Location: Trapani Province Map
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Segesta is one of the best preserved ancient archeological sited in Italy located in Trapani province. The legend goes that Segesta was constructed in the 13th century BC by Trojan hero Aeneas for his king Egesta or Atsesta. Hero subsequently named this city in honor of his monarch. Another Greek myth suggests that Greek colonists from Philoctetes found the city. Whatever might be the real origin, the location for Segesta was chosen wisely. It is situated on confluence of two rivers Scamander and Simoentom. The wealth of the settlement became too tempting and in 307 BC it was captured by Agathocles and completely destroyed. Most of Segeste residents were sold into slavery. General Agathocles subsequently rebuild the city and renamed it Dikeopolis. During expansion of the Roman Republic the city became part of the Republic and saw dramatic increase in wealth and construction of public buildings. Despite centuries of neglect many of the buildings are in excellent state of preservation.
The date of the
foundation is not known, but documents show that the city was
inhabited in the 9th century BC. The Greek historian Thucydides
narrates that the Trojan refugees, crossing the Mediterranean Sea,
reached Sicily, and founded Segesta, called Aegesta, and Erice.
These refugees took the name of Elimi.
According to the myth,
Segesta was founded by Aceste (who was its first king), son of the
Trojan noble Egesta and of the river god Crimiso. Virgilio reports
the legend according to which Segesta was founded by Aeneas to rest
the old men and women, after they had set the ships on fire just
before resuming the journey.
Since their
foundation, Segesta and Selinunte were at war with each other for
border reasons. The first clash (the Pentatlo di Cnidus episode)
took place in 580 BC. and Segesta emerged victorious. In 415 BC
Segesta asked Athens for help to intervene against the Selinuntine
initiative supported by Syracuse. The Athenians took Segesta's
request as a pretext and decided on a large expedition to Sicily,
they besieged Syracuse but were disastrously defeated. The clashes
ended in 409 BC, when Selinunte was besieged and destroyed by the
Carthaginians, again invoked by the Segesta people.
In 307 BC
many Segestani were killed or sold as slaves by the Syracusan tyrant
Agàtocle for not having provided him with the requested economic
aid. Agàtocle, after the ferocious repression, changed the name of
the city to Diceopoli (just city).
In 276 BC the city
surrendered itself to the powerful army of Pyrrhus, returning under
the Punic influence at the departure of the Epirota.
In the First Punic War, in 260 BC he allied himself with Rome which had great respect for it because, according to tradition, both cities had common origins (both descending from the fugitives of Troy). The Romans defended it from the Carthaginian attempted reconquest. It was therefore guaranteed the status of a free city, with exemption from the imposition of taxes, unlike the other Sicilian cities (civitas libero ac immunis).
It was in 104 BC that from Segesta began the slave revolts
in Sicily, the so-called servile wars, led by Athenion. These
uprisings were bloodied by the Romans in 99 BC.
The fall of
the city
Segesta was destroyed by the Vandals in the 5th century,
and never rebuilt in the size of the previous period.
medieval village
Nevertheless, a small settlement remained and,
after the expulsion of the Arabs, the Normans built a castle there.
This, enlarged in the Swabian era, was the center of a medieval
village. The name was then almost lost until 1574, when the
Dominican historian Tommaso Fazello, the architect of the
identification of several ancient cities in Sicily, located the
site.
On April 20, 1787 Goethe arrives in Segesta who dwells
in his descriptions of the Journey to Italy on the structure of the
temple and informs us that a restoration was carried out in 1781.
The archaeological area of Segesta,
which became an archaeological park in 2013, includes several sites.
The area, since the nineties, has been enormously re-evaluated
thanks to numerous discoveries concerning the ruins of the ancient
Elymian city.
the Doric temple,
theater
sanctuary of
contrada Mango
agora and navarca's house (Greek-Roman period).
medieval area (city walls, castle attached to the theater, two
Norman churches, the medieval quarter and the mosque).
Temple
The temple, also known as the "Great Temple", was built during the
last thirty years of the 5th century BC, on the top of a hill west
of the city, outside its walls. It is a large hexastyle peripteral
temple (ie with six columns on the shorter side, not fluted). On the
long side it has instead fourteen columns (in total 36 therefore, 10
meters high). The current state of conservation presents the entire
colonnade of the peristasis.
theater
The theater was built
on the highest peak of Monte Barbaro, on a site, behind the agora,
which was already the seat of a place of worship many centuries
earlier. Use the splendid panorama of the sea and hills as far as
the eye can see as a backdrop. It was built at the end of the 3rd
century BC. with blocks of local limestone. It differs from the
typical structure of Greek theaters because the auditorium with a
diameter of 63 meters, does not rest directly on the rock but was
specially built and is supported by retaining walls. It consists of
two entrances, slightly offset from the main axis of the building
and is able to hold about 4000 people.
Of the other components of
the city we know the walls with the articulated Porta di Valle, some
residential districts and some monuments pertinent to medieval
Segesta (walls, castle, mosque and top village).
The
sanctuary of the Mango district, outside the walls, must have been
built in the sixth century. B.C. Also of the Hellenistic-Roman city
are the agora and a residential building of great value called the
"navarca's house" for the decorations at the prow of the ship carved
on the sides of an elegant peristyle.