La stòria dâ Sicilia

[alfieb]

We've had dozens of different eras over the thousands of years of history. Which period is your favorite to learn about, and why?

[Sikeliot]

Greek. Additionally of all the people who have contributed to Sicilian history, Greeks are the ones I value the most.

[alfieb]

I quite enjoy reading about the ancient Greek settlements, mainly Syracusæ, but I'd say my favorite is probably the early Kingdom of Sicily, from the 1060s to the 1260s, until the last male members of the House of Hohenstafen were killed off.

[Sikeliot]

Any of the post-Norman history just doesn't interest me much, probably because I don't think any of the successive groups after them did us any favors or contributed anything valuable and worth preserving to the culture.

[alfieb]

You really should read up on King Frederick. He was among the most influential rulers in European history, let alone our own. The most powerful man in Europe, but he spent most of his time in Palermo.

[Sikeliot]

Ah. Maybe it's just that I personally feel that Sicily should have become a Greek island like Crete, Rhodes, Chios etc. and not taken the historical turn it took

[alfieb]

Our location and size made that rather difficult. 5m+ people live in Sicily. No other island in the Med has more than 1.6. We're in the middle of it all.

[Sikeliot]

I think what gets me about it all is this. It'd have been better, in my opinion, for Sicily to have always been part of a larger whole, i.e. a Greek island analogous to Crete, than having been a powerful kingdom for so many years and then exploited to the point of now being one of the poorest parts of Europe and having to live in the shadow of a once glorious past.

I guess what we view as the glorious years of Sicily differ. If someone asks me why I am proud of being Sicilian I'll go way back and be like, "What would Athens have been without us?" or "A mathematician from Syracuse estimated the value of pi/figured out displacement" because the years of European feudalism just do not appeal to me.

[alfieb]

Oh, without a doubt, Syracuse was fantastic for the Hellenistic world - but there were all independent city-states at the time, and other than vague ethnic distinctions (Ionians led by Athens vs. Dorians led by Sparta, with both sides found throughout Sicily) there wasn't much difference.

So while Syracuse had been a major (Doric) power, your ancestors were mostly Ionic, so how do you identify with them?

With medieval feudal Sicily, we were all together. Our ethnogenesis as Sicilians, rather than Greeks in Sicily or Catanians or whatever began with the Normans and was best emphasized by the development of our own language.

I'm as proud of Archimedes as I am for Frederick II, Bellini, etc.

[Sikeliot]

So while Syracuse had been a major (Doric) power, your ancestors were mostly Ionic, so how do you identify with them?

With medieval feudal Sicily, we were all together. Our ethnogenesis as Sicilians, rather than Greeks in Sicily or Catanians or whatever began with the Normans and was best emphasized by the development of our own language.

But I guess I just am not partial to medieval feudalism because I associate it with Germanic Europe, which to me is one of the most bland and culturally boring regions in Europe.