History of the Peloponnesian War

THE same winter the Athenians wished to sail again to Sicily, with a larger armament than that under Laches and Eurymedon, and bring it into subjection to them, if they could; the mass of the people being ignorant of the size of the island, and the number of its inhabitants, both Greeks and barbarians; and that they were undertaking a war not much inferior in magnitude to that with the Peloponnesians.

For the voyage round Sicily in a merchant vessel is one of not much less than eight days; and [*]( The reasoning employed in the words τοσαύτη οὖσα is very much in the style of the geography of Herodotus. The notion is, that so large an island ought to have been in the midst of a wide sea, proportioned to its own magnitude; and not to have been so close upon the coast, as to seem a sort of appendage to the mainland, —Arnold.) though it is of such extent, it is only excluded by the space of about twenty stades of sea from being mainland.

Now it was settled originally in the following manner, and these were all the nations that occupied it. The earliest people said to have lived in any part of the country are the Cyclopes and Laestrygones; with regard to whom, I can neither tell their race, nor whence they came into it, nor whither they departed out of it: but let that suffice which has been said by the poets, and which every body in any way knows of them.

The Sicanians appear to have been the first who settled in it after them; indeed, as they themselves assert, even before them, as being the aboriginal population; but as the truth is found to be, they were Iberians, and were driven from the river Sicanus, in Theria, by the Ligurians. And it was from them that the island was at that time called Sicania, having previously been called Trinacria; and still, even to this day, they inhabit Sicily in its western districts.