Sicily (Trinacria)

Roman Sicily

Sicily, which the Greeks called Trinacria for its three-cornered shape, is the largest island in the Mediterranean and an autonomous region of Italy. Greeks settled it from around 750 BCE, with Syracuse their leading city, while Carthage held the west. After the First Punic War (264-241 BCE) it became Rome's first province outside the Italian peninsula, and the poet Ovid later travelled there. Acts records Paul stopping at Syracuse, and Christian communities are attested on the island from the 3rd century; Pope Eusebius, exiled by the emperor Maxentius, died on the island in 310. Byzantine rule gave way to Muslim conquest from 827, then to the Normans (1061-1091) and the Kingdom of Sicily of 1130. Its Jews were expelled under Ferdinand II from 1492.