330 Corinne Bonnet
At the same time the sanctuary, thanks to the deeds done there, the objects dedicated
there, and the words uttered there, as well as the symbolic actions performed there, is
a charged location with respect to the display of identity. As a “portable homeland,” its
beliefs and rites correspond to ethnic modes of action. In the case of Sicily, what can
we see?
Let us take the case of Selinus, frontier city, founded by the Greeks, allied to Carthage
until Himera (480BC), passing next into the Greek camp, then re-conquered by Punic
forces (Tusa 2010). How are these variable ethnic parameters reflected in cult prac-
tice? Demeter, who is known in the documents from Selinus exclusively by the title of
Malophoros, occupies a central place in the pantheon dominated by the authoritarian
figure of Zeus, owner of the temple G (Sfameni Gasparro 2008). This epiklesis recalls
the Megarian roots of the colony. The presence on the western hill of Gaggera, in the
periurban zone, of a primitive altar along with two structures indicates that a cult spot
had been erected to the goddess from the very first generation of the colony. At the same
place would later be built the grandiose sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros (Antonetti
and De Vido 2006; Grotta 2010; Robu 2011). It continued to function until it was
abandoned in 250BC.Yet, on closer inspection, certain specific features of this location
betray a cult construction intended to be supra-local. Similarly, the association of Mal-
ophoros with Hecate seems to recall the Eleusinian model, or once again her strong
connection to (Zeus) Meilichios, who also had arrived from Megara Nisaia at the time
of the foundation, whose sacred space is directly adjacent and persists well beyond the
occupation of punic Selinus. Meilichios is fully enmeshed within a network of Panhel-
lenic references, but at Selinus he is also the object of distinctive representations that are
just as firmly connected to a Punic cultural sphere. In fact, one is faced with a field of
stelai(Cusumano 2006), occasionally characterized by anthropomorphic characteristics
(e.g., rough facial features). Similar to N. Cusumano, I believe that one can identify here
strategies of mediation and of cultural permeability between two communities, occurring
even before the Punic conquest, but especially necessary for the Greeks who survived the
massacre of 409 and for the new Punic masters of the region. They placed themselves
together under the protection of Meilichios, ancestral god and benefactor, savior, cathar-
tic and reassuring, and god ofphilia(friendship) and of concord between blood groups.
The strangeness of a lithic god of Greek roots being recuperated by the Punic popu-
lation could therefore refer, at the same time, in the double register of an inevitable
rupture and a necessary continuity, to a newly integrated alterity in the city and to
a common base, formed by Malophoros and Meilichios, probably assimilated to Baal
Hammnon and Tanit, designed to ensure the well-being and prosperity at the heart of a
reconfigured city.
This example shows that we are dealing with neither a register of “identity isolation”
nor one of simple dilution of “the other” into “the same.” The historical setting is
constantly shifting, conflicts necessarily emerging against a backdrop of empirical pacifica-
tion. This process of constant refiguring—ethnic, political, social, and cultural—produces
various modes of symbolic creativity that Richard White, in his study of the relations
between Indians, French, English, and Americans (1650–1815), has dubbed “the mid-
dle ground” (White 2010). In placing emphasis on the intermediate spaces or the cultural
identities that entwine and generate compromise, we are able to escape the impasse of a