The Sicilian Inheritance

by Jo Piazza

It is on friends that one depends to get along in life.

“Sicily was Greece and Greece was Sicily and all the good stories come from here and have been bastardized around the globe. You know the story of Persephone, yes? A maiden who lived in the fertile fields close to Enna in the center of the island,” Fina explained. “This is where Hades, the king of the underworld, found her and abducted her, bringing her to be his queen down in hell. Persephone did not go quietly, a Sicilian woman never would. She went on a hunger strike and finally he had to relent and allow her to return for half of the year.” “Right, I remember reading the myth in lit class,” I said, feeling slightly schooled. “But you thought she was Greek. Persephone, the grain mother, is the reason we have such a fertile growing season followed by such a miserable drought. She was a rebel. She was a queen. She was a Sicilian woman!”

It is hard to be a historian without becoming a nihilist because you see the worst of history repeat itself over and over again. It may be why I lose my mind on a regular basis.”

She was a goddess of self-defense and also of female conquest. Massive temples were built to honor her here in the island’s western towns like Erice and Trapani and Sciacca. When the Greeks came to the island some scholars say that the worship of her disappeared, but her followers would never have let that happen. The women kept her alive. They knew assimilation was the only way to survive and continued to worship the ideals of Astarte, her bravery, independence, passion, through temples to the Greek goddesses Artemis and Aphrodite, and then the Roman Diana and Venus. Eventually, when the Christians came, the women transferred Astarte’s spirit and her strength into the Virgin Mary. This is how Astarte lives on. It is one of the reasons that the island’s women were so quick to accept the idea of the Virgin Mary. We transfer the love of our previous goddesses into acceptable figures for whatever time we are living in. Astarte remains alive in all of us Sicilian women.”

“Do not feel sorry for yourself, Sara. Women are like the cats. We have nine lives.