Lentini
Lentini (also Leontini, Greek Leontinoi ) is a city of Syracuse in Sicily region of Italy with 24,048 inhabitants (as of 31 December 2012).
Location and data
Lentini is situated 51 km north- west of Syracuse. The population lives mainly in agriculture and industry.
The neighboring municipalities are Belper (CT ), Carlentini, Catania (CT ), Franco Fonte, Militello in Val di Catania ( CT), Palagonia (CT ), Ramacca (CT) and Scordia (CT).
History
In ancient times the city was called Leontinoi. Here are the man-eating giants have lived Laestrygonians that Odysseus has described. The city was founded in 729 BC by Chalkidians from Naxos.
Leontini is located about ten kilometers from the sea, making it almost the only Greek settlement that is not directly on the coast. The square was originally held by the Sicilian residents, but then conquered by the Greeks because of its dominant position to a fertile plain in the north. He was subjected to 498 BC by Hippocrates of Gela, and Hiero I of Syracuse moved here 476 BC, the inhabitants of Catana and Naxos.
Later Leontini regained its independence, but had in his efforts to defend them, and more often rely on the support of Athens. It is mainly thanks to the eloquence of Gorgias, which led to the failed Athenian expedition of 427 BC.
422 BC Syracuse supported the oligarchs against the people of the city, she took on as a citizen, Leontini had been abandoned. This led to renewed Athenian intervention, at first diplomatically, but then, when the exiles from Leontini joined with the envoys of Segesta, to the great expedition of 415 BC.
After their failure Leontini was once again subject to Syracuse (compare Strabo vi. 272). Its independence was indeed guaranteed by the treaty of 405 BC between Dionysius and the Carthaginians, but the city lost it again soon. It was finally conquered by Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 214 BC.
In Roman times Leontini seems to have played no significant role. In early Christian and Byzantine Lentini was a bishopric, on the titular Leontium goes back. The city was destroyed by the Saracens in 848 and almost completely razed to the ground by an earthquake in 1693.
The city was in earthquakes in the years 1140, 1169 and 1542 severely damaged and destroyed in 1693. After the city fell apart. Only since the beginning of the 19th century, the city is growing again.
Archeology
Polybius ( vii. 6) describes the ancient city as lying in a valley between two hills, with views north to the fertile mentioned plane. Two city gates, there was that one directional plane, the other in the south to Syracuse, the acropolis on both sides of the valley, and build up to over the lower hills beyond.
The eastern of the two hills shows remarkable remains of a strongly fortified medieval castle, in which some authors (incorrectly) Greek Masonry want to have recognized.
Excavations were made in 1899 in the Sicilian necropolis in one of the canyon, finds in the various Greek cemeteries, especially some remarkable bronze works are kept in Berlin.
Today, the remains of the ancient Leontini, especially the walls and the necropolis to visit in an archaeological zone. Finds are exhibited in the museum of modern Lentini.
Structures
- Sant'Alfio church, built at the end of the 17th century
- Archaeological Museum with finds from the surrounding area
- Archaeological zone of the old city walls and necropolis
Sons and daughters of the town
- Gorgias
- Giacomo da Lentini