LEGENDRY ISLE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 5, 10 September 1943, Page 3

LEGENDRY ISLE

STORIES OF SICILY

The, Eighth- Army plunged into, ancient history Avhe.n it entered Sj'raciis-c, in ' July last, a city as old as Rome 'itself, and. one that must liave had half a million inhabitants an days gone by. Perhaps some soldier who remembered a little of the classical history may -have reflected that Tyrants ruled here two thousand five hundred years ago, forerunners of duces, fuhre.rs and, the lesser dictators of modern States ; and lie may even have wondered if tile Italians could find a scientist and mathematician to delay the siege of the city as the famous Archimedes held up the Romans in 212 B.C. The old. Syracuse was purely a Greek colony, and not actually the first in Sicily, though it Avas the most famous. Naxos, fifty miles to the north, preceded it., and so did Catania, an offshoot of Naxos. It is as avcll that the Allied armies are a force of fighters and not of' .scholars, because Sifcily is an island, of legends. This is Avhc.rc the huge, one-eyed blacksmiths, the Cyclops, used to dAA r ell. Perhaps they used Aetna as a forge when they made armour for the gods. Messina is another very old town, established originally by pirates. Hf travellers are to be believed the inhabitants liave never really lost, the habits introduced by the first colonists. As the Allies take, their landing barges lip through the straits of Messina they will have to lie very careful to avoid Seylla and Charybdis, two very objectionable women who used to ma'ke navigation difficult in ancient days. Scylla had six long necks with dogs' heads. She lived in a caA T e and used to stretch out her necks and snatch sailor* off the" ships as they sailed by. The other lady Avas terribly voracious—she could SAvalloAv an ox whole—and it a navigator Avas not. skilful hits ship would get into her Avhirlpool and be sucked down into the depths of the sea. Further up the Italian coast there were., and probably still are. Sirens, aa'lio sang so sweetly that the}" were able to lure, weak sailors to destruction. Nor are these the only perils to be encountered*by the imaginatiA-e soldier, because. Avithin a few miles of Syracuse itself there dwelt the Laestrvgones. savage cannibals; and to the Avest, whore the Americans were operating. lived giants who long defied the gods until at last the gods managed to dump mountains on top of them. The volcanoes of the region show that some of tlie.se monsters arc still struggling.