In the course of the last two years, we have spent a lot of time investigating literary connections to Italy’s capital for our new book, The Book Lover’s Guide to Rome.  We decided to write in chronological order, starting with the Classical period, by taking a look at Virgil’s Aeneid, specifically with reference to Aeneas and Evander as they walk the latter’s domains – a conceit that allows Virgil to wax lyrical about the Rome to come.  However, even with a cursory perusal of Virgil’s magnum opus, the curious reader will spot many references to the Sicily experienced by Aeneas, the legendary ancestor of Romulus and Remus.  His Trinacria is a key destination in linking the Trojan/Greek past to his Roman future.  In fact, the island features in more than one of the books that make up the entire volume.

So how did Virgil’s hero find himself in Trinacria and what did he do there?  In Book 3 of The Aeneid, Aeneas recounts his story to Queen Dido in Carthage.  After a brush with Charybdis in the Straits of Messina and the Cyclops at Aci Trezza, he tells Dido that his Trojan fleet made for Ortygia, the island just off the Syracusan mainland on the eastern coast of Sicily.  As a spot ruled by Anius, a friend of his father Anchises, and righteously blessed by the god Apollo, Aeneas is sure he will be able to seek the god’s guidance.  As he is to find out, the site is in fact redolent of all the old gods – in glowing terms, Virgil portrays the Arethusa Fountain: ‘Alpheus, as old fame reports, has found from Greece a secret passage underground, by love to beauteous Arethusa led’. Subsequently departing Ortygia, Aeneas then rounds Cape Pachynus, passing Gela before spotting Akragas ‘with lofty summits crown’d’.  Akragas and its lofty summits, of course, refer to Agrigento and its Valle dei Templi.

The Arethusa Fountain, Ortigia, Siracusa

Next on his tour of what we would now consider the delights of Sicilian antiquity is Selinus and the ‘palmy land’.  Selinus aka Selinunte, the archeological park to the southeast of Mazara del Vallo, draws thousands to its acres of temple ruins.  Wisely, Aeneas then decides to ‘shun the Lilybaean strand, unsafe, for secret rocks and moving sand’.  Lilybaeum was the Latin name for the modern town of Marsala and anyone who has wandered around this part of Sicily will know it is right next to the salt flats and an area of very flat land extending out into shallow waters. Book 3 ends with the disheartening news that Anchises, our hero’s father, has died from old age at his home in nearby Drepanum (Trapani).

Ruins at Selinunte

After an interval in Book 4, during which time we learn of Queen Dido’s love for Aeneas and her tragic suicide, we return to Sicily in Book 5.  Aeneas and his fleet are in Drepanum.  He then decides to pay homage at Anchises’ tomb where, as Virgil tell us, he ‘pour’d to Bacchus, on the hallow’d ground, two bowls of sparkling wine…’  His father’s ghost arises to lament the fact that they never reached Rome together or the ‘Tiber’s flood’.  Funeral games are organised in Anchises’ honour, a tradition that was common to more than one society from the Classical period.  

As part of the memorial activities, Acestes, the King of Segesta, welcomes Aeneas warmly.  The son of Egesta of Troy and the river god, Crimisus, Acestes, as critics have noted, serves to emphasize the mythical link between Sicily and Troy.  Amidst the games, with heroes rewarded for their endeavours, Segesta’s spectacularly located theatre appears to be referenced in the text.  (N.B. it’s actually a 3^rd century BCE construction): ‘Into the neighb’ring plain, with mountains pent, whose sides were shaded with surrounding woods.  Full in the midst of this fair valley stood a native theatre, which, rising slow by just degrees, o’erlook’d the ground below.’  As myth is wont to bend reality, Virgil’s geo-chronological references should not be taken as gospel.

The theatre at Segesta

As the games continue, it seems the Trojan women are unhappy.  The goddess, Juno, disguised as an old crone, realises that the women are exhausted from their seven-year search for a home.  Seizing the opportunity to make a little mischief, she sows the seeds of discontent and eventually torches the ships in Drepanum harbour.  Aeneas, on learning of the disaster, throws himself on the mercy of Jupiter who sends a torrential storm to quell the flames.  Yet, even our hero is conflicted: ‘But doubtful thoughts the hero’s heart divide; if he should still in Sicily reside.’ 

Anchises makes yet another otherworldly appearance to his son, making the stark suggestion that he should take a little trip to the underworld in order to receive a vision of things to come, promising him it would reveal his own and, indeed, Rome’s future.  The dilemma over who goes and who stays is solved by splitting the Trojans between crew and settlers.  Those charged with staying lay down the outlines of a temple to Venus and the boundaries of their settlement.  Mount Eryx (now Erice), today reachable from Trapani by cable car, used to boast the Temple of Venus Erycina.  It was replaced by a Norman castle in the 12^th century.  

After sacrificing an unfortunate crew member to the gods due to the inauspicious attentions of Somnus, the personification of sleep, the Trojans assigned to the crew sail to the underworld via the oracular attentions of the Cumaean Sibyl, and then on to Latium, their ultimate destiny.  With a firm Sicilian glint in our eye, and a knowing wink to the past, we wonder if Aeneas or, for that matter, Rome, would have been the same if it weren’t for this Trojan sojourn on the island of Trinacria.  The founding myth of Rome owes more than a few sesterces to the island it has so often used as a political football.  

All quotes from The Aeneid come from John Dryden’s verse translation.

Among other works, Andrew and Suzanne Edwards are the authors of the recently published The Book Lover’s Guide to Rome and a previous work on literary journeys, Sicily: A Literary Guide for Travellers.