This photo journal features the ruins of the former Greek city of Selinus, now a famous archaeological site near the current town of Selinunte (selly-NOON-tay), which is located on the SW coast of Sicily in the province of Trapani, 76 miles SW of Palermo & 70 miles west of Agrigento. Selinunte is beautifully situated on a high plain overlooking the Mediterranean, & flanked on either side by golden beaches. We stopped for lunch there, & while the rest of the gang had a lesurely lunch, I grabbed a bite, wandered the waterfront streets of the town, & took some pix ;o)

The Greek archaeological site is one of the largest & most impressive archaeological sites in the Mediterranean. The ancient city of Selinus, as it was known then, was one of the most important of the 12 Greek colonies in Sicily. (Apparently, it was named Selinus because of the abundant wild celery which grew there.) Because it was the most westerly colony, it was the first to be attacked & razed by the Carthaginians, who came the short distance across the Mediterranean from Tunisia in North Africa. They also had skirmishes with the native Sicilians on the west side of the island.

Let’s go back in history a bit - Greek settlement in southern Italy & Sicily began in the 8th & 7th centuries BCE (‘before the Christian era’). The new settlers, who left Greece for various reasons including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, expulsion etc), came in search of new commercial outlets & ports. Because it was so densely inhabited by Greeks, the Romans called this area “Magna Graecia” (Greater Greece). In Sicily, they first settled on the east coast because it was closer. (See the area map. You can see how close Sicily is to Greece, & how close the SW corner of the island is to Tunisia in north Africa. The settlers & invaders didn’t have far to go.)

The new Greek colony of Selinus, on the SW coast, was founded between 650 & 630 BCE by Doric Greek settlers who came from the east coast Greek settlement of Megara. About 100 years later, a fresh body of new colonists arrived from the parent city of Megara in Greece. The new colony prospered into an efficient port city of power & prestige, adorned with splendid temples. This did not go unnoticed by their old enemies, the Carthaginians from the north African country of Tunisia, just off the SW tip of Sicily, who viewed this upstart town as a threat to their growing influence in Sicily. So in 409 BCE they sent 100,000 of their men the short distance across the Mediterranean to lay siege to the town. The siege, which lasted for 9 days, resulted in an orgy of destruction, torture, rape, murder & looting that was considered abhorrent, even by the standards of the time. The town was virtually leveled, about 16,000 of town’s estimated 25,000 inhabitants were butchered outright, & 7,000 were enslaved. Only a scant 2,000 managed to escape the bloodbath & made their way to nearby Agrigento. Although Selinus was repopulated somewhat by the Carthaginians, it never achieved its former beauty, power or prestige. During the first Punic War with Rome in 250 BCE, the Carthaginian forces fled the Roman advance towards Palermo, but deprived the Romans of a prize by destroying Selinus before they left.

The site remained an abandoned ruin for centuries. A small Byzantine Greek village grew up around the ancient ruins around 700 AD, however, a major earthquake destroyed the village & further damaged what was left of Selinus early in the 9th century, just prior to the arrival of the Arabs in Sicily.

More info here: http://www.bestofsicily.com/sights.htm and here: http://www.bestofsicily.com/selinunte.htm