Greeks and Phoenicians in the Western Mediterranean 329800–750BC,the Phoenicians were found in this area and crossed the Strait of Messina
to reach, for example, Pithekoussai. A little later, from around 750BC, the Greeks
founded Megara Hyblaia, Zankle, Naxos, Syracuse, Solonte, Motya, and other sites.
They came into contact, often quite bloody contact, with three indigenous groups
who were primarily located in their island’s interior: Sicels, Sicanians, and Elymians.
We will have more than one occasion to return to the key testimony of Thucydides
and his vision of the ethnography of Sicilian. By the end of the seventh century, with
the foundations of Selinus and Himera, the Greeks were demonstrating hegemonic
designs on the whole island. The material culture of this archaic period, in particular
the ceramics, shows signs of regular exchanges between the two groups. However,
in the sixth century, the situation deteriorates with the rise to power of Carthage,
who transformed the Phoenician cities of the west into walled strongholds, and the
unsuccessful attacks of Greek colonies in the Phoenician or Punic zone. Allied to the
Elymians, the Phoenicians of Sicily defended their position, but were severely defeated
in 480 at Himera. They were victorious, in revenge, in 409BCat Selinus, then at
Himera, Akragas, and Gela, stabilizing their territorial hold on Sicily. Two centuries
of constant conflict followed, never decisive, during the fourth and third centuries,
with Carthage and Syracuse facing off, until the intervention of the Romans, in the
course of the First Punic War, brought this bloody confrontation to a close. In 241BC,
following the naval victory of the Romans in the Battle of the Aegates Islands, all of
Sicily was placed under Roman protection and became the first province of the future
Empire. The long cohabitation of Phoenicians and Greeks, punctuated by unusually
fierce outbursts of violence, if we are to believe the historical memory that deals with it,
but also consisting of marriages, alliances, and exchanges, contracts, of betrayal, and of
misunderstandings, thus represents fertile ground for an enquiry into ethnicity (provided
one makes allowance for the documentary limitations outlined in the preceding text).
This confrontation, day by day, in peace and in war, in the public and private spheres,
in the most varied areas (business, war, culture, diplomacy, religion, technology, sailing,
and so on) generated an awareness of self and other, asocial representationcharacterized
by a powerful tension between, on the one hand, integration, porosity, recognition,
collaboration, and, on the other, rejection, boundaries, separation, deprecation, and
indeed barbarization. Even though it may not be possible or even desirable to untangle
these elements, it is easy to understand that various modes of thought are at work in
these processes. Inasmuch as it is a “portable homeland” (Bastenier 2004), religion is in
this regard a major field of contestation, which justifies starting here.
Cultural Practices and “Middle Ground”
Sacred space, dedicated to ritual practice, which is to say to the relationship, contrac-
tual but asymmetrical, between humans and gods, obeys a logic of its own, notably
in the matter of protection of persons, guarantees, and security. It is a space theoreti-
cally protected from certain types of violence, a place of mediation and of transactions.