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Document Details :

Title: Apollo Mediating Identities in Ancient Greek Sicily
Author(s): DONNELLAN, Lieve
Journal: BABESCH
Volume: 87    Date: 2012   
Pages: 173-186
DOI: 10.2143/BAB.87.0.2160697

Abstract :
The importance of the cult of Apollo Archegetes of Naxos for Sicily is amply recognised, and is generally connected by scholars with Sicilian theoria and communal identity. It is claimed in this paper, however, that the religious and political functions of Apollo Archegetes were more diverse and that Apollo Archegetes fulfilled an important local role, rather than being a symbol of a universal and well defined Sikeliot identity. Numismatic evidence indicates that Apollo Archegetes symbolised the opposition of Naxos, Leontinoi and Katane against Syracuse in the 5th century BC. Only in the 4th century BC, with the Timoleontic symmachia, was the image of Apollo Archegetes truly pan-Sikeliot. Sikeliot identity was in the Archaic period rather loose and of a religious nature. It is proposed to call this identity ‘proto-Sikeliot’, to distinguish it from a well defined Sikeliot identity, which crystallised only after the Athenian invasion, to become well established in the 4th century BC.

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