We leave the lovely Baglio Oneto bound for Erice, on a mountaintop in the distance. The mountain, also Erice, is dominant in this area and very important to various forces that have dominated this area. In ancient times, Aeneas left Troy with most of his family and sailed around the Mediterranean to fulfill his destiny to found a great city, he came here and buried his father here. We go up the very windy road, grateful that Francesco is such a terrific driver. The mountain is about 750 meters tall, and they have bicycle and car races up here, which seems daunting.
We hike up a ways from the parking area, past amazing views. Below us is the city of Trapani, a major tourist area and sea salt area. Far off in the mist is where we stayed last night outside of Marsala. The mountain has two origin stories. One has to do with Jason and the Argonauts, a sailor went overboard to swim to the sirens, Aphrodite saw him and swept him up to this mountain,seduced him, and they had a half- divine child who became King Aeryx. Herakles, who had just finished taking the herd of cattle over the Alps, had one cow escape ro Sicily, Herakles came to get his cow, King Aeryx said it was his. The two wrestled, Aeryx lost, and was buried on top of the mountain. Herakles had to leave to finish his labors but said his descendants would return. A prince of Sparta came here and tried to be that descendant, but the Cathaginians ran him off. At Trapani Hannibal wipes out 30,000 Romans, then 70,000 at another place. They Romans asked a Sybil for help, who told them they needed to get Venus Aericina to help them, so they came here to take their pledge to Venus. After that, they did better.
Up here in early times the Phoenician goddess Astarte was worshipped. Every spring, they would release some doves that would to Carthage, and then 10 days later they would return with one red bird, symbolic of spring. The Greeks never settled here, but the Romans did take this over as a palce to the goddess of lioe and sex, Venus. There is no evidence of a temple as we usually think of it, although there were a few signs. There were about 100 priestesses, older teens from wealthy families, who also gave sex in the role of Venus as a transformational act. The priestesses were given lavish gifts as part of the worship. The priestesses would “retire” at about age 25, wealthy and skilled in the arts of sex, and desirable as wives because they were considered still virgins (Aphrodite was always a Virgin anew). When Christianity came in many temples were destroyed, especially ones dedicated to Aphrodite and sex. They then “cleansed” the area by making it an area for monasteries and convents.
We climb among the ruins of he castle at the top, with magnificent views. The open area is covered with wildflowers, thick with large black bees buzzing away. We come to a beautiful overlook to the sea. Douglas tells us of the story of the Minoan bulls in Knossos, raised to be beautiful for sacrifice. One bull was very beautiful, Poseidon wa jealous, and struck Minos’ wife with a passion for the bull. Minos’ wife fell for the beauty of the bull, and asked Daedalus how to make an artificial cow so the bull could mate with her. Daedalus makes the fake cow (he had no choice, she was the queen). She climbs in to the cow and mates with the bull, she has a child which does not look like her (the Minotaur, bull of Minos). Her husband had Daedalus build a labyrinth where the aminotaur is kept. Meanwhile Daedalus’ human son goes up to be in the Athenian games, the son wins and Athens kills him, then Minos marches on Athens and forces them to send him 7 girls and 7 boys every year as sacrifice for the bull. Also, Daedalus is locked in a tower with his son, so he will not give away the secret of the labyrinth. He gets feathers from the birds, and wax from the candles he is given, and Deadelus makes wings. They then take off for Sicily, but Icarus flies too close to the sun and dies. This tells us how important trade with Knossos. In the 2nd century, one writer said Daedalus actually invented the winged sail, not wings. There is an early Minoan outpost which suggests add with Sicily. King Minos wanted to find Daedalus, posed the question of how to thread a piece of string through a snail shell, Daedalus was in the back room, told him to put some sugar in the shell, tie the string to an ant who would go in seek the sugar, eat it and then come out. This also links to the legend of Theseus leaving a string (called a clew in Ancient Greek). Minos was then killed by the host of Daedalus, who made a golden honeycomb for his host, and this has become a kind of symbol in Sicily. Daedalus was also credited with busking the oldest walls here, on the sheer side, the largest blocks with no mortar, still here after many earthquakes.
