The Sicilians of the Balkans and the Thracian connection

Here we speak of Thracians, an Indo-European population of the eastern Indo-European branch, the satəm one, which is why the Proto-Illyrian Sicilians belonging to the western branch, kentum, would have nothing to do with it, at least apparently. But instead they have something to do with it, and how. In fact, it is historically and "toponymically" proven that Sicilian elements have penetrated the Balkan Peninsula on several occasions, most of them merging with the local tribes.

di Alessandro Bonfanti

cover: flag of the Szeklerland
("Land of the Sicilians" or "fields of the Sicilians")

Some of you also kindly asked me about the case of Sicilians of Transylvania, if they have anything to do with our Sicilians. I definitely answer in this way: partly yes and partly no. I know, it sounds like an answer that says 'nothing', but it doesn't and you will see why. First of all, who are the Sicilians of Transylvania? And then, did our proto-Illyrian Sicilians ever reach Romania? And finally, our Sicilians have also reached somewhere else? Now comes the fun.

The people of the Sicilians of Transylvania, called Szekler in Hungarian language, I follow in Romanian e Sicilians in Latin (so I anticipate the next '' episode '', which will be really challenging but also surprising), lives mostly in the Romanian Transylvanian area and in the minority in Vojdovina in Serbia, and speaks an ancient Hungarian dialect. These Sicilians live in a region of Romania called in their language, a Hungarian dialect, Szeklerland '' Land of the Sicilians '', in the number of about 670.000, divided into the various districts of Harghita, Covasna and Mureş. The origin of these Sicilians is clearly Ugric-Magyar, therefore linguistically related to the Finnish one, and have nothing to do with our Italic and proto-Illyrian Sicilians, at least from a linguistic point of view.

But there is something anomalous. These Sicilians are Hungarians who settled in the neighboring regions of the possessions of Hungary in the past and no longer belong to this nation, namely the Romanian Székelyföld and the Serbian Vojdovina. The Hungarians conquered their present land, ancient Pannonia, now Hungary, in 896 AD and the Hungarian scholar Gyula László speaks of a previous arrival of the Hungarians themselves, before the final conquest, already in the fifth century of the Common Era, and of which the first wave included the tribe of Szekler, already present at that time in the Carpathians. Their language still retains very archaic terms of the Hungarian language, so this lineage of the Hungarians, perched in the mountainous areas and linguistically isolated itself, has kept its idiom alive. The problem is now this, whether these Sicilians have acquired this name a posteriori, that is, starting from their Romanian and Balkan settlements, or have they had it from the beginning.

It is probable (therefore more than possible) that these Sicilians were so called by the neighboring natives of the late ancient era because they came from the Carpathians to settle permanently on a territory that is now too desolate and which in a much, much older time was the seat of Proto-Illyrian Sicilians of Balkan origin, which in their long stay have left their indelible mark in the name of the place. In fact, the Sicilians Magyars, having been the first of the Hungarians to arrive, occupied a very large area, from the south-western foothills of the Carpathians to the north-eastern Balkans. In the Balkans there were Sicilians settled since the Eenolithic age, this is now known, but in the areas of Thrace and Dacia? Well, I can also provide you with proof in this case.

Diodorus Siculus, my fellow countryman, speaks in book V (50-51) of the Historical library of an event that took place inNaxos island, located in the center of the Aegean Sea. The story is this: it says that earlier this island was called Strongile and was occupied by Bute and a handful of Thracians. Bute and Lycurgus were both sons of Boreas, but of different mothers, and Bute was the youngest. Bute made an attempt on his brother's life to take his kingdom and for this he was thrown out by his father; and so he sailed with an army of Thracians to Strongile, an island of the Cyclades, and plied piracy there. Having no women with them, they went to Thessaly, to Drio, a place in Phthiotic Achaia where there was a thiasus of the cult of Dionysus. Bute and the Thracians took the women with them. Bute took Coronis, wanting to lie with her and against her will, who by praying to Dionysus managed to escape from Bute. The latter, taken by madness, died falling into a well. The other Thracians took the other women, including the noble Ifimedia, wife of Aloeus, and daughter Pancratides.

