Segesta
Segesta, known as Egesta in Greek, is an ancient city located in northwestern Sicily, historically inhabited by the Elymi, a non-Greek people. The city is situated on and below Mount Barbaro, near the river Gaggera. According to legend, the city was founded by Aegestes, born of a Trojan maiden and the river-god Crimissus. Throughout its history, Segesta was involved in conflicts with neighboring cities, particularly Selinus, and formed various alliances, including a notable relationship with Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Despite periods of subjugation and destruction, particularly by the Carthaginians and later, Dionysius I of Syracuse, Segesta ultimately aligned with the Romans at the onset of the First Punic War, gaining the status of a free city after their victory. The remnants of Segesta include impressive structures such as a well-preserved Doric temple, initiated in the 5th century BCE but never completed, and an ancient theater that showcases its rich cultural heritage. Today, Segesta stands as a testament to the complex interplay of different civilizations in ancient Sicily, reflecting its historical significance in the region.
Segesta
in Greek Egesta, later Dicaeopolis (at first near Calatafimi, in northwestern Sicily)
This original city stood on and below Mount Barbaro, near the river Gaggera that debouched into the Crimissus (Fiume Caldo, joining the Fiume Freddo). According to Greek myth, the river-god Crimissus, assuming the form of a dog, became the lover of the Trojan maiden Segesta, who gave birth to the city founder Aegestes (all three deities are depicted on Segestan coinage). The early township was the principal center of the non-Greek Elymi, to whose undeciphered language, of Anatolian (?) origin, some locally discovered graffiti have been attributed; and the inscriptions on some Segestan coins seem to show Elymian forms.
Segesta was in continual conflict with Selinus (Selinunte), from at least c 580/576 BC. About 480–461, some of its earliest coins refer to an alliance with another Elymian town, Eryx (Erice); but it was considerably Hellenized from this time onward, as the fine style of these monetary issues indicates. Whether, however, as supposed, it formed an alliance with Athens in 454/3 (or 458/7) is now uncertain. But in 424, during the Peloponnesian War, its inhabitants supported the Athenians' first expedition to Sicily, and then in 418/417 they appealed to them for help (by making a fictitious display of their own wealth), thus encouraging the second, disastrous Athenian expedition to the island. Shortly afterward the Segestans asked for Carthaginian assistance, too, which duly brought about the destruction of Selinus and other cities in 409. In 397, as an ally of Carthage, Segesta was besieged by Dionysius I of Syracuse. Thereafter it remained subject to the Carthaginians, until Agathocles of Syracuse seized the city in 307, treating its population very savagely, and changing its name to Dicaeopolis, `city of the just.’ Rebuilt on the same site and reviving its former name, it resumed its dependency on Carthage, except for a brief period under the control of the invading King Pyrrhus of Epirus (276). At the beginning of the First Punic War (264–241), however, Segesta immediately joined the side of the Romans, with whom it shared a claim to Trojan descent; and, surviving a Carthaginian siege (260), its people were rewarded, after the Roman victory, by the status of a free and tax-free city (civitas libera et immunis), accompanied by a grant of extensive territory.
During the Roman period the town was transplanted to a new site (near Castellamare del Golfo, in the vicinity of medicinal sulphur springs). Serious damage was caused by the First Slave Revolt of 104–100. An isolated coinage under Augustus (31 BC–AD 14) probably celebrates the acquisition of Latin rights (under which the annually elected officials became Roman citizens). In AD 25, according to Tacitus, the Segestans successfully appealed to Tiberius for the reconstruction of the Temple of Venus (Aphrodite) on Mount Eryx (qv), which belonged to them. But thereafter Segesta disappeared from view; the Vandals, in the fifth century, were probably responsible for its final destruction.
The original township was surrounded by a double circuit of walls, of which certain sections, of various epochs, still survive, including towers and a gate. On a small hill to the west stand the columns, six on the facade and fourteen on the sides, of one of the finest of all surviving Doric temples, begun in 430/420 BC and never completed (an alternative theory pronouncing it to have been, not a Greek temple of the usual type but an open peristyle for oriental worship, has been contested). The art historian Bernard Berenson declared the building `an affirmation of reason, order and intelligence in the midst of the pell-mell, the indifference and the anarchy of nature.’
An earlier shrine has now been discovered underlying the temple, and another has been found at Mango on Mount Barbaro within the ancient walls. The same hill displays a theater of early Hellenistic date, constructed over a prehistoric site and cave and modified in Roman times. Recent examination of a large deposit at Vanella on the same mountainside, consisting perhaps of votive objects tipped down from a sanctuary, has illustrated the penetration of Greek material from c 630 to 420.