Ducetius

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Ducetius (died 440 BC) was a Hellenized-leader of the Sicels and founder of a united Sicilian state and numerous cities.^[1] It is thought he may have been born around the town of Mineo.^[2] His story is told through the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in the first century BC, who drew on the work of Timaeus. He was a native Sicilian, but his education was Greek^[3] and was very much influenced by Greek civilization in Sicily. He is sometimes known by the Hellenized name of Douketios.

Sicily at this time was under the tyranny of Gelo and his brother Hiero. After the death of Hiero in 467 BC, Syracuse became a democracy. There were however, troubles in the aftermath of the tyranny's collapse. War had broken out between Syracuse and its former colony Catana in 460. Ducetius assisted Syracuse because Catana had occupied Sicel land, and together defeated them. Ducetius went on to found the city of Mene (today Mineo) and occupy Morgantina. By 452 BC he had united central Sicily and founded the city of Palice,^[1] the seat of his power, near the Lacus Palicorum, then two holy crater lakes and site of a temple to the Sicel gods of Palici.^[2] The city grew quickly as it became a place of refuge for runaway slaves.^[4] Ducetius then conquered Aetna, southwest of Mount Etna, before moving into Agrigentum. Syracuse, although an ally, became concerned by his unchecked expansion. However, Ducetius did not necessarily pose a threat to Syracuse in the same way Carthage had. But with his taking of Motyon, a stronghold held by Agrigentum in 451 BC Syracuse decided to assist Agrigentum, but was not able defeat him. It was in this year that Ducetius' Sicel empire was at its height. Only a year later in 450 BC, it would be decisively defeated at Nomae. His surviving army was scattered amongst the Sicel cities, and Ducetius was left with only a handful of followers. Agrigentum retook Motyon and Ducetius fled to Syracuse. Ducetius was tried by a politically-moderate general assembley in Syracuse. They voted to pay to have him exiled to Corinth, Syracuse's mother-city, on the condition that he never return to Sicily. He returned however, in 446 BC, to try to rebuild Sicel influence, but turned his attention to the north of Sicily and left Syracuse and Agrigentum alone. He founded the city of Cale Acte (near modern day Messina), supposedly on the instruction of an oracle, of both Sicel and Corinthian settlers, but in 440, while attempting to unite the people of northern Sicily, he died of illness.^[5] Ducetius' federation fell apart almost immediately after his death, and Palice was sacked shortly thereafter, selling its inhabitants into slavery.^[1] In Diodorus' account, he speaks of the sacking Piacus, a city taken by Ducetius around 442 BC, by Syracuse and its allies in the same line as his death, perhaps implying the two events were related. Indeed, the Syracusans had not been idle when between 446 and 440 BC Ducetius was forming a Sicel empire to rival Syracuse. By the time Piacus had been sacked, all of its neighboring cities had already been conquered.^[6]

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