Sicily and the “Clash of Civilizations” - Why Greco-Roman...Why NOT Etruscan-Roman or Phoenician-Roman Civilization?
Sicily and the “Clash of Civilizations” - Why Greco-Roman...Why NOT Etruscan-Roman or Phoenician-Roman Civilization?
(April 20, 2012)
'Phoenicians Bartering with Ancient Britons' / ‘Victorious Youth’ 300-100 BC
There are no “History Cycles” – Just the ‘Same-O’ ‘Same-O’! The Ancient European Greeks fought wars with Middle East Persians. Subsequently, Greek colonist of Sicily melded with the indigenous Euro-Latin Sicilians to form the Siceliot culture, but went to war with the Middle-Eastern Phoenician colonist in Sicily. Later the Euro-Latin Romans melded with the Siceliots to form the Greco-Roman culture, but they went to war with the Middle Eastern Carthaginians in Sicily. The Latin-Romans in turn went to war with the Middle Eastern Etruscans in Italy. Later, Medieval European Crusaders invaded the Middle East, and today the Europeans are warring with (you guessed it) the Middle East. Clearly, Toynbee and Huntington’s “Civilization” historiography warrants serious consideration.
“Civilization”
The renowned classical scholar and world historian Arnold J. Toynbee used the word “Civilization” to denote a large social aggregation of smaller “communities” (e.g. nation-states, city-states, fiefdoms, tribes, etc.). He wrote:
“Civilizations are wholes whose [community] parts all cohere with one another and all affect one another reciprocally.” (A Study of History vol. iii, [1934] p. 380 emp.+)
For example, we currently speak of “Western Civilization”, consisting of individual nation-states [i.e. community-parts] such as England, France, Germany, America, etc. Whereas; in the so-called Middle Ages, “Western Civilization” was an aggregate of various “communities” such as feudatories, duchies, city-states, etc. In each case what we mean by Western Civilization is a “whole whose parts cohere and reciprocally affect each other”.
Sixty years after Toynbee posited his Civilization thesis, political scientist Samuel P. Huntington published a renowned seminal article “The Clash of Civilizations?”, in the elite and politically influential journal Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993), wherein he posited that the post-Cold War era would be characterized by conflicts between societies of different religions and cultures.
More specifically, according to Huntington:
“The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.
“The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” (p. 22, emp.+)
The history of ancient Sicily clearly supports to the Toynbee/Huntington historiography.
Greco-Roman Civilization
It is common to see history books (especially high school and college text) treating ancient Greece and Rome as societies distinct from each other, and represented as early ‘evolutionary’ stages of Western Civilization; although, one also reads sweeping generalizations about the ‘Greco-Romans’.
Toynbee argues that the Greeks and Romans are “community” parts of one unique and distinct society; i.e. the Greco-Roman Civilization. And, that civilization passed out of existence centuries before the equally distinct Western Civilization came into existence.
As Germany, France, etc. are individual political/cultural entities in a single Western Civilization; similarly, Greece and Rome were political/cultural components of a single Greco-Roman Civilization. Even though Greece and Rome (as Germany and France) had different languages, religions, economies, political systems, etc., and they competed and fought wars with each other; nevertheless, they shared a common cultural history that warrants the common generic classification denoted by the singular social entity “Greco-Roman Civilization”.
In the early part of the first millennium B. C. (circa 800 B.C.) three eastern Mediterranean people came to Italy.
· The Greeks came to eastern Sicily and southern Italy.
· The Phoenicians came from present day Lebanon to western Sicily.
· The Etruscans, most likely, came from present day Turkey to northwest Italy.
Before long all three would struggle for dominance of Italy and Sicily.
However, an interesting pattern of blending and conflicting cultures developed, ultimately giving rise to the Greco-Roman Civilization and the demise of the Phoenicians and Etruscans.
[Note: Etruscan origins are still debated; however, it seems to me that the balance of the argument is decidedly on the side of historians claiming they came from the area of present day Turkey (e.g. Toynbee, Will Durant, D. Randall-Maciver, etc.)
Indeed, there is reported genetic evidence to that effect – see: “Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Modern Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans” http://www.cell.com/AJHG/retrieve/pii/S0002929707611069]
Latin Relations with Greeks – Blending Cultures
The indigenous Latin people in Sicily (e.g. Sicels) melded fairly easily into Greek society. The profound and renowned classical scholar Edward A. Freeman wrote about the indigenous Sicilians (i.e. Sicels) and Greek-Sicilians (i.e. Siceliots) in his seminal work on Sicily:
“The Sikel I hold to be an undeveloped Latin...
When the Sikel's day of progress came, it took the shape of assimilation to the Greek, of gradual adoption into the Greek body.
