Western Grego-Roman Cities

The polity of Rhodes, with Cretan assistance, founded Gela on the south coast of Sicily in 688 B.C.E. (Herodotus, VII, 153) and assisted in the foundation of Akragas/ Agrigento farther northwest on the same coast in 580 B.C.E. Akragas’s foundation was part of the second wave of Greek city building in Sicily, about 150 years after the founding of Syracuse and other east coast settlements. Much of the Rhodian situation was replicated in the new cities. Settlers found familiar terrain like Gela, on a steep ridge facing the sea, surrounded by generous plains. At Gela, the acropolis at the east end is near the River Gelas, which waters the plains. Agrigento is bracketed by two rivers with plains to the south, and its lower ridge is visually equivalent to the site of Gela. An irrigation system of the Greek period like that known a little to the east at Camarina could have facilitated growing food in the alluvial soil between the two rivers, to the south of the temple ridge (Di Vita 1996: 294). If we notice geological similarities and extrapolate too freely from them to architectural similarities, we may introduce chronological fuzziness to our study. The island-wide Rhodian tradition of dealing with water resources was carried to Sicily by the colonists along with other aspects of the culture. Exchange of ideas continued during the centuries between the founding of Akragas and the synoecism of Rhodes City centuries later. For instance, the grottoes of the acropolis of the city of Rhodes are “cut into the bioclastic limestones of the Rhodes formation, with, in some cases, the floor cut down into clayey and marly units that correspond to a line of seepage” (E. Rice, personal communication). At Akragas as at Rhodes, the builders cut down through the stone to the impermeable clay and marl units, to tap the line of seepage. With similar geology, it is not surprising that many elements of the water system of the two places were similar, developed indepen dently from the old tradition. New concepts of water management were carried from place to place by expert builders, from the seventh through the fifth century B.C.E.