Rileggendo Zenobio: una nota sulla percezione e la rappresentazione dei Siculi

This article analyses the representation of the Sikels in some Greek sources. The first author is Homer with his obscure references to the Sikels and an old woman named Sikele; these loci give a representation of this ethnos as a people of pirats, interested in the slave trade. It’s possible that this image has arrived to Epicharmos who used the term ‘sikelizein’ as a synonym of ‘ponereuesthai’. The second analyzed source is Thucydides whose medallion of the prehellenic people in the island is favorable enough about the Sikels: they knew rafting, were brave warriors and won the Sikans. They were also farmers and traders with Phoinikes. Deeply different is the Ephorus’ tradition that portrays the Sikels as cruel ‘barbarians’ (FGrHist 70 F 137). Diodorus of Sicily tells us how the Sikels arrived ‘pandemei’ into the eastern area of Sicily, abandoned as a consequence of many and continuous Etna’s eruptions (5, 6); he adds that, afterwards, there were struggles between the two ethne and finally they came to terms. In Zenobios’ “Paroimion Epitome” we find three proverbs that can be used for the representation of the Sikels. The first, “more than Kallikyrioi” (4, 54) is very important because its explanation contains some detail of the revolt against Gamoroi by these ‘douloi’: there’s a bias against them. The next proverb is “The Sikel and the sea” (5, 51) that seems a contamination of an Aesopic fabula and an expression commonly used about the Kretan skill in shipping. The Zenobian proverb renewed man’s identity, his freight and ridiculed his incapacity as trader and sailorman. The last proverb, “Sikelos omphakizetai”, refers to the authority of Epicharmos and represents the Sikels as pilferers, immature grape’s thieves (5, 84). It’s evident that in the age of the comic poet (beginning of the Vth B.C.) a malicious cliché of the Sikels circulated on the Syrakousan scene and created expressions later inherited by historians and scholars.