Greeks and Phoenicians in the Western Mediterranean 333From the outset, it is clear, on the strength of this first example, that the historiograph-
ical conception of ethnicity and of the relations between Greeks and Phoenicians in Sicily
is nourished by a rich array of considerations, both fluctuating and structural. A second
example will confirm this analysis and takes us back to Selinus, viewed earlier from the
point of view of cultic mediation. How does Diodorus describe the events that brought
about Selinus’ shift from the Greek orbit into the Carthaginian sphere? In a recent arti-
cle, Nicola Cusumano (2010) has drawn a parallel between the events in Selinus and
those that occurred when Motya was taken by the Greeks in 397BC. In both instances,
“ethnic violence” once fomented resulted in a virtually irreducible opposition between
the opponents, and a risk of slipping back into animal savagery and the destruction
of society.
The story of the siege of Selinus in 409BCby the Carthaginians and their mercenaries,
especially Iberians and Campanians, illustrates a deployment of violence carried to almost
unimaginable heights, a sort of “paradise of cruelty” (Diod. Sic. 13.59.1–2). The final
assault leads to atrocities perpetrated on the dead bodies of the conquered, including
women and children. One is tempted to use the concept of genocide or of ethnic cleans-
ing as long as the accent is placed on the unlimited savagery of the assailants. However,
there is no voice to counterbalance the account, loaded withpathosand ideology, of
the historian of Sicilian origin who clearly adopted the role of spokesman for ancestral
hatreds directed at the Carthaginians that persisted in Sicily and Rome until the Augus-
tan period, well after the destruction—just as violent and cruel—of Carthage in 146BC
One is tempted to say that the passage of time serves like a sound box that amplifies the
echoes of the past so that they resonate more fully, even as the present provides virtually
no further opportunities to encounter a “real” Carthaginian and to recognize the fact
that, similar to the brave Hanno in Plautus’Poenulus, deep down he shares the same
values and the same ethics as the Romans and Greeks. Remembrance had the effect of
freezing memories of the conquerors of Selinus (although they themselves were con-
quered by history), and turning them into the very icon of a fierce and barbarous people,
a sort of historical nightmare, the big bad wolf of fairy tales or, as N. Cusumano says, “a
metaphysical enemy.”
In 397BC,when the Greeks, led by Dionysios of Syracuse, captured Motya, the result,
once again, was carnage. Hatred is the motor here, just as 12 years earlier at Selinus,
but the two episodes present a very different face. At Syracuse, hatred leads the people
to unite around a common project, allowing Dionysios to soften his tyranny and the
Syracusans to recast their hatred of the tyrant as a “civilizing” hatred directed at their
external adversaries. Whether an innate violence or a violence provoked by abuse, the
“instinctive” violence of the Punic people does not depend on any value, and fits no
ethical horizon. That is why, faithful to theirphysis(nature), which transcends thekairos
(moment), the Greek mercenaries of Hannibal’s army, the Carthaginian general who
razes Selinus, display pity for the massacred Selinuntines (Diod. Sic. 13.58), the sign of an
empathy and ethnic solidarity rooted in their genes and transcending the rivalry of the two
camps. The only exceptions to this rule are the Carthaginians’ Greek auxiliaries during
the siege of Motya: Dionysios condemns them to crucifixion, the worst of punishments,
for having denied, as it were, their Greek identity and having fought against their own
“blood brothers” (Diod. Sic. 14.53). By contrast, Diodorus emphasizes the enduring
relationship that unites the Phoenicians of the West with the Phoenicians of the East, this