Wee walk higher to overlook the Norman castle with pointed arches, occupied over the years since then. Below it was a “folly” built by a British eccentric in 1881, and now a hotel. Below are shelves of sedimentary rock pushed up form the sea. We walk through an “English” garden, less formal than the French style, with small rock walls. We walk through the town of narrow streets and tiny shops. We come to the cultural scientific institute. Ettore Majorana was the son of a postmaster, brilliant at numbers, who was often brought out to show off his skills. His parents sent him to a special school in Eome they study hydrology, he connected with Enrico Fermi, write some papers, became an expert of ionization, subatomic physics. In the late 1920s he taught classes, apprenticed under Heisenberg and Neils Bohr. He was thought to be a true genius scientist, but was very troubled by the ida of nuclear war, began to be ill, withdrew from teaching and society. He withdrew all his money from the bank, got on a ferry from Naples to Sicily, sent a telegram that he would remember them fondly until 11pm tonight. He has never been seen again since. It is not clear if he committed suicide, went to South America, or was kidnapped by the Nazis. In 1963 they converted a decommissioned church into a cultural center dedicated to h8m, which host scientific conferences. It is also dedicated to the peaceful uses of science. On top of the old church is the Franciscan symbol, one bare arm for strength and one cowled arm for faith. We turn a corner and suddenly see the most beautiful orange ceramics, which Douglas notes are locally made. I am so drawn to these, very different than the predominant blues and whites of most ceramic backgrounds. They do ship to the US, so I puchase a pretty oval serving dish, it will arrive in July.
We next stop at the pastry shop of Maria Grammatica, profiled in the book “Bitter Almonds.” Orphaned young, she was sent to the convent, but she was very rebellious, finally left the area but came back an opened a wonderful pastry shop. We stop for a break, Barney has a good cannolo, and I had a torta paradiso, both were delicious. A large tour group is in the garden behind the store but we manage to find some places, and Barbara starts a conversation with some of the tour group folks and pretty soon folks laughing together and sharing tables. We continue on to the main cathedral, Real Duomo, with its stunning carved plaster vaulted ceiling (replacing the original ceiling which fell down in the 19th century), all built on the site of a 4th century church. Inside was a mini-museum of relics, and lovely side chapels with large 17th century paintings. Barney opted to climb the 108 steps up the 13th century (Frederick III) tower which six bells and a beautiful view.
We depart lovely Erice for Segesta. Aeneas stopped here on his journey to found a great city. After Erice, they were here, founded another town, for the one-year anniversary of his father’s death they were celebrating, but the women got tired of all the celebrating, rebelled, and started to burn the ships. Aeneas prayed to Zeus who sent rain. Aeneas gave the men a choice to stay or go. Some stayed, Aeneas plowed around the large hill to outline the border of the town. The rest left with Aeneas to go to Rome, where Romulus and Remus, the sons of Aeneas, founded Rome.
The Eleni did not have temples, so how and why this got built is a question. When Athens went to war against Siracusa, they came to the island and looking for allies. The Eleni were said by Thucydides to be the descendants of Trojans, and in fact they are genetically linked to Anatolia. This area had not been Greek, but at a certain point the area became Heklenized, using coins with both languages, then only Greek. When the Romans come here they were very Hellenized as well, they fully adopted Greek culture. In this temple, there is no fluting on the columns, the drums are thin, there is no inner sanctum for the god, the blocks retain their building knobs, it seems unfinished. The setting in a somewhat wild area is typical of Greek temples, often situated in settings that appear to be wild or at least natural.
We get a simple snack at the ticket office/cafe/gift sp and sit outside under some shade. A couple of dogs patrol the area, gently begging for a handout … both have collars so they are not feral, they probably belong to the owners. The bus feels so nice and cool, and we are headed to Palermo. On our left is a national park with protected species, and a place where they do traditional farming techniques. We go by Castellomarre, founded by the Arabs, and from her came one Mafia gang in New York.
