According to Thucydides (vi:2), before the arrival of Greek colonists, the Sicels (or Siculi) were one of the three tribes who inhabited Sicily: the Sicels (Greek Sikeloi) in eastern Sicily (as well as southern Italy), who spoke an Indo-European language, and the Sicani (Greek Sikanoi) and Elymi (Greek Elymoi) in central and western Sicily, who may have spoken non-Indo-European languages, although this is not quite certain, particularly with regard to the Elymian language, which some would consider related to Ligurian or to Anatolian. The common assumption is that the Sicels were the more recent arrivals. The Sicels have given Sicily the name it has held since antiquity, but they were rapidly absorbed into the culture of Magna Graecia.

Thucydides and other classical writers were aware of the traditions according to which the Sicels had once lived in Central Italy, east and even north of Rome (Servius ' commentary on Aeneid VII.795; Dionysius of Halicarnassus i.9.22). Thence they were dislodged by Umbrian and Sabine tribes, and finally crossed into Sicily.

Of the Sicel language we know a little from glosses of ancient writers and from some inscriptions. It is thought that the Sicels did not employ writing until they were influenced by the Greek colonists. The first inscription was found on a spouted jug found at Centuripe ; it uses a Greek alphabet of the 5th or 6th century BCE. Four Sicel inscriptions have been found in recent decades. An important inscription has been found at Centuripe. A Sicel necropolis has been found at Noto.

Their characteristic cult of the Palici is influenced by Greek myth in the version that has survived, in which the local nymph Talia bore to Adranus, the volcanic god whom the Greeks idenified with Hephaestus, twin sons, who were "twice-born (palin "newly"; ikein "to come"), born first of their nymph mother, and then of the earth, because of the "jealousy" of Hera, who urged Mother Earth, Gaia, to swallow up the nymph. Then the soil parted, giving birth to the twins, who were venerated in Sicily as patrons of navigation and of agriculture. In the most archaic level of Greek mythology, a titan, Tityos, grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He came to the attention of later Greek mythographers only when he attempted to waylay Leto near Delphi. If such a mytheme is set into action as ritual, it is unavoidable to see a pair of sacrificial children who are laid in the earth to encourage the green growth.

In the temple to Adranus, father of the Palici, the Sicels kept an eternal fire. A god Hybla (or goddess Hyblaea), after whom three towns were named, had a sanctuary at Hybla Gereatis . The connection of Demeter and Kore with Henna (the rape of Proserpine) and of the nymph Arethusa with Syracuse is due to Greek influence.

The chief Sicel towns were: Agyrium (San Filippo d'Argiro ); Centuripa or Centuripae (Centorbi, but now once again called Centuripe ); Henna (Castrogiovanni, which is a corruption of Castrum Hennae through the Arabic Qasr-janni, but since Fascism once again called Enna); and three sites named Hybla: Hybla Major, called Geleatis or Gereatis, on the river Symaethus; Hybla Minor, on the east coast north of Syracuse (site of the Dorian colony of Hyblaean Megara ); and Hybla Heraea in the south of Sicily.

External link

• Archaic Italy: the Siculi

Further reading

• L. Bernabò Brea, 1966. Sicily Before the Greeks (rev ised edition; originally published in Italian, 1966)