I’m Sicilian on my father’s side, and I kinda generally knew a lot of people conquered it over the years, but damn. I did a Google search for “conquered Siciliy” and I’m not sure who didn’t conquer them. I think I got drunk and conquered them once.
Here’s what I got (in no particular order):
Greeks
Romans
Arabs
Byzantines
Normans
French
Spanish
Moors, according to Dennis Hopper in “True Romace” (there are other references, of course)
Vandals
Ostrogoths
Allies (WW2)
Am I missing anyone?
Perhaps the Carthaginians, who fought with the native Greeks for control of the island through most of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. At their best, the Carthaginians held all of Sicily save Syracuse, but never really held it long enough to say they’d “conquered” the island. Still traces of their culture remain on the island, particularly in Palermo.
Oh, don’t be so hard on your Sicilian side. Siciliy’s location makes it a major strategic prize. Everybody wanted a piece of it. Think of Sicily as the Jackie Kennedy of islands to conquer. Whoa! What a prize!
Compare it to, say, Scotland, where my father was born. What kind of prize is a bunch of rocks populated by cranky sheperds? The Romans turned around and built Hadrian’s Wall when they met the Scots, savages clad in animal skins who hid in cliffs and hurled rocks down on the Roman soldiers marching below them in formation.
Scotland is viewed differently now we know there is oil offshore. Prior to that, Scotland’s value as a strategic prize was to Siciliy’s as Janet Reno is to Elizabeth Taylor.
