L'identità delle popolazioni anelleniche d'Occidente nel Peri Italias di Antioco di Siracusa

Abstract

Dealing with the origins of the populations settled in southern Italy and eastern Sicily Antiochus focuses on the theme of the autochthony of the Oenotrians, as well as other ethne originated from those, such as Italoi, Sicels and Morgetes. This can be especially inferred by the narrative context of fragment 2 (Jacoby), reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The sketchy reference to the Italic Archaeology made by Antiochus, who mentions the Oenotrians as the oldest people in Italy, contrasts with traditions absorbed into Pherecydes’ work, according to which the Oenotrians were an ethnos of a distant Arcadian kinship, descending from the eponymous Lycaon, son of Oenotrus. Antiochus’ portrayal of the Italic Archaeology aims to demolish Greeks’ previous ethnographical strands, in order to stress a sense of shared ethnic identity among all western populations,and to assert their autonomy and independency from the most ancient lineages of Mainland Greece. At the same time the historian intended to clarify in rationalist and etiological terms the reasons for the Oenotrians’ fragmentation, and the resettlement of the Sicels and Morgetes in Sicily, where they perceived themselves as distinct people, both politically and ethnically. This view supported Hermocrates’ political program which was shown at the Congress of Gela in 424: the Syracusan general appealed to unity and autonomy of the different Sicilian communities, to overcome those ethinc divisions which were encouraged by certain political circles in Mainland Greece.