The Islands

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, and its natives echo Goethe’s claim that if you haven’t seen Sicily, you don’t know Italy. The region is heavily populated and pulsates with life. In fact, civilization on this island goes back almost 3000 years. Ancient peoples —the Siculi, the Sicani, and the Elymi—who probably came from other parts of the Mediterranean, were living on the island when the Greeks arrived in the middle of the eighth century B.C. The first Greek town we know of was Naxos, which was destroyed by Syracuse a few centuries later. Richard Strauss’s opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, though delightful, will not exactly give you an idea of life in old Magna Graecia.