Douglas tells us about the Roman wheat economy with a very few very wealthy landowners and lots of slaves, which became feudal lords and serfs. The lords lived in Palermo and would come to the estate once or twice a year. Along came the Enlightenment and the idea of individual human rights, that people were more than just serfs or cannon fodder. The French tried to break up the big landowners, but the The French lost to the British who put the king back on the throne. The wealthy landowners were sitting in Palermo, the estates were being run by overseers called gavalotti, who were often brutal. The landowners either in Palermo or Catania or Naples just cared about the taxes, not about going into the interior, so the area was fairly lawless. Along came Garibaldi, and he promised to the serfs that they would get land. But the Garibaldi neeed the support of the landowners, although some lost their land and this land was auctioned and bought by the gavalotti who had often amassed resources. The gavalotti were not aristocrats, so they adopted the title of “Don” and the kissing of the ring, with a “paternal care” for the peaasants. Outsiders were not trusted, so outside police etc. were not trusted, thus there were power centers that were outside the law. A play was written called “The Mafiosi of …” and the word mafiosi came from an Arabic word of a man that had pride, took care of himself. The word began to be used to describe the local groups that seemed to run things locally.m Meanwhile by WWI the country unified but the country was poor, 27 million people left in the first century of unification, although about half came back. The Fascists came into power, but they cold unot tolerate altemative power Centers, they wanted everything to be centralized. They sent the navy here to show their power, told people they could make Italy great again. A strong police commissioner was sent named Mori to bring Sicily to heel, with carte blanche to do whatever was needed. He began locking people up and shutting down towns that would not surrender their mafiosi to him. He put his offices in the mafiosi homes, took their livestock, etc., many mafiosi fled to America where life was easier. In the 1930s, the mafia were lying low. Then comes WWII, the Allies needed someone to run the towns other than the Fascist administrators,so the loyal opposition were communists and socialists, so who was left were the mafiosi. After the war, new political parties were organized, the Christian Democrats were het best organized, and the Mafia would help get out the vote and the politicians would give them contracts, The Catholic Church did not like the Mafia, but they did not like the Socialists and Communists more, so they allied with tte Mafia. Everyone knew it was corrupt, but as long as the economy improved in the 1960s, people held their noses and voted ChristinanDemocrats. By the 1970s, there was a new, idealistic class of police and judges. Young people of the late 60s and the 70s wanted to change things. The American FBI did little against the Ma&if for a long time, fearing they would gain strength in the US. Eventually they forced any Mafiosi back to Italy. Sicilians looked down on the American Mafia who did a lot of anti-family stuff . A new group of Mafiosi from Corleone began to realize that more money could be made from drugs in the American style, they began to market heroin. Meanwhile the new judges were able to document money laundering and the Mafia were locked out up but freedin the corrupt appellate. The trials were televised and many people watched them. Giovanni Falcone was assassinated by the Mafia when they blew up a bridge he was driving over, it was a massacre. This was a turning point. The protection of judges was a big challenge, as the state needed to do this but was corrupt. Another judge, Borsalino was killed visiting his mother. At the Falcone funeral, the widow of of the police officer with him spoke, and her grief was caught in a photo, she looked like the Pieta. This photo became the symbol of the anti-Mafia movement.
Finally a student movement emerged, with confiscated Mafia resources used for anti-Mafia education, people became ashamed of themselves with the assassinations of two judges. Sicily also turned a corner and realized that they wanted to advance and not be a backwater. The Mafia realized that they overreached and anti-corruption efforts strengthened.
We enter Palermo, which was attractive and full of small parks, but the post-war building boom built under Mafia contracts led to buildings that are crumbling and have not withstood recent earthquakes very well. Palermo was the strongest Mafia area of Sicily because all the heroin money went through here. Lucky Luciano came back from America, ran the whole French Connection, when that got stopped, he worked with the Corsican organized crime, and later he sent heroin to Southeast Asia to American soldiers in Vietnam. Much of old Palermo was bombed during WWII, and only some was rebuilt, with Marshall Plan money that the Mafia controlled.
The Pope (Innocent IV) was unhappy with the Arabs being in Sicily from the 8th century on, but was busy fighting the Arabs and the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox who were all fighting each other in Italy. The pope told the Norman Prince Roger that if he could subdue Sicily and get rid of the Arabs, he could have it. The Normans came to Sicily, and conquered it over 30 years, around the same time Willam the Conqueror came to France to subdue England (he was of the same family). The Normans found that the Arabs were running the government well, the Eastern Orthodox ran agriculture well, and the Jews ran the economy well, so the Normans kept everyone in place.
We come to the old part of Palermo, which still has some of the elaborate old Spanish buildings. Our hotel used to be the stock market under the Bourbons, now the Hotel Piazza Borsa. Our room is huge, with a sitting area and balcony. We take a brief rest, and we go exploring to the marina. Lots of beautiful boats, and we have drinks at the marina bar, where a while wedding happens to be ending up, with bridesmaids in pale teal, a bride in a one-shoulder beautiful dress, and lots of family. It is fun ro watch them all interacting.
Back to the hotel, we meet the group for a dinner at Trattoria Atri Tempo, Sicilian home cooking and street food. As Douglas told us, there were massive amounts of food. The appetizers included huge capers, cheeses, sundries tomatoes, chickpea flour flatbreads, deepfried squash blossoms, ricotta cheese sliders, sweetbreads, etc. then came two pastas, a round long pasta with cauliflower and a broad fettuccini with ragu. Then there was spa roast pork shank with potatoes and stewed beef with vegetables. Finally a dressed salad, and then the final course. limoncello, bay leaf cello, and fennel cello took the table, along with cannoli, sesame cookies, and fresh watermelon. It was indeed a feast.
No comments:
Post a Comment