1995: 240–2). If some people see the founding of Ibiza, in 654/3 according to Diodorus
Siculus (5.16.2–3), as the birth of an imperialist Carthaginian policy, and therefore of
a “Punic Empire,” others point out the distortions of perception due to an exclusively
exogenous (Greco-Roman) historiography that paralyzes categories of thought. It there-
fore seems more prudent and wise to speak of “Phoenicians of the West.” We should
not forget that the term of “Phoenicians” (Phoinikes) results from a Greek perception
of those populations who, themselves, from an emic point of view, defined themselves
as “Tyrians,” “Sidonians,” and “Giblites.” Similarly, in the West, there is no “indige-
nous” expression corresponding to the term “Punic,” from the Latin “Poenus, punicus.”
As in the Eastern motherland, the inhabitants of these places referred to themselves
as “Carthaginians,” “the people of Tharros,” or “from Sulcis.” Moreover, as we will
see further, links with the motherland and Phoenician roots appear in our testimony
(Greek and Roman!) as an essential ingredient of the identity of the Phoenicians of
the West.
These terminological considerations go to the heart of the matter before us. In the
absence of any Phoenician literary source, from either East or West, and given the inher-
ent limitations of the epigraphic record, the ethnicity of the Phoenicians of the West
emerges exclusively thanks to Greek sources (and, to a lesser degree, Roman sources) in
their accounts of their dealings with other peoples. If we take the trouble to recall that
these “others” were, from the Phoenician point of view, sometimes commercial part-
ners, but even more often competitors or bitter adversaries on the field of battle, we
will appreciate the fact that, while we are certainly dealing with an extremely interesting
collection of sources, they make accessing Phoenician “self-identity” extremely difficult,
even as they reveal the ethnicity of the Greeks in the mirror of their opponents. These
sources privilege a “dialogic” ethnicity, which, like a mirror, reflects the ways in which the
Greeks, through interaction with the Phoenicians in Sicily, built their own identity and
the limits of otherness, including their symbolic dimension. The bias of literary sources,
which, as we have noted, is a serious problem, may be corrected by the use of archaeo-
logical sources, which enable a more direct access to the social productions of Phoenician
society in Sicily, as well their symbolic dimension. Just as the work of J. Hall (2005) has
shown, the interpretation of these data in terms of ethnicity is nonetheless complex and
open to debate.
If Sicily supplies an ideal location for exploring the relations between Greeks and
Phoenicians, it is because Sicily represents a very early instance of the primary geopolitical
challenges that both sides faced in their strategies of expansion. If the later signs of
East–West trade contacts involving Sicily at the end of second and beginning of the
first millennium are questionable (Falsone 1995: 677–8), it is certain that, around