Battle of Selinus - Background

Background

The island of Sicily contained the Elymians, Sikans and the Siculi living in respective communities before the Phoenicians had started their colonisation of Sicily after 800 BC. The Phoenicians had initially planted trading posts all over the coast of Sicily, but never penetrated far inland and ultimately withdrew without resistance to the Western half of the island (concentrating in the cities of Motya, Panormus and Soluntum) with the arrival of the Greek colonists after 750 BC. The Ionian Greeks took the lead in colinising Sicily among Greeks when they planted Naxos in 735 BC, and spread north and west along the island coast until the city of Himera was founded in c648 BC, bordering the Phoenician territory of Soluntum. The Dorian Greeks founded Syracuse in 734 BC, and spread south then west along the coastline until Selinus was founded around 654 BC, bordering the Phoenician territory of Motya. While the Ionian Greeks on the whole had friendly relations with the native Sicilians and the Phoenicians, the Dorian Greeks were comparably more aggressive, pushing inland at the expense of the natives to expand the Greek domain. Conflicts among the Greeks colonies and between the natives and Greeks erupted, but these were localised mostly affairs without any decisive results or intervention from non Sicilian powers. The Phoenicains and Carthaginians traded with everyone in Sicily and on the whole all the island colonies prospered. This prosperity caused some of the Greek cities to start to expand their territories again, ultimately leading to the events known as Sicilian Wars.