When the Thracians returned to Strongile, they elected Agassemenus king, to whom they also gave in wife Pancratis, after she herself had been contested by two Thracians, Siculus and Ecetorus, who had killed each other in the duel shortly before Agassameno's election as king. As for Ifimedia, she was given to one of the most well-liked commanders by Agassamenus himself. Then came the sons of Aloeus, Oto and Ephialtes, who conquered the island in search of the two women. They ruled over the Thracians and also ended up killing each other in a duel for domination of the island. The Thracians stayed there for another time, until a famine caused them to leave. Thus came the Cari expelled from the island of Latmia, whose king was Naxos son of Polemon. Oto and Ephialtes gave the name Dia to the island and the king Naxos finally imposed his own final name. And Pliny says that Naxos was also known as "Sicily Minor".

Here we talk about Thracians, Indo-European population of the Eastern Indo-European branch, that satəm, which is why the Proto-Illyrian Sicilians belonging to the western branch, kentum, they wouldn't have anything to do with it, at least apparently. But instead they have something to do with it, and how. This demonstrates in fact that Sicilian elements have also penetrated into Thrace, merging with the local tribes, resulting clearly evident in the anthroponyms of Thrace, that is, of present-day Bulgaria and part of Romania. But this does not exclude that the whole area facing north, that is the Dacia, the current Romania, may not have received Sicilian infiltration.

Therefore, I think that those `` Sicilian fields '' are actually a much older denomination than the settlement of the Magyar Sicilians, who took that name from the time they settled in the same area. In short, those Magyars became '' Sicilians '' because they arrived and settled in a land that '' was '' long before reached by Siculi, by proto-Illyrian Sicilians, although perhaps already absorbed by the Thracian tribes.

Also the mention of the Sicilians in Homeric Odyssey it refers to Balkan Sicilians and not to those who settled in Sicily in the '' post-Thapsian '' space-time context, ie starting from the first half of the 1270th century. BC, when the Achaeans, once the Sicilians arrived en masse in eastern Sicily from the peninsula between 1250 and XNUMX BC (faces di Pantalica I Nord), abruptly stopped docking along the South-Eastern coasts and trading with the Sicans. From that moment, in fact, i Sicani began to migrate towards the western side of the island, settling beyond the Himera river, today's Salso, leaving the entire eastern side to the bellicose Sicilians (the Achaeans therefore changed their routes, reaching other coasts of Sicily, such as that of the well-known Kamikos, palace of Sican king Kokalos).

In XX book ofOdyssey (vv. 382-383) we read:… τοὺς ξείνους ἐν νηῒ πολυκλήϊδι βαλόντες / ἐς Σικελοὺς πέμψωμεν, ὅθεν κὲ τοι ἄξιοιον. ''... we throw the foreigners on the ship full of oarlocks / and we will send them to the Sicilians, from whom you would derive adequate income''. This is as much as one of the Suits (''pretenders'') shouts to Telemachus to send the soothsayer Theoclimenus together with that ragged beggar, who was if not Ulysses in disguise, after predicting the calamities that would befall the Suitors themselves.

It also appears in the same narrative fabric the old servant of Laertes, the elderly father of Ulysses, mentioned with the name Σικελή (book XXIV, vv. 211, 366 and 389). And in fact it is neither of praenomen nor of nomen, but only of epiclesis having the function of qualifying the origin of the elderly woman, just as in the case of the Sicilian king who arrived at the court of Pandosia in the land of the Enotri and was welcomed by King Morgete. Just as the king Σικελός was such for being the "king of the Sicilians", or rather the "first among the Sicilians", the elderly Σικελή was such for being a member of theethnos of the Sicilians. L'Odyssey he does not argue about the whereabouts of these Sicilians, nor about the exact provenance of the elderly woman.

After the destruction of Ilio / Troia, in 1184-3 BC, the Sicilians had already made the first migration from the Italian peninsula to Sicily, and there were still other Sicilians in the same peninsula, as there were other Sicilians in the Balkan peninsula and just a lot near Ithaca. The Balkan Sicilians were therefore much closer and known to the Itacese and the suitors than the Sicilians present in Sicily and the Italian peninsula. Not surprisingly, the hydronyms of eastern Sicily mentioned in the poem are precisely the '' old '' ones, the Sican ones (with a radical form white- '' pure / white '' and by semantic extension '' river ''), and not the '' new '' ones, that is the Sicilian ones (with radical form assume- / assy- / assi- '' origin / mouth / source '' and by extension '' sivinity '' and '' river ''), and the island area itself is Sikania, Not Sikelia.