Erice Attractions

Myth and History

The Mons Eryx has from early times been the seat of a cult of the old Mediterranean mother deity, whom is it thought the Phoenicians named the "goddess of Eryx". She was venerated by the Elymians, who founded a settlement here, and later ranked in importance with the Carthaginian goddess, Astarte, the Greek goddess, Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. The cult was connected with the sacred prostitution of the Hierodulians. The location of the temple is known, though the building is no longer extant. Ancient tradition ascribes the foundation of the town and its temple to Eryx, a son of Poseidon and Aphrodite. He was defeated in battle by Heracles but was permitted to retain power, on condition that he subsequently cede it to a descendant of Heracles. According to Virgil the Trojan Aeneas came to the Eryx on his journey from Carthage to Rome, and erected a temple there to his mother Aphrodite/Venus.

Another tradition says that the walls around the temple to Aphrodite are the work of Daedalus fleeing from Crete to Sicily.

The legend of Heracles and Eryx was referred to by the Spartan Dorieus (a brother of Leonidas, the hero of the Thermopyles 490 B.C.), when he tried in 510 B.C. to found a Greek colony called Heracleia at the foot of Mount Eryx. Herodotus records that he was defeated by the Phoenicians and the Elymians of Segesta and met his death in the conflict. In 489 B.C. the tyrant Gelon of Gela attempted to continue this strategy against the Carthaginians and Elymians and thereby avenge Dorieus, but the latter's native city of Sparta denied him any support in his endeavors and thus his plan foundered.

Segesta, to which Eryx continued to be subordinate, tempted the Athenians - as we learn in Thucydides (6,46) - to undertake their Sicilian adventure, part of the attraction for which was the apparently rich treasures that Eryx boasted in its temple: "The Segestans, however, had worked out the following ruse for when the first envoys from Athens arrived in order to convince themselves of the Segestans' money. They led the Athenians up to the Temple of Aphrodite on Mount Eryx and there showed them oblations, vessels, pitchers, incense urns and many other implements, coated in silver, which, while of little actual value, had a much greater impact on the eye of the beholder. And in every house they hosted the crews from the ships, to which end they sought out all the gold and silver cups in Segesta and borrowed others from neighboring Phoenician and Hellenic towns and used them for their entertaining as if they had all actually belonged to them. As almost all of them brought out the same dishes over and over again, and there was so much to see everywhere, it all made the greatest possible impression on the Athenians, who returned home making it known wherever they went what wealth they had seen there."

In the ensuing period Eryx was a Carthaginian base until the end of the first Punic War. In 260 B.C. Hamilcar founded Drepanon (Trapani) from here. In 241 B.C., however, the town fell to Rome. As the Romans traced themselves back to Aeneas, the Temple of Eryx, being seen as a foundation of Aeneas, was highly regarded and the inhabitants (Veneris servi), to whom the Hierodulians belonged, held a special position. Tiberius (14-37 A.D.) had the now derelict temple restored, as did Claudius (41-54 A.D.) after him.

Subsequently the building fell into decline. The Arabs named Eryx Gebel-Hamed, the Normans named it Monte San Giuliano (after the conqueror of the Saracens, Julianus); this name was only replaced by the ancient one in 1934. In Saracen and Norman times the fortified mountain town was a refuge for the inhabitants of Trapani, which was later to eclipse Eryx.