After dinner and a good nights rest at Case di Latomie, an agriturismo hotel, whose owner's primary business is in olives, we visited Selinunte yesterday morning. Papa and I visited Selinunte a few years ago and wanted to see more. Selinunte is an Ancient Greek city on the southern coast of Sicily, founded in 628 BC and abandoned in 250 BC. Its territory was repeatedly the site of battles, with the Phoenicians, Segestans, Romans, and finally destroyed by the Carthaginians. The ruins cover over 650 acres with an acropolis overlooking the sea, and the remains of three large temples a few hundred meters away. The site is considered to have some of the most significant Greek ruins in the world. Most of the site is without ropes, so Emerson and Colby had fun scrambling over the carved stones and columns. After lunch we visited the nearby site of Cava di Cusa, the stone quarries where most of the stone to build Selinunte came from. Cava di Cusa is particularly interesting because it appears the workers and stone masons were interrupted and left the site in a hurry in 409 BC, during an attack. We were fascinated by the method they used to carve the columns, in perfect circles down into solid stone at perfect angles so that the columns were tapered. Amazing to think about such work being done over 2600 years ago with simple tools!
