Sicilian landscape as contested space in the first century BC: three case studies

Abstract

Sicily was made the first overseas Roman province between 241 and 212 BC, and became knownas the ‘bread-basket’ of the Republic due to the island’s famously fertile farmlands. The island,with its history of pre-Roman conflict, second century slave revolts, and use as a militarystronghold in the civil wars of the first century, never dissociated itself from conflict. As such, itsconstruction as a ‘contested space’ was popular in the literature of first-century Rome, employedas a symptomatic topos of the state of Rome – the closer Roman Sicily resembled its preannexationstate, the greater the perceived threat to the Republic, and vice-versa. This construction of Sicily and its landscape was employed by authors such as Cicero,Diodorus Siculus, and Virgil to great effect, as they engaged with, reinforced, or challenged themajor contemporary discourses of imperialism, the impact of civil war, and food security. Cicero’sIn Verrem presents its audience with a Sicily that has been purposely constructed to deliver themost damning image of Verres, the infamously corrupt governor of Sicily from 73-71, the mostsympathetic and familiar image of the Sicilians, presented as virtuous and stoic farmers, and aSicily that has been reduced to a war-torn desert under Verres’ rule. Through his construction ofSicily as contested space, Cicero secured his win against Verres in court and demonstrated to hisaudiences the danger Verres’ actions presented Rome, threatening the stability of therelationship between Sicily and Rome. Diodorus Siculus’ work of universal history, the BibliothekeHistorika, adopts the construction of Sicily as contested space at a time when the future of theisland was uncertain. A Sicilian himself, Diodorus places a primacy on Sicily in his compilation,foregrounding his home’s importance not only to Rome’s imperial hegemonic success, but to thedevelopment of the world. Diodorus’ use of Sicily as a contested space highlights his subtlecritiques of Roman rule, which evidently owe much to his identity as a Sicilian Greek living atRome through the tumultuous 40s and 30s. Virgil’s Aeneid, which features a dual-construction ofSicily across two books, employs Sicily as a contested space in reaction to this same period, andthe contemporary anxieties of the 20s. In the wake of decades of civil unrest, many Romans wereunsure whether the sole rule of Augustus would hold, or whether the state would be plungedback into civil war. Virgil addresses these anxieties through his construction of Sicily. In Book Three, Virgil presents Sicily as an adversary of Aeneas and as symbolic of pre-Roman Sicily, heldby hostes. In Book Five, the once-contested Sicily is depicted as a settled space due to thepresence of Rome. This comparative construction recalls the events of the 30s, reflects theanxieties of the 20s, and presents Virgil’s support for the Augustan peace in clear terms for hisaudience: just as the presence of Aeneas, and the defeat of Carthage, brought peace to Sicily andRome before, so too will Augustus’ victory over Sextus Pompeius (and so, Sicily) continue to bringpeace to Rome in the 20s. This thesis, through the analysis of Sicilian landscape in three separate literary works ofthe first century, demonstrates that Sicily’s appearance in the literary record of the Late Republicis not merely as a location of historical or mythological events, but a reaction to contemporaryevents and personal literary goals, resulting in a Sicily that is constructed as symptomatic of thestability of the Roman state and emblematic of Empire.