Tradition and Innovation

At the beginning of the Hellenistic Age, Sicily became the landing-place for political innovations produced by Hellenistic culture in the West – and very soon it turned out to be the theatre for the comparison of different ethnicities: Sicilian natives, Greeks, Italics, Carthaginians and Romans.

This book investigates the decades between 289 and 241 B.C. and the social as well as political development of Sicily by re-examining crucial events that made the island the first Roman provincia after the first Punic War: the failure of the first Hellenistic kingship in the West; the Sicilian expedition of Pyrrhus; the new Hellenistic kingship of Hiero of Syracuse; the first Punic War and the victory of Rome. Also, this study highlights how successfully the political modernization and the social innovations of the Hellenistic Age took place in Sicilian cities – and the way some novelties were rejected and some traditional institutions still existed, even after the complete Roman conquest.