Naxos (Sicily)

Origins

According to Thucydides, Chalcidians from Euboea led by Theocles founded Naxos in 734 BCE on the Schisò headland below modern Taormina; later writers add settlers from the Aegean island of Naxos, which gave the city its name. As the first landfall for ships crossing from Greece, it became the starting point for Greek colonisation of the island.

Rule and society

Naxos was small but symbolically important: its altar of Apollo Archegetes, 'the Founder', was where envoys sailing from Sicily to Greece made sacrifice. Within a few years it sent out settlers to found Leontini and Catana. It grew vines on the slopes of Etna, and its coins with Dionysus and a satyr are celebrated. Hippocrates of Gela subdued it around 495 BCE, and later it was often allied with Athens and Leontini against Syracuse.

Decline and legacy

Dionysius I captured Naxos by treachery in 403 BCE, sold its people into slavery and gave its land to the Sicels. In 358 BCE survivors and Sicels founded Tauromenium on the hill above. Excavations at Giardini Naxos have revealed the walls, sanctuaries and street grid.