Usuari:MALLUS/Sículs

Els sículs o síquels o sicels (siculi, sicels, Σικελοί) foren els primers habitants de Sicília. Les mítiques races anteriors dels lestrígons (laestrygones) o ciclops (cyclopes), una raça de gegants esmentada pels autors clàssics no tenen cap validesa històrica.

Podrien ser un dels Pobles de la Mar o be una raça ària procedent d'Itàlia. Ja estaven assentats a l'illa en començar el primer mil·lenni aC. Des el segle vi aC van haver de lluitar contra els grecs. El seu moment culminant fou el període d'unió sota el rei Ducetius a la meitat del segle v aC; després foren progressivament hel·lenitzats i sovint conquerits pels grecs.

Quan van passar a domini romà, a la meitat del segle iii aC ja estaven completament hel·lenitzats i es van llatinitzar ràpidament per l'aportació a l'illa de milers d'esclaus.

Història

Archaeological excavation has shown some micènica influence on Bronze Age Sicily. The earliest literary mention of Sicels is in the Odissea. Homer also mentions Sicània, but makes no distinctions: "they were a faraway place and a faraway people and apparently they were one and the same" for Homer, Robin Lane Fox notes. There are four incidental mentions of Sicels or Sicania, as a source for a devoted household slave or a likely place to sell a slave.

It is possible that the sículs and the sicans of the Iron Age had consisted of an Il·liris population who (as with the Messapis) had imposed themselves on a native, Pre-Indo-European ("Mediterrània") population. Tucídides 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. Thence they were dislodged by Umbres and Sabins tribes, and finally crossed into Sicily. Their social organization appears to have been tribal, their economy, agricultural. According to Diodor de Sicília, after a series of conflicts with the Sicani, the riu Salso was declared the boundary between their respective territories.

The common assumption is that the Sicels were the more recent arrivals; that they had introduced the use of iron into Edat del bronze Sicily and brought the domesticated horse. This would date their arrival on the island to the early first millennium BCE. But there is some evidence that the ethnonym may predate the Iron Age, based on the name Shekelesh given to one of the Pobles del mar in the Gran inscripció de Karnak (late 13th century BCE).

The Sicel necròpolis de Pantalica, near Siracusa, is the best known, and the second largest one is the Necròpolis de Cassibile, near Noto; their elite tombs "a forno" or "oven-shaped" take the form of beehives.

The chief Sicel towns were: Agyrium (Agira); Centuripa or Centuripae (Centorbi, but now once again called Centuripe); Henna (later Castrogiovanni, which is a corruption of Castrum Hennae through the Arabic Qasr-janni, but since the 1920s once again called Enna); and three sites named Hibla: Hibla Major, called Geleatis or Gereatis, on the river Symaethus; Hibla Menor, on the east coast north of Syracuse (possibly pre-dating the doris colony of Mègara Hiblea); and Hibla Inferior in the south of Sicily.

With the coming of Greek colonists— both calcidis, who maintained good relations with the Sicels, and doris, who did not— and the growing influence of Greek civilization, the Sicels were forced out of most of the advantageous port sites and withdrew by degrees into the hinterland. Sixty kilometres (forty miles) from the coast of the mar Jònica, Sicels and Greeks exceptionally lived side by side in Morgàntia to the extent that historians argue whether it was a Greek polis or a Sicel city. Greek goods, especially pottery, moved along natural routes, and eventually Hellenistic influences can be observed in regularised Sicel town planning. However, in the middle of the fifth century BCE a Sicel leader, Ducetius, was able to create an organised Sicel state as a unitary domain in opposition to Greek Siracusa, including several cities in the central and south of the island. After a few years of independence, his army was defeated by the Greeks in 450 BCE, and he died ten years later. Without his charisma, the movement collapsed and the increasingly Hellenized culture of the Sicels lost its distinctive character. But in the winter of 426/5 Thucydides noted the presence among the allies of Athens in the setge de Siracusa of Sicels who had "previously been allies of Syracuse, but had been harshly governed by the Syracusans and had now revolted" Aside from Tucícides the Greek literary sources on Sicels and other pre-Hellenic peoples of Sicily are to be found in fragmentary scattered quotes from the lost material of Hel·lànic de Mitilene and Antíoc de Siracusa.

Llengua

Sicel

Codis
ISO 639-3	scx

Linguistic studies have suggested that the Sicels may have spoken an llengua indoeuropea and occupied eastern Sicily as well as southern Italy whereas the Sicans (Greek: Sikanoi) and Elimis (Greek Elymoi) inhabited central and western Sicily. It is likely that the two latter peoples still spoke non-Indo-European languages, although this is far from certain, particularly with regard to the elimi, which some would consider related to ligur antic or to anatòliques.

Of the Sicel language the little that is known is derived from glosses of ancient writers and from a very few inscriptions, not all of which are demonstrably Siculan. It is thought that the Sicels did not employ writing until they were influenced by the Greek colonists. The first inscription, of ninety-nine Greek letters, was found on a spouted jug found in 1824 at Centuripe; it uses a Greek alphabet of the 6th or 5th century BCE. Four Sicel inscriptions have been found in recent decades. An important inscription has been found at Centuripe.

The best evidence for Sicel having been of Indo-European derivation is the verb form pibe "drink", a second-person singular present imperative active exactly cognate with Latin bibe (and Sanskrit piba, etc.). Membership in the branca itàlica, perhaps even close to Llengües llatino-falisques cannot be ruled out: Varró states that Sicel language was strictly allied to Latin as many words sounded almost identical and had the same meaning, such as oncia, lytra, moeton (Lat. mutuum). The longest and most well known Sicel inscription is scratched on the lid of a guttus (vine jug) found in 1824 near Centoripe (ancient Centuripae, then Centorbi). It reads:

NUNUSTENTIMIMARUSTAINAMIEMITOMESTIDUROMNANEPOS

DUROMIEMTOMESTIVELIOMNEDEMPONITANTOMEREDESUINO

BRTOME[...

There have been various attempts at interpreting it (e.g. V. Pisani 1963, G. Radke 1996) with no sure results.

Mitologia

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 Adranos, the volcanic god whom the Greeks identified with Hefest, twin sons, who were "twice-born (palin "again"; ikein "to come"), born first of their nymph mother, and then of the earth, because of the "jealousy" of Hera, who urged Mother Earth, Gea, 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 mitologia grega, a tità, Tityos, grew so large 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 mitema is set into action as ritual, it is usual to see a pair of sacrificial children 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 Hibla (or goddess Hyblaea), after whom three towns were named, had a sanctuary at Hibla Menor. The connection of Demèter and Kore with Henna (the rape of Prosèrpina) and of the nymph Aretusa with Siracusa is due to Greek influence.