{"id":1227,"date":"2017-05-06T06:18:05","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T06:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=1227"},"modified":"2017-05-06T06:18:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T06:18:05","slug":"crossroads-of-western-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=1227","title":{"rendered":"Crossroads of Western History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sicily is the football at the boot of Italy, and it\u2019s been kicked around since the beginning of recorded time\u2014though not necessarily by Italy.\u00a0 More significant than sitting on Italy\u2019s toe, its locus at the crossroads of Mediterranean shipping lanes means it has always been prominent in warlords\u2019 dreams of empire.<\/p>\n

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One epoch overwrites another, and when walls are pealed back, they often reveal earlier periods. This column is from the Greek period, 4th century BC.<\/p><\/div>\n

Most every movement of Western civilization has washed across Sicily, usually with plenty of bloodshed.\u00a0 The Greeks came in 750 BC, stayed for 500 years, and left an imprint that continues to this day.\u00a0 They were preceded and succeeded by Carthaginians, who were succeeded by Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, French, Spanish and finally modern Italy.\u00a0 If stones could talk, the tales would be long and bloody, filled with triumph and sorrow.\u00a0 They would celebrate human resilience. \u00a0Sicilian stones don\u2019t talk, but they give visual witness to Sicily\u2019s history when weather or archeologists or remodelers peel back the layers of walls in Siracusa, Paloma and other ancient cities.<\/p>\n

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Siracusa, queen city of Sicily for a millennium<\/p><\/div>\n

When gazing back over Sicily\u2019s past, one sees many 100+ year epochs of culture and prosperity abruptly ended, then followed by epochs of despotism and brutality.\u00a0 Slavery of formerly free people was the common result of a Sicilian war–whether that be enslavement of Sicilians or of the defeated soldiers who dared to invade Sicily. Interestingly, in light of Americans\u2019 current view of Middle Eastern Islam, the Arab period (827 – 1038 AD) is remembered as an epoch of cosmopolitanism and religious tolerance.<\/p>\n

Siracusa has endured many such epochs. \u00a0It was the queen city of Sicily for a thousand years beginning with Greek rule, when it was said to rival Athens in population and exceed it in beauty.\u00a0 Today its history sustains it as many visitors flood Siracusa each year, curious to learn about its past and experience its charms.<\/p>\n

Siracusa is where our bikes first touch the road.<\/p>\n

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Our hotel’s breakfast room reveals a wall from 400 AD, a period of Roman rule<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sicily is the football at the boot of Italy, and it\u2019s been kicked around since the beginning of recorded time\u2014though not necessarily by Italy.\u00a0 More significant than sitting on Italy\u2019s toe, its locus at the crossroads of Mediterranean shipping lanes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-1227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling","tag-sicily-100th-giro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/4OldColumn.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QqGi-jN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}