Diodoro Siculo e le identità etniche dei Sicani e dei Siculi

Abstract

In his short account about the origins of Sicanians and Sicels Diodorus focuses on the process leading to the modification of the identity traits of these populations, from language to their education system which progressively became Greek; they eventually lost their previous ethnonymous. This picture can be hardly ascribed to the sources employed by Diodorus for the account of the so-called ‘Sicilian Archaeology’ in the first chapters of 5th Book (especially Timaeus); instead, it should be read in the light of changes occurring after Roman conquest of Sicily. For the gradual changing of identity traits of Sicanians and Sicels, up to a redefinition of these peoples as Siceliotes (that is, Greeks), seems to be connected to a sort of reaction and response to Rome and its ideology. Romans enhanced fictious ethnic kinships (such as that connecting the Elymians to the refugees from the Trojan War), and in so doing they tried to include anhellenic peoples of Sicily within Roman cultural heritage.