Syracuse. When the Greeks colonized Sicily, they became the neighbors of three native peoples, the Sicani, Siculi, and Elymi. Throughout their history there the Greeks also had to reckon with the Carthaginians to the south, who established colonies in western Sicily, and the Etruscans to the north, who also had designs on the island. The Greek colonists arriving from the eighth century onward ejected the natives from the best sites of the island; in Syracuse, the island's largest city, they reduced them to a dependent status similar to that of the helots in Sparta.

Riches. The colonists were attracted by the fertility of the island; it produced wheat, wine, oil, cattle, and horses. In later times Sicily became a chief supplier of grain to the Romans as well. Early commercial contacts with old Greece are indicated by Corinthian...