with many notable works, for which he was greatly admired and honoured. Among the rest, he cast a ram in gold, that was set up in the temple of Venus Erycina; which he did with so great art, as those that beheld it thought it rather to be living than counterfeit. Now Minos, hearing that Cocalus had entertained Dædalus, prepares to invade the territory of Cocalus; but when he was arrived, Cocalus, doubting his own strength, promiseth to deliver Dædalus. This he performs not, but in the mean while kills Minos by treason, and persuades the Cretans, Minos's followers, to inhabit a part of Sicily; the better (as it seems) to strengthen himself against the Siculi. Hereunto the Cretans (their king being dead) gave their consent, and builded for themselves the city of Minoa, after the name of their king Minos. After, they likewise built the town of Engyum, now called Gangi; and these were the first cities built by the Greeks in Sicily, about two ages before the war of Troy; for the grandchildren of Minos served with the Greeks at the siege thereof. But after such time as the Cretans understood that their king had by treason been made away, they gathered together a great army to invade Cocalus; and landing near unto Camicus, they besieged the same five years, but in vain. In the end (being forced to return without any revenge taken) they were wrecked on the coast of Italy; and having no means to repair their ships, nor the honour they had lost, they made good the place whereon they fell, and built Hyria, or Hyrium, between the two famous ports of 'Brundusium and Tarentum. Of these Cretans came those nations afterward called Iapyges and Messapii. After the taking of Troy, Ægestus and Elymus brought with them certain troops into Sicily, and seated themselves among the Sicani, where they built the cities of Egesta and Elyma. It is said that Æneas visited these places in his passage into Italy; and that some of the Trojans, his followers, were left behind him in these towns of Sicily; whereof there want not good authors that make Æneas himself the founder. About the same time the Phoenicians seized upon the promontories of Pachinus and Lilybæum, and upon certain small isles adjoining to the main island; which they fortified, to secure the trades that they had with the Sicilians; like as the Portugals have done in the East India, at Goa, Ormus, Mosambique, and other places. But the Phoenicians stayed not there; for after they had once assured their descents, they built the goodly city of Panormus, now called Palermo. These we find were the nations that inhabited the isle of Sicily before the war of Troy, and ere the Greeks in any numbers began to straggle in those parts. It may perchance seem strange to the reader, that in all ancient story, he finds one and the same beginning of nations, after the flood; and that the first planters of all parts of the world were said to be mighty and giantlike men; and that, as Phoenicia, Egypt, Libya, and Greece, had Hercules, Orestes, Antæus, Typhon, and the like; as Denmark had Starchaterus, remembered by P Saxo Grammaticus; as Scythia, Britany, and other regions had giants for their first inhabitants; so this isle of Sicily had her Læstrygones and Cyclops. This discourse I could also reject for feigned and fabulous, did not Moses make us know, that the Zamzummims, Emims, Anakims, and Og of Basan, with others, which sometime inhabited the mountains and deserts of Moab, Ammon, and mount Seir, were men of exceeding strength and stature, and of the races of giants; and were it not that 9 Tertullian, St. Augustine, Nicephorus, Procopius, Isidore, Pliny, Diodore, Herodotus, Solinus, Plutarch, and many other authors, have confirmed the opinion. Yea, Vesputius, in his second navigation into America, hath reported, that himself hath seen the like men in those parts. Again, whereas the selfsame is ℗ Saxo G. in præfat. hist. q Tertul. de Resurr. Aug. de Civit. Dei, 1. 15. c. 9. Et quæst. in Gen. Niceph. 1. 2. c. 37. Procop. 1. 2. de written of all nations that is written of any one; as, touching their simplicity of life, their mean fare, their feeding on acorns and roots, their poor cottages, the covering of their bodies with the skins of beasts, their hunting, their arms and weapons, and their warfare; their first passages over great rivers and arms of the sea upon rafts of trees tied together; and afterward, their making boats, first of twigs and leather, then of wood; first, with oars, and then with sail; that they esteemed as gods the first finders out of arts; as of husbandry, of laws, and of policy; it is a matter that makes me neither to wonder at nor to doubt of it: for they all lived in the same newness of time, which we call old time, and had all the same want of his instruction, which (after the Creator of all things) hath by degrees taught all mankind: for other teaching had they none that were removed far off from the Hebrews, who inherited the knowledge of the first patriarchs, than that from variable effects they began, by time and degrees, to find out the causes; from whence came philosophy natural, as the moral did from disorder and confusion, and the law from cruelty and oppression. But it is certain that the age of time hath brought forth stranger and more incredible things