Aitna e Naxos nella politica territoriale di Ierone: alcune osservazioni

Abstract

Aim of this study is to review the literary sources about Hieron’s politics against the Chalcidian colonies of Katane and Naxos, in order to explain some aspects of the ethnic redistribution in the territory ruled by the tyrant in connection with the re-foundation of Aitna and Naxos. The colony of Aitna looks like a city made up by various ethnic groups, and this is not contradicted by the famous excursus about the foundation of Aitna in Pindar’s First Pythian Ode, where there is no clue about any supposed opposition between Ionian and Dorian ethne. Here, the emphasis on the Dorian institutions introduced at Aitna by Hieron in favour of his son Deinomene seems functional to show that the royal power, inspired by the Eraclid and Dorian nomoi, would have assure harmony and peace inside the mixed community of Aitna, exactly as in Laconia Illos’ laws and Aigimios’ rules allowed the two bloodlines that gave rise to the city of Sparta to live with perfect agreement each other and to hold a firm civic stability. Regarding Naxos, archaeological evidence clearly shows that Hieron strengthen the role of the first Sicilian colony, reshaping the town with a different urban orientation and an orthogonal layout of the streets. Even in this case, it seems likely that the new inhabitants of Naxos were ethnically mixed, and that this resettlement was functional to avoid that the Chalcidian peoples could join forces against the tyrant, looking to the support of other near cities as Rhegion and Messene. But above all, the new life of Naxos was focused on the strengthening of the naval dockyards and the activities connected to the harbor. Within the Hieron’s territorial program, Naxos should have played the role of the Northern outpost of the Syracusan navy, in order to control closely the military and commercial traffics passing through the Strait of Messina, and to inhibit the possible claims put forward by Micito, who recently ascended the throne of Rhegion. Naxos, therefore, should have play a “complementary” role to Aitna in the military and commercial control of the boundaries of the new Aitnaian arché created by Hieron for his son Deinomene.