Syracuse, City of Legends: A Glory of Sicily

by Jeremy Dummett

Dubbed 'the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all' by Cicero, Syracuse also boasts the richest history of anywhere in Sicily. Syracuse, City of Legends - the first modern historical guide to the city - explores Syracuse's place within the island and the wider Mediterranean and reveals why it continues to captivate visitors today, more than two and a half millennia after its foundation. Over its long and colourful life, Syracuse has been home to many creative figures, including Archimedes, the greatest mathematician of the ancient world, as well as host to Plato, Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal, and Caravaggio, who have all contributed to the rich history and atmosphere of this beguiling and distinctive Sicilian city. Generously illustrated, Syracuse, City of Legends also offers detailed descriptions of the principal monuments from each period in the city's life, explaining their physical location as well as their historical context.This vivid and engaging history weaves together the history, architecture and archaeology of Syracuse and will be an invaluable companion for anyone visiting the city as well as a compelling introduction to its ancient and modern history.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Travel

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Tim Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In classical times, Syracuse was a great city, never conquered, the capital of Sicily, equal in population and culture to Athens, the intellectual heart of the West. In Roman and Byzantine times, she was a provincial centre governing a quarter of the island. But Syracuse was destroyed by the Arabs and eclipsed by Palermo, and she has never recovered.

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm debating with myself about whether toward this book three stars or something more and I've settled on 3.5 stars. I guess it is really hard to do justice to a city like Syracuse that has had such a long and tumultuous history. Dummett puts his finger on the issue quite clearly when he identifies geography as being a major contributor to both the vibrancy of the culture in Syracuse but also the violence that has been visited upon the city many, many times. It's a greek city positioned between Rome and Carthage and open to invasion from anywhere in the Mediterranean. Add to this the conflicts between Anthenians, Spartans, Macedonians ....and throw in a few internal conflicts with the Romans, then the Arabs, then the Crusades ..and life was never going to be easy for Syracusans.
I think Jeremy Dummett has done a workman-like job of condensing this history and being reasonably objective about it but I think it's slightly confused between being a history of Syracuse and a guide book to the Modern City. I can see where he is coming from. As, the exhortation on the dust cover says: "Don't leave for Sicily without this guide". His market for the book is probably going to be the english speaking tourists heading off for a holiday in Sicily/Syracuse ..so he probably needs to include a bit about where the touristic highlights are today.
Though, personally I felt that this latter section detracted from the book for me. Maybe I'd be be more generous if I was on my way to Syracuse right now. And I'm not totally convinced that Dummett has established that Syracuse really is a city of legends. Most of the happenings appear to be pretty well documented. Many of them not nice...but not really legends.
Somewhere, I've read a fairly detailed account of the failed Athenian invasion of Syracuse, which, to my recollection, was more detailed and interesting than Dummett's summary. Likewise, I've read better accounts of Plato's visits to Syracuse. (Must say, that I've always found it amusing that Plato, the great theorist about how to run a country/city came to grief when he was actually given the chance to put his ideas into practice. It seems the the reality of dealing with real people with real flaws was a bit too much for Plato).
And, I would have like to have learned a bit more about Archimedes. What an extraordinary character ......but we don't seem to have very much solid information about him.
But there certainly seems to have been a dearth of good leaders ..and even those who were good leaders seemed to be brought undone through some failing of their own or events beyond their capacity to influence. Overall, an interesting book which delivers a fairly comprehensive history of Syracuse and it's place in the world but left me wanting a bit more. Three and a half stars from me.

[Bill Perrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather strange lopsided book; perhaps the author only felt comfortable with some parts of the history of Syracuse. The early history of the times around the Punic wars is detailed and somewhat interesting but after the Romans his history is condensed into fewer and fewer pages. It was a promising start but ended rather limply.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has a wonderful title and it was what attracted me to the book but unfortunately it is not much more than a guide book but one that fails to make one want to visit Syracuse. The illustrations are minimal while the prose is leaden enough to leave me struggling to finish the book - well I didn't because it bored me. There have been numerous books, fiction and non fiction, in English which leave the reader with a passionate desire to visit Sicily and walk its streets and experience the peculiar thrall of its atmosphere and I could easily supply a list of a dozen works without thinking but I am not going to because it would be insulting to place them in association with this mediocre work which is not even satisfactory as a guide book, in its defence it doesn't claim to be one, but as an evocation of place it is nugatory.

Who this book is aimed at or what it is for is beyond me. Avoid at all cost.