Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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Selinunte
The ruins of Selinunte are some of the most impressive of the ancient Greek world, and
the site is one of the most captivating in Sicily.
Selinos (as it was known to the Greeks) was once one of the richest and most powerful
cities in the world, with over 100,000 inhabitants and an unrivalled temple-building pro-
gram. The most westerly of the Greek colonies, it was established by a group of settlers
from nearby Megara Hyblaea in 628 BC who had been attracted by its wonderful location
atop a promontory between two major rivers (now silted up), the Modione and Cottone,
the latter forming a secure natural harbour. The plains surrounding the site were over-
grown with celery (
selinon
in Greek), which served as inspiration for the new colony's
name.
Originally allied with Carthage, Selinunte switched allegiance after the Carthaginian
defeat by Gelon of Syracuse at Himera in 480 BC. Under Syracusan protection it grew in
power and prestige. The city's growth resulted in a litany of territorial disputes with its
northern neighbour, Segesta, which ended abruptly in 409 BC when the latter called for
Carthaginian help. Selinunte's former ally happily obliged and arrived to take revenge.
Troops commanded by Hannibal utterly destroyed the city after a nine-day siege, leav-
ing only those who had taken shelter in the temples as survivors; they were spared not out
of a sense of humanity but because of the fear that they might set fire to the temples and
prevent their looting. In a famous retort to the Agrigentan ambassadors who sought to ne-
gotiate for the survivors' lives, Hannibal replied that as they hadn't been able to defend
their freedom, they deserved to be slaves. One year later, Hermocrates of Syracuse took
over the city and initiated its recovery. In 250 BC, with the Romans about to conquer the
city, its citizens were relocated to Lilybaeum (Marsala), the Carthaginian capital in Sicily,
but not before they destroyed as much as they could. What they left standing, mainly
temples, was finished off by an earthquake in the Middle Ages.
The city was forgotten until the middle of the 16th century, when a Dominican monk
identified its location. Excavations began in 1823, courtesy of two English archaeologists,
William Harris and Samuel Angell, who uncovered the first metopes.
