by DANILO
CARUSO
Beetwen the
centuries VIII and VI b.C. numerous groups of Greeks emigrated in Sicily, those
brought their civilization in the island coming into contact, and also
clashing, with the old inhabitants (Sicanians and Siculians). They said in the
antiquity that Minos, character belonging more to the Greek legends that to the
history, he had been here in precedence killed by a sicanian king, Cocalus, and
that after he had been buried in a point on which subsequently rose a temple of
Aphrodite.
The
mythology narrates that Daedalus, run away by Crete, found hospitality in
Sicily beside Cocalus but the mythical cretan sovereign that pursued him to do
justice to himself for the episode of the Minotaur tracks him. The thalassocrat
unwisely accepts an invitation of the Sicanian to his fortress of Kamikos, and
here he is killed during a bath together with his daughters. Theron, tyrant of
Agrigento between 489 and 472 b.C., taken back the story of the killing of
Minos and used it in order to conquest: the myth was built by the
Agrigentinians to annex a territorial band beyond own confinements and with
fundamental defensive importance.
Theron took
like pretext of his military action the fact that he wants to avenge the cretan
king. According to the thesis from me elaborated, exposed in my essay “SICANIA
/ Il sito sicano di Colle Madore: dalla leggenda alla realtà (2004)”, the
sacellum (with the surrounding environments) of the archaeological area
analyzed, set to the outskirts of the Commune of Lercara Friddi, represents
what was in past identified as temple of Aphrodite / sepulchre of Minos about
which Diodorus Siculus then spoke in his “Historical Library”: the particular
position of the hill, the etymology of the name, the analysis of the finds and
the type of liturgy that there unwound allow to intend it. The Madore and the
Sicanianss, that lived in it for remote times, joining, beginning from a
millennium before the birth of Christ, were crushed beetwen the States of two
new greek cities: Agrigento to south and Himera to north.
The hill and
its zone were neuralgic for a military point of view for the control of the
surrounding regions. This hill was in fact closed to the dominion of Akragas,
on an height of the strategic watershed of the rivers Torto and Platani, from
which the ways in direction of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Mediterranean were
checked. At first the Greeks of none of the two parts occupied with the
strength the area, rather they maintained it neutral through the exploitation
of its temple devoted to Aphrodite. These spaces of border was besides
characterized in the thematic reflection by the image of the water. The name
Madore derives from the Greek adjective madarós (wet): the
territory around the hill had perhaps called the region of the waters,
the proximity to the river basins and the presence of aqueous strata make to think
it. The recovery of an aedicule, on which a man is represented sat on the edge
of a tub (Minos), and of a basin for lustral water – both coming from the
sacellum – also testify the centrality of the water as cultual element, in a
liturgical context characterized by sacrificial offers (thysía).
The
Acragantinians in a second moment thought about acting in a different way: the
invasion in weapons of a zone made neutral through religious motivations asked
for a valid justification in order to avoid the accusation of sacrilege. They
said, with hypocrisy, that the sepulchre of Minos was on Colle (Hill) Madore,
under the temple of Aphrodite. It gave the possibility to attack because they
affirmed to want to avenge him: and this would not have made them in appearance
guilty of an unfair thing in the judgments of their contemporaries. By doing so
the Madore (together with the whole territory of Himera) fell in the hands of
Agrigento around 483 b.C.
The
excavations conducted on this tract of land (1995, 1998 2004) by the
Superintendence to the cultural heritage from Palermo – after the donation
of Antonino Caruso to the Commune of Lercara Friddi of the first finds
accidentally discoveries in 1992 – have brought to the light, besides, the
sacred area in examination, situated in proximity of the top. Meaningful
recoveries are parts of statuettes of Demeter and an incision in punic language
(evocative of Astarte) recalling, for analogy, the cult of Aphrodite, whose
presence on the Madore is without doubt proved by different recoveries: an
acephalous statuette of female divinity that has in her arms a hare (sacred
animal to Aphrodite), a piece of bowl with on the fund reproduced a swastika
and a foil embellished by bull heads embossed worked (clear figurative representations
to her connected).
As a
consequence of the false revenge of Theron the substitution of Demeter to
Aphrodite (both goddesses of the fertility) is possible, given the absence,
because of the following lack of the theme of the sepulchre, of the
couple Aphrodite/Minos: the nature was compared to the female
figure, therefore Aphrodite was equivalent to Demeter. Other finds (the
fragments of the antefisses of the temple, the model of hut with circular plan,
etc.) confirm my study that also justifies the presence of material imported
from Himera as simple commercial purchase, material that was inserted in a
culture influenced by Akragas. Among the bronzy foils discovered one represents
a female divinity (or Aphrodite or Demeter).
The sacred
space of this temple of Aphrodite partially was destroyed, in the way according
to which Diodorus Siculus tells, in 483/482 b.C. by Theron of Agrigento (in
reality in what could appear his hypogeal place there was not the Minoan tomb
invented by the Acragantinians, on the contrary a shop for the workmanship of
the metals). In the spring of 409 b.C. the Carthaginians, which occupied a
western part of Sicily, destroyed during a war against the Greek, the whole
inhabited area of Colle Madore and its population therefore was dispersed.
Considered the renown of the place I have believed possible a visit of the poet
Pindar in the temple of Aphrodite / sepulchre of Minos during
the period of his permanence in Sicily (476/475 b.C.), seen his relationships
with the Emmenidians and the aristocratic and commemorative matrix of his
poetry. My thesis is alternative to a series of other four locations proposed
by other researchers: Eraclea Minoa, the tholoi of Sant’Angelo Muxaro, Licata,
the Caves of the Gurfa of Alia.
The fortress
sicanian of Kamikos was usually identified with Sant’Angelo Muxaro, but this
should not involve that the pretense burial of Minos must automatically be
situated in its proximities: in the Greek reality the choice of the site of the
sepulchre and the connection with the myth were functional to the expansive
agrigentinian politics and not to the legend. Colle Madore introduces suitable
connotations and doesn’t matter the fact that is distant from the coast, rather
what is more is that it was situated on the axle Sabucina-Polizzello delimiting
in the VI century b.C. the northern border of the acragantinian dominion.
A study of
the early nineteenth century of G. Nicastro set Kamikos at Sutera: the summit
of the mountain San (St.) Paolino (to whose feet the modern country is placed)
is visible from the Madore looking toward east. The tholoi are always very
suggestive, but they are functional to the mythical aspect of the minoan
stories unlike the history of Agrigento and Theron more pertinent to the
analysis.
With regard to
Colle Madore my system diverges from a formulation elaborated by the
archaeologist Stefano Vassallo that connects this site to the influence of
Himera: particularly he interprets the person of the aedicule above mentioned
as Heracles and moreover sustains an etymology from the arab language of the
place-name Madore.
Danilo
Caruso / SICANIA - Il sito sicano di Colle Madore: dalla leggenda alla realtà
(essay in pdf)
