Commencing with Messina across the narrow straits at the toe of Italy's boot, Randall-MacIver follows Sicily's east coast southerly turning west where the coast does at the island's southeastern point, to touch successively at each of the following principal Greek cities: Messina, Taormina, Acireale, Catania, Lentini (inland), Syracuse, Gela-Kamarina (Terranova), Akragas (Girgenti), Selinus (Sciacca or Castelvetrano), Segesta (inland- Salemi? Calatafimi?), and Enna (inland). Not surprisingly, Randall-MacIver devotes almost as many pages to Syracuse as to the other cities combined.
By far the greatest
number of Greek architectural sites on Sicily
are the remains of Doric temples devoted to gods, but probably the most famous
remains are those of the theater at Syracuse.
Paraphrasing again -
"(The theater
was)...probably built by Hieron I, who reigned (in Syracuse) from 478 B.C. to 467 B.C....(and it
was)...certainly enlarged and restored...two hundred years later. It is one of
the finest Greek buildings in the whole world..., is hewn out of the native
rock, (and) measures 440 feet in maximum diameter. Originally it had sixty-one
tiers of seats, divided into nine wedge-shaped blocks. At the back of the
theater is the well-known ˜street of tombs', which leads up to a cemetery on
the plateau just behind. This cemetery contains a mixture of tombs of all
dates, some of them as late as the Christian period. There is no mixture,
however, in the ˜street of tombs.' The great caverns on either side of the way
are all post-Hellenic; they are not Greek, still less are they Sicilian, but
they belong to the period of the Roman Empire; and this fact must be
emphasized, because even our best writers have been misled by an erroneous
interpretation which has been current for half a century."
Regarding
some of the "many historic memories" of the theater at Syracuse,
Randall-MacIver writes:
"When
Aeschylus visited Syracuse we are told by an anonymous commentator that he
witnessed in this theater a performance of his own Persae....Plays of
Sophocles, Euripides, and many less famous dramatists were performed in this
theater before distinguished visitors from Sparta, Corinth, and every part of
Greece. Pindar and Plato must have sat at various times in the audience, and
Theocritus almost certainly came here...."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
