Sicily as the Frontier of Ancient Greek Civilization in the Classical Age: Its Duality and Historical Development = Sicily as the Frontier of Ancient Greek Civilization in the Classical Age: Its Duality and Historical Development

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In the context of historians in the high classical age, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, Sicily with her mixed population, primary culture and dubious political cause serves as a barbarous frontier at the edge of Greek world. Nevertheless, the historical work by Diodorus preserves for us a positive description of Sicily, the frontier of Greek civilization in the western end, by confirming her role as a military barrier of the Greek world, an active stage for Greek culture, and a utopia with admirable morality. The positive image of Sicily as the frontier of Greek civilization was not simply invented by Timaeus and other Hellenistic historians. Sicilian tyrants, notably Gelon and Hiero, together with early classical writers from Greece proper, such as Pindar and Aeschylus, played an active role in its formation. The dramatic decline of this notion reflects the profound transformation of the political attitude and the anti-barbarian ideology of Athenian intellectuals in the classical period.