DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52591#0230
XII
THE VOTIVE OFFERINGS OF THE
SICILIAN PRINCES
SICILY,**the land of mules/' the island where Hepha-
estus works in the depth of Aetna,1 forms, along
with South Italy, the western sphere, which the Greeks
had occupied with their trade, predominance, and adminis-
tration and called “ Magna Graecia.” A significant name
in more than one sense I For both the State achievements
and distances are greater, and the landscapes have a grander
character than those of Greece itself. No Greek landscape
can vie with that of Girgenti in magnificence. When you
stand on the old acropolis of Acragas, you have before you
first a big and wide valley, in which in old times “ the
fairest of the cities of mortal men ”2 extended with its
houses, bridges, the famous fish-ponds, and the great
burial-grounds, and next comes a new mountain ridge, with
a row of splendid temples, which still seem to screen the
town from the open country and the sea to the south. The
temple ruins of the town correspond in size with the landscape,
especially those of the temple of Zeus, which the tyrant
Theron had built by Carthaginian prisoners after the victory
of Himera, with which only Asia Minor, the other great
Greece, has parallels. It was of Acragas that Empedocles
said that its inhabitants lived as if they should die on the
morrow, and built houses as if they should live for ever.
Of the same colossal dimensions, suggestive of the temples
1 Euripides, Troades, 220. 2 Pindar, Pythia, xii. i.
214
THE VOTIVE OFFERINGS OF THE
SICILIAN PRINCES
SICILY,**the land of mules/' the island where Hepha-
estus works in the depth of Aetna,1 forms, along
with South Italy, the western sphere, which the Greeks
had occupied with their trade, predominance, and adminis-
tration and called “ Magna Graecia.” A significant name
in more than one sense I For both the State achievements
and distances are greater, and the landscapes have a grander
character than those of Greece itself. No Greek landscape
can vie with that of Girgenti in magnificence. When you
stand on the old acropolis of Acragas, you have before you
first a big and wide valley, in which in old times “ the
fairest of the cities of mortal men ”2 extended with its
houses, bridges, the famous fish-ponds, and the great
burial-grounds, and next comes a new mountain ridge, with
a row of splendid temples, which still seem to screen the
town from the open country and the sea to the south. The
temple ruins of the town correspond in size with the landscape,
especially those of the temple of Zeus, which the tyrant
Theron had built by Carthaginian prisoners after the victory
of Himera, with which only Asia Minor, the other great
Greece, has parallels. It was of Acragas that Empedocles
said that its inhabitants lived as if they should die on the
morrow, and built houses as if they should live for ever.
Of the same colossal dimensions, suggestive of the temples
1 Euripides, Troades, 220. 2 Pindar, Pythia, xii. i.
214