ANCIENT ISLAND OF SICILY.

Sicily usually has seen controlled by external powers -Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Islamic, Norman, Hohen-Staufen, Catalan, Spaniard- but also experiencing short periods of independence, as under the Greeks and later as the Emirate then Kingdom of Sicily. Although today part of the Republic of Italy, it has its own distinct culture.
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The island has a River which was called Him-Era in the ancient time, the Grande was the name of the River flowing to the North into the Tyr-Rhenian Sea, the other name was Salso going to the South coast of the island. A strange confusion is regarded by many ancient writers to the fact that it is one and the same river, rising in the middle of the island but going in opposite directions and dividing the island in two parts as if the river give the appearance of two rivers. The Northern Himera (Grande), a much less considerable stream than the South (Salso), is described as flowing by the city to which it gave its name.
Mount Etna is an active strato volcano on the East coast of the island . It lies above the convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is the tallest active volcano in Europe, currently 3,329 m/10,922ft high, and the most active in the world. Volcanic activity first took place at Etna around 500,000 years ago, with eruptions occurring beneath the sea off the ancient coastline of the island. Thousands of years ago, the Eastern flank of the mountain experienced a catatrophic collapse, generating an enormous landslide that left a large depression in the side of the volcano, known as "Valley of the Ox." This occurred around 8,000 years ago, and caused a huge tsunami, which left its mark in several places in the Eastern Mediterranean. The most recent collapse event is thought to have been occurred about 2,000 years ago, forming what is known as the Piano Caldera.
At the time of Phoenician and Greek colonization, 3 different groups of people inhabited the island:
- The El-Ym-Ians were ancient people who inhabited the Western part of Sicily. They maintained friendly relations and alliances with Carth-Age. The El-Ym-Ians were granted a privileged status under Roman rule and were exempted from taxes, in recognition of El-Ym-Ians' claim of Trojan ancestry, which was seen as making them cousins of the Romans, who also claimed to have been descended from the Trojans. E-Ryx, an ancient city in the region, has a mountain with the same name, 3 km from the sea coast. The mountain is a wholly isolated peak, rising in the midst of a low undulating tract, which causes its elevation to appear much more considerable than it really is, so it was regarded in ancient as well as modern time as the most lofty summit in the whole  Sicily island next to Aetna, though its real elevation does not exceed 2,184 ft. Hence we find E-Ryx alluded by Virgil and other Roman poets as a mountain of the first order of magnitude. On its summit stood a celebrated temple of Venus (Aphrodite), founded by Aeneas.
- The Sic-Ani were the oldest inhabitants with a recorded name that dwelt in the middle, central region of the island. They migrated from the Iberian Peninsula driven by the Ligurians, a region of North-Western Italy, from the River Sicanus. Archaeological excavation has shown that they had received some Mycena-Ean influence.
- The Sicels were an Italic tribe who inhabited Easter Sicily. They gave their name to the island held since antiquity, but they rapidly fused into the culture of Magna Graecia. The earliest literary mention of Sicels is in the Odyssey. Homer also mentions Sicania, but makes no distinctions: "they were from a faraway place and a faraway people and apparently they were one and the same." There are 4 mentions of Sicels or Sicania, and that is as a source for a devoted household slave or a place to sell a slave.
The most significant ancient myth for Sicily is that of Demeter and Core (the maiden), better known as Perse-Phone. These two goddesses and their story pervaded the island's pre-Christian culture.
Dem-Eter was the ancient Greek 'earth' goddess of grain, agriculture, and fertility. Her daughter, by Zeus, was Core (Perse-Phone).
One day Had-Es, god of the Under-World, abducted Core while she was joyfully collecting flowers in a field. Against her will, he took her with him into the depths of the Earth.
When Dem-Eter couldn't find her beloved daughter, out of great distress and distraction, she allowed the earth's crop to die and the land to grow barren.
Finally after some months, Zeus intervened and ordered Had-Es to return Core to Dem-Eter; however, before she reached the Earth's surface, Had-Es fed Core with pome-granate seeds, a powerful and ancient representation of fertility.
Had-Es' cunning action condemned Core to spend part of each year  in the Under-World as a psycho-pomp, graciously welcoming the dead to the afterlife.