The distinction between Sikel and Sikeliot, between the folk of the land and the Greeks who had settled in their land...died out slowly but surely, and was wholly forgotten in the days of Cicero.
So the people of the extreme south of Italy, Sikels and others, had so much in common with the Greeks that they could be changed into assimilated Greeks...(The History of Sicily From The Earliest Times Vol. I, 1891, p. 21 emp.+)
In short, the indigenous Sicel (i.e. Latin-Sicilians) melded into the Siceliot (i.e. Greek-Sicilians) culture to become one unified Sicel-Siceliot culture.
Phoenician Relations with Greeks – Conflicting Cultures
However, the Greek colonists on the eastern side of Sicily were never able to reconcile with the Phoenician colonist in the west. Freeman writes:
“[Whereas,] the Greeks found the greater part of Sicily in the hands of near kinsfolk [Latin] Sikel inhabitants...[The Phoenician] rivals of the Sikeliots were utter aliens... (p. 19 emp.+)
The Sicelots (Greek-Sicilians) were in continuous conflict with the Phoenicians; Freeman:
"The fact of the history of Phoenician dealings with Sicily is that from the more part of the spots which they had occupied in Sicily they did give way before the Greeks...
“The general fact that the Phoenicians withdrew from the various points along different parts of the coast, from the promontories and islands...
“They withdrew to form three more considerable settlements in the northwestern part of Sicily...The retreat would doubtless be gradual; as the Greek came on, the Phoenician fell back.” ( p 245 emp.+)
However, as the Sicilian-Phoenicians were giving way to the Sicilian-Greeks, the Carthaginian- Phoenicians colonist in North Africa were growing into a mighty economic and military power. They eventual assumed power over the Phoenician part of western Sicily, which brought the Greek’s westward expansion to a halt.
The Sicelots were no match for the military might of Carthage. When in 275 B.C. the last Greek effort to remove Phoenicians from Sicily failed, the brilliant General Pyrrhic is said to say: “What a wrestling ground we are leaving, my friends, for the Carthaginians and the Romans.”
Roman Relations with Etruscans and Phoenicians – Conflicting Cultures
The Latin-Romans, unlike their Latin-Sicel brethren in Sicily, who melded into colonial Greek society, were not able to reconcile themselves into colonial Etruscan society. When Etruria was at its height in power and Rome was a village on the Tiber, the Romans partook of Etrurian culture and technology.
However, as soon as Rome came into its own power it clashed relentlessly with the Etruscans until Etruria was virtually banished from the pages of history. Their language is still unknown, and what little we know of them comes from nineteenth and twentieth century archeological digs and historians digging through Roman text and artifacts to discern Etruscan influences.
Similarly, when Rome marched on Sicily there was no question of rapprochement with the Carthaginian/Phoenician-Sicilians. The Romans fought them to the proverbial and literal “death”. It has been said, albeit it metaphorically not literally, that Rome ‘plowed salt into the earth” around Carthage to insure that it would never rise to power again.
This conveys the sense of irreconcilable difference between the Euro/Latin-Romans and the Middle Eastern/Phoenician-Carthaginians.
Latin Roman Relations with Latin Sicel-Siceliots – Blending Cultures
In an article “Auxilia and Gymnasia: A Sicilian Model of Roman Imperialism” (The Journal of Roman Studies Vol. 97, (2007), pp. 68-100), Jonathan Prag provides voluminous evidence of the degree that Latin Romans in Sicily were able to integrate seamlessly into the Latin Sicel-Siceliot culture giving rise to the Greco-Roman culture. For example, he writes:
“Roman rule in Sicily entailed the continuity, indeed the encouragement of traditional norms...
“A development which might traditionally be characterized as a lack of ‘Romanization’ on the island – or, vice versa, as the continuity of a vital Hellenistic civic culture – is, perhaps paradoxically, a direct consequence of Roman rule...
“Studies have increasingly emphasized the Hellenistic aspects of [Roman] Republican Sicily
“What is all to little remarked upon is the simple oddity of a Roman magistrate being sent year on year, in the second century b.c., to hold a large and important provincia without any Roman soldiers to accompany him
Conclusion
Clearly, the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans in Sicly demonstrate a relentless pattern of European civilizations clashing with Middle Eastern. Indeed, after the fall of the Greco-Roman Civilization, the Arabs captured Sicily for the Middle East once again until the European Normans conquered Sicily in the eleventh century. In the seventeenth century the Turks invaded Europe to the doors of Vienna. From the nineteenth through the twentieth-first centuries Europeans have repeatedly invaded the Middle East.
“And the beat goes on!”
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