than the infancy: for we have now greater giants for vice and injustice, than the world had in those days for bodily strength; for cottages, and houses of clay and timber, we have raised palaces of stone; we carve them, we paint them, and adorn them with gold; insomuch as men are rather known by their houses than their houses by them; we are fallen from two dishes to two hundred; from water to wine and drunkenness ; from the covering of our bodies with the skins of beasts, not only to silk and gold, but to the very skins of men. But to conclude this digression, time will also take revenge of the excess which it hath brought forth: Quam longa dies peperit, longiorque auxit, longissima subruit; "Long "time brought forth, longer time increased it, and a time "longer than the rest shall overthrow it." §. 2. The plantation of the Greeks in Sicily. WHEN the first inhabitants had contended long enough about the dominion of all Sicily, it happened that one Theocles, a Greek, being driven upon that coast by an easterly wind, and finding true the commendations thereof, which had been thought fabulous, being delivered only by poets, gave information to the Athenians of this his discovery, and proposed unto them the benefit of this easy conquest, offering to become their guide. But Theocles was as little regarded by the Athenians, as Columbus, in our grandfathers' times, was by the English. Wherefore he took the same course that Columbus afterwards did. He overlaboured not himself in persuading the noble Athenians (who thought themselves to be well enough already) to their own profit; but went to the Chalcidians, that were needy and industrious, by whom his project was gladly entertained. By these was built the city of Naxus, and a colony planted of Eubœans. But the rest of the Greeks were wiser than our western princes of Europe; for they had no pope that should forbid them to occupy the void places of the world. Archias of Corinth followed the Euboeans, and landed in Sicily, near unto that city called afterward Syracuse; of which, Syracuse, as Cicero relates, was the greatest and most goodly city of all that the Greeks possessed: for the situation is both strong and of an excellent prospect, from every entrance by land or sea. The port was (for the most part) environed with beautiful buildings; and that part which was without the city, was on both sides banked up, and sustained with beautiful walls of marble. The city itself was one of the greatest in the world: for it had in compass, (as Strabo reporteth,) without the treble wall thereof, one hundred and eighty furlongs, which made of our miles about eighteen. It was compounded of four cities, (Strabo saith of five,) to wit, Insula, Acra r dina, Tycha, and Neapolis; of which greatness the ruins and foundations of the walls do yet witness. After such time as the Dores of Peloponnesus had driven out the Sicilians, this goodly city for a long time bccame the seat of tyrants. The first whereof was Gelo; the second, Hiero the elder; the third, Thrasybulus; the fourth and fifth, Dionysius the elder and younger; the sixth, Dion; the seventh, Agathocles; the eighth, Pyrrhus; the ninth, Hiero the younger; the tenth and last, Hieronymus; who being slain at Leontium, at length the Romans conquered it under the conduct of Marcellus. that part only was then compassed with a wall which the Ætolians called Homothermon, the Greeks Nasos, the Latins Insula. He with his Corinthians having overcome the Siculi, drove them up into the country; and after a few years, their multitudes increasing, they added unto the city of the island that of Acradina, Tycha, and Neapolis. So as well by the commodity of the double port, capable of as many ships as any haven of that part of Europe, as by the fertility of the soil, Syracuse grew up in great haste to be one of the goodliest towns of the world. In short time the Greeks did possess the better part of all the sea-coast; forcing the Sicilians to withdraw themselves into the fast and mountainous parts of the island, making their royal residence in Trinacia. Some seven years after the arrival of Archias, the Chalcidians, encouraged by the success of the Corinthians, did assail and obtain the city of Leontium, built and possessed by the Siculi. In brief, the Greeks win from the Siculi and their associates the cities of Catana and Hybla, which, in honour of the Megarians that forced it, they called Megara. About five and forty years after Archias had taken Syracuse, Antiphemus and Entimus, the one from Rhodes, the other from Crete, brought an army into Sicily, and built Gela; whose citizens, one hundred and eight years after, did erect that magnificent and renowned city of Agrigentum, governed according to the laws of the Dorians. The Syracusians also, in the seventieth year after their plantation, did set up the city of Acra, in the mountains ; and in the ninetieth year Casmena, in the plains adjoining; and again, in the hundred and thirtieth year of their dwelling in Syracuse, they built Camerina; and soon after that, Enna, in the very centre of the island. So did the Cumani, about the same time, recover from the Siculi the city of Zancle, which they had founded in the strait between Sicily and Italy. They of Zancle had been founders of Hi mera. |