C. Michael Sampson (University of Manitoba)
Diodorus Siculus claims that the shrine of the Palici—twin Sicel divinities—was of unparalleled antiquity and importance to the Sicel population (11.89.1). The mythological tradition surrounding these twins, however, is regularly distorted and unclear: the earliest testimony in a fragmentary Aeschylean tragedy provides a decidedly Greek etymology for their name (Παλικοί > πάλιν ἱκέσθαι > ‘to come back’) while nearly a millennium later, the account of Macrobius’ Saturnalia is no less idiosyncratic or problematic. This paper attempts to separate and comprehend the discrete strands of the twins’ mythological traditions—Sicel, Greek, Latin—and to treat the various mythographers’ accounts (and the twins themselves) on their own terms.
