ABSTRACT
In the course of the 6th–2nd centuries BC, one might see Sicily as a conglomerate of cultural contact zones fought over for centuries by Greeks, Phoenicians, indigenous populations and finally the Romans, with a steady influx of manpower with a Celtic, Italiote and Iberian origin.
However, this chapter adopts a more confined perspective discussing the elements of the socio-political developments in 4th century Syracuse in order to expound the relationship between Dionysius, Syracuse, the rest of his empire and the Mediterranean world. Thus, in order to chart these complexities and developments, this chapter gives some examples of how the employment of modern tenets of cultural geography (‘the spatial turn’) as an analytical tool may contribute to elucidate this complexity. In particular, the focus is on the vexed question of how (and even if) the civic community of Syracuse was able to develop its ideology and authority in the period of autocratic government from 405 to 367 BC. In addition, it is a secondary aim of this chapter to consider the relationship and nature of contacts between Syracusan Sicily and the larger Western Mediterranean world, including the Iberian Peninsula, in the 5th through the 4th centuries BCE. This is not meant to be a near-comparative study of Emporion and Syracuse pondering the fates of both locations in their making. Rather this is an attempt to suggest that Dionysius partially owed his success to overseas engagements with the food and resource systems of the western Mediterranean, including Greek settlements, in ‘Greek’ Iberia.
