The Island of Sicily
  Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia) is an autonomous region of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 square kms and
  currentlyhas just over five million inhabitants.
  It is also the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, several much smaller islands surrounding it are also considered to be part of Sicily.
  Along with Sardinia, the island is officially classified as a region of Insular Italy. Throughout much of its history, Sicily has been considered a crucial strategic
  location due in large part to its importance for Mediterranean trade routes.
  The area was highly regarded as part of Magna Graecia, with Cicero describing Siracusa as the greatest and most beautiful city of all Ancient Greece.
  Although a region of Italy today, Sicily was once its own country as the Kingdom of Sicily, ruled from Palermo. The kingdom originally ruled over the island, the
  southern Italian Peninsula and Malta before the Sicilian Vespers.
  It later became a part of the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons, with the capital in Naples rather than Sicily.
  Since that time the Italian unification has taken place and Sicily is now an autonomous part of Italy.
  Sicily is considered to be highly rich in its own unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, cuisine, architecture and language.
  The Sicilian economy is largely based on agricolture (mainly orange and lemon orchards, olive oil, wine and olives); this same rural countryside has attracted
  significant tourism in the modern age as its natural beauty is highly regarded.
  Sicily also holds importance for archeological and ancient sites such as the Necropolis of Pantalica and the Valley of the Temples.

Ancient Tribes
The original inhabitants of Sicily were three defined groups of the Ancient peoples of Italy.
The most prominent and by far the earliest of which was the Sicani, who according to Thucydides arrived from the Iberian Peninsula (perhaps Catalonia). Important historical evidence has been discovered in the form of cave drawings by the Sicani, dated from the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, around
8000 BC.
The Elymians, thought to be from the Aegean Sea, were the next tribe to migrate to join the Sicanians on Sicily.
Although there is no evidence of any wars between the tribes, when the Elymians settled in the north-west corner of the island, the Sicanians moved across eastwards.
From mainland Italy, thought to originally have been Ligures from Liguria, came the Sicels in 1200 BC; forcing the Sicanians to move back across Sicily settling in the middle of the island.

  Greek and Roman Period
  About 750 BC, the Greeks began to colonise Sicily, establishing many important settlements. The most important colony was Syracuse;
  other significant ones were Akragas, Gela, Himera, Selinunte, and Zancle.
  The native Sicani and Sicel peoples were absorbed by the Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area was part of Magna Graecia along
  with the rest of Southern Italy, which the Greeks had also colonised.
  Sicily was very fertile, and the introduction of olives and grape vines flourished, creating a great deal of profitable trading.
  A significant part of Greek culture on the island was that of Greek religion and many temples were built across Sicily, such as the Valley of
  the Temples at Agrigento.
  Politics on the island was intertwined with that of Greece; Syracuse became desired by the Athenians, who during Peloponnesian War set
  out on the Sicilian Expedition. Syracuse gained Sparta and Corinth as allies, as a result the Athenian army and ships were destroyed, with
  most of the survivors being sold into slavery. While Greek Syracuse controlled much of Sicily, there were a few Carthagian colonies in the
  far west of the island. When the two cultures began to clash, the Sicilian Wars erupted. Greece began to make peace with the Roman
  Republic in 262 BC and the Romans sought to annex Sicily as its empire's first province. Rome intervened in the First Punic War, crushing
  Carthage so that by 242 BC Sicily had become the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula.
  The Second Punic War, in which Archimedes was killed, saw Carthage trying to take Sicily from the Roman Empire. They failed and this time
Rome was even more unrelenting in the annihilation of the invaders; during 210 BC the Roman consul M. Valerian, told the Roman Senate that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".
Sicily served a level of high importance for the Romans as it acted as the empire's granary, it was divided into two quaestorships in the form of Syracuse to the east and Lilybaeum to the west. Although under Augustus some attempt was made to introduce the Latin Language to the island, Sicily was allowed to remain largely Greek in a cultural sense, rather than a complete cultural Romanisation. When Verres became governor of Sicily, the once prosperous and contented people were put into sharp decline, in 70 BC noted figure Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration In Verrem.Christianity first appeared in Sicily during the years following AD 200, between this time and AD 313 when Constantine the Great finally lifted the prohibition, a significant number of Sicilians became martyrs such as Agatha, Christina, Lucy, Euplius and many more.
Christianity grew rapidly in Sicily during the next two centuries, the period of history where Sicily was a Roman province lasted for around 700 years in total.

Early Middle Ages
As the Roman Empire was falling apart, a Germanic tribe known as the Vandals took Sicily in AD 440 under the rule of their king Geiseric.
The Vandals had already invaded parts of Roman France and Spain, inserting themselves as an important power in western Europe.
However, they soon lost these newly acquired possessions to another East Germanic tribe in the form of the Goths.
The Ostrogothic conquest of Sicily (and Italy as a whole) under Theodoric the Great began in 488; although the Goths were Germanic, Theodoric sought to revive Roman culture and government and allowed freedom of religion.
The Gothic War took place between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire.
Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken under general Belisarius who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor Justinian I. Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan and the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna falling within five years. However, a new Ostrogoth king Totila, drove down the Italian peninsula, plundering and conquering Sicily in 550. Totila, in turn, was defeated
and killed in the Battle of Taginae by the Byzantine general Narses in 552. Byzantine Emperor Constans II decided to move from the capital
Constantinople to Syracuse in Sicily during 660, the following year he launched an assault from Sicily against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which then occupied most of Southern Italy. The rumours that the capital of the empire was to be moved to Syracuse, along with small raids probably cost Constans his life as he was assassinated in 668. His son Constantine IV succeeded him, a brief usurpation in Sicily by Mezezius being quickly suppressed by the new emperor.
Contemporary accounts report that the Greek language was widely spoken on the island during this period.

  In 826, Euphemius, the commander of the Byzantine fleet at Sicily, forced a nun into marriage. Emperor Michael II caught wind of the matter,
  and ordered that general Constantine end the marriage, and cut off Euphemius' nose. Euphemius rose up, killed Constantine and proceeded to
  occupy Syracuse; he in turn was defeated and driven out to North Africa. He offered rule of Sicily over to Ziyadat Allah, the Aaghlabid Emir of
  Tunisia, in return for refuge, and the rank of a general; a Muslim army of Arabs, Berbers, Spaniards, Cretans and Persians was sent.
  The conquest was a see-saw affair, with considerable resistance and many internal struggles; it took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be
  conquered. Syracuse held for a long time, Taormina fell in 902, and all of the island was eventually conquered by 965. Throughout this reign,
  revolts by Byzantine Sicilians continuously occurred, especially in the east and parts of the island were re-occupied before being quashed.
  Agricultural items such as oranges, lemons and pistachio were brought to Sicily. As ddhimmis, the native Christians were allowed freedom of
  religion, but had to pay an extra tax to their rulers. However, the Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarreling fractured the
  Muslim regime. During this time there was also a minority Jewish presence. By the 11th century, mainland Southern Italian powers were hiring
  ferocious Norman mercenaries, who were Christian descendants of the Vikings; it was the Normans under Roger I who conquered Sicily from the
  Arabs. After taking Apulia and Calabria, he occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. In 1068, Roger guiscard and his men defeated the
  Arabs at Misilmeri, but the most crucial battle was the siege of Palermo, which led to Sicily coming completely under Norman control by 1091.

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