Erice, temple of the goddess of love
taken from the brochure of the Province of Trapani
It was the cult of fertility and love to score Erice, famous in antiquity for its temple atop the mountain to which they addressed the sailors.
Astarte was the Carthaginians, Aphrodite for the Greeks, Ericina of Venus to the Romans: lighthouse in the Mediterranean, the temple of the goddess was perhaps founded by Aeneas, or perhaps by Daedalus, or perhaps from the local Eryx, son of Aphrodite, who challenged Heracles to move from this place and he was killed (and thus the city was sacred to Hercules).
Of this temple there is no trace; according to Diodorus, stood on the ancient acropolis where in the thirteenth century Norman castle was built. You reach it through the gardens of Balio, breathtaking panorama overlooking the sea, where you give yourself to a horizon that takes the Egadi Islands and Mount Hood. You walk on the esplanade of the magnificent fortress, often used by so foggy that thicken and thin out softly as suddenly. You try something that might suggest an open-air altar, as a “false pit of Aphrodite”. And it remains, instead, stunned by a site that the myth, ruins and nature make swirling and mysterious sensuality.
City elim and then under the influence of the Carthaginians, contended by the Greeks, Erice was so rich that, in 415 a.C., Segesta wanted to loan him his cup of gold and silver to impress the Athenians sent to them asking defense against Syracuse. Are around this time the walls that still run in the slope, well-preserved, on the western edge of, from door to door Sword Drills, for about 800 meters: in the lower part, the walls are large blocks of stone; have square towers and they are open to some posterns monolithic lintel.
Destroyed during the First Punic War by the Carthaginians, who moved the inhabitants to Drepanon (Trapani).
Erice was conquered in 248 a. C. from Rome. Perhaps then it was a heap of ruins, but the temple of the goddess was reborn with a new splendor to the winners.
Suetonius writes: “Claudius restored the temple of Venus Erice in Sicily, that had fallen into disrepair due to aging, exchequer at the expense of the Roman people”.
It adds Diodorus: “They [the Romans] overcame all the peoples who preceded them to the honors which made the goddess”.
CASTELLAMMARE