Leontini

Leontinoi (Carlentini, near Lentini)

A Greek city in Sicily, at the southern extremity of the Campi Leontini (Piana di Catania), the largest stretch of fertile plain in the eastern part of the island. Leontini lay six miles inland to the south of the river Terias (San Leonardo, or Lentini). According to mythology, Xuthus the son of the wind-god Aeolus reigned at Leontini; Heracles passed through the place, and it was the home of cannibal giants, the Laestrygones.

Enjoying an excellent water supply, the site was occupied since very early times, and when settlers (originating from Chalcis in Euboea) from the recently established Sicilian colony of Naxos (Punta di Schiso) arrived in 729 BC under the leadership of Theocles, they found native Sicels in possession. There are differing reports of what happened next. According to Thucydides the Chalcidians drove out the Sicels by force. Polyaenus (second century AD), however, had learned of an alternative story that the colonists swore an agreement to live in peace alongside this indigenous population, but subsequently admitted Megarian settlers (who later colonized Megara Hyblaea) on the condition that they turned the Sicels out. Archaeological evidence suggests that the two communities did exist for a time alongside one another.

About 615 or 609, Panaetius, with the help of oppressed classes, became the first `tyrant’ (autocratic ruler) of a Sicilian city-state. At this time Leontini was one of the richest Sicilian communities. Its coinage, which began at about the turn of the century, often depicts a lion (leon). This was a play on the name of the city, but the lion was also the symbol of Apollo, who was worshipped at Leontini with special devotion. Another coin-type was a grain of wheat in which the neighborhood abounded, thus providing the inhabitants with their prosperity.

Leontini was captured by Hippocrates of Gela c 494; and later a local `tyrant’ (autocrat), Aenesidemus, gained power. This despotic regime, however, was eliminated in 466. Thereafter the city repeatedly sought to evade Syracusan encroachment by contracting alliances with Athens. In 433/2, for example, such an understanding was reached, with Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria) as an additional adherent. Then in 427, during the Peloponnesian War, the most distinguished of Leontini's citizens, the sophist and rhetorician Gorgias, led a delegation to Athens—a landmark in the history of the art of rhetoric, which he introduced to that city. After occupation by the Syracusans five years later, Leontini supported the Athenian expedition against them in 415. However, with a brief intermission in 405–403, when it celebrated an alliance with Catana on its coinage, the city passed once again, and remained, under the control of Syracuse. During the Second Punic War between the Romans and Carthaginians the Syracusan monarch Hieronymus was murdered at Leontini (214), which was then sacked and annexed by the Romans. Losing its political privileges, it suffered in the Second Sicilian Slave War (104), but still derived prosperity from its fertile soil, to which Cicero bears witness. By the time of the later Roman empire, however, it had diminished in size.

At the entrance to the ancient city, which as recent excavations show, was first established on the hill of San Mauro, part of a fortified circuit of mid-seventh century date, and the remains of the south gate (described by Polybius as the Syracusan Gate), have been discovered, and several hundred yards of later fortifications of various epochs (sixth, fifth, third centuries) have come to light. Temples, too, have been located in the San Mauro and Metapiccola hills. A plateau on the Metapiccola summit has yielded remains of rectangular huts of the pre-Greek Sicel village. Sicel cemeteries, farther down, contain tombs in the form of small artificial caves.