As we saw in our route on the Roman Agrigento, the theatre was an important reference point for the citizens’ entertainment.
But it was even more fundamental in facilitating the transition from Greek to Roman culture, which, after the Punic Wars, occurred throughout Sicily.
In the region there are clear and continuous references to this art, which make it possible to trace an ideal link with at least three other UNESCO sites: first of all with Syracuse, where the Greek theatre, in its intact majesty, still hosts performances that bring it to life every year; then, with the Aeolian Islands, a mysterious land of a thousand shades, the centre of Mediterranean trade since ancient times, where vascular paintings of theatrical subjects have been found and, above all, more than a thousand terracotta works that constitute in Italy the most complete and ancient documentation of the scenic costume of the Greek age.
Finally, we must mention Mount Etna, a grandiose volcano that dominates the whole area of Catania where Euripides decided to set the satirical drama “Il Ciclope” (The Cyclops), a parody of the episode of Polyphemus narrated by Homer in the Odyssey.
In the early 1900s the work was reworked by Pirandello: the themes that the author recounts in his “U Ciclopu”, imbued with strong suggestions recalling the Sicily of his time, and the language used in the writing of the work, the Girgentano dialect, take us back to the territory of Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples, the writer’s homeland and source of inexhaustible inspiration.
