The Greek city of Halaesa comes to light in Messina, Sicily

For the second consecutive year, an Italian-English mission excavation campaign has been carried out in the area that houses the remains of the most important sanctuary in the ancient city of Halaesa, where traces of an ancient theatre have also been found.

View of the archaeological site of Halaesa, Tusa [Credit:  Allie Caulfield]

Halaesa, in fact, was a Sicilian-Greek city of considerable importance that took its name from the Alesa river, today the Tusa stream. Here there was a sanctuary dedicated to the god Apollo that overlooks the coast and the mouth of the river and which was identified in the fifties by the archaeologist Gianfilippo Carrettoni but has since been covered with vegetation and all but forgotten.

From June to July, the site was the focus of six weeks of work for archaeologists from the Universities of Messina, directed by Lorenzo Campagna, and Oxford, led by Jonathan Prag, in collaboration with the Museum of Silvopastoral Traditions in Mistretta and the Superintendence of Messina.

View of the agora of Halaesa, Tusa [Credit: SABAP Messina]

The work resulted in the reconstruction of the layout of the large religious complex, which was dominated by a podium 50 metres long and 4 metres high; two other sacred buildings have also been identified, while some findings seem to suggest the presence of at least two other smaller temples which will be investigated in the 2019 campaign.

In the centre of the sanctuary are traces of its largest and most important building with white mosaic flooring, columns and architectural decorations. Inside there were several statues of which some fragments were found during the excavation and some of which also belong to a statue of a female deity kept in the antiquarium of Tusa.

The trench that allowed the identification of the theatre of Halaesa, Tusa
[Credit: Eugenio Donato, University of Messina]

Sea view from the theatre site of Halaesa, Tusa [Credit: Mission Archéologique 
Française d'Halaesa - MAFHA]

Archaeologists at work at the site of Halaesa, Tusa [Credit: Mission Archéologique 
Française d'Halaesa - MAFHA]

The discovery of the theatre was announced a week earlier by the "Mission Archéologique Française d'Halaesa - MAFHA", the French team engaged in the fieldwork led by Vincent Michel from the Université de Poitiers and Michela Costanzi from the Université de Picardie "Jules Verne" of Amiens.

"We are very happy and very proud to announce that Sicily has another ancient theatre here... in Halaesa. Two years of searching for a clue and at the end, thanks to studies with sophisticated technologies (lidar, electric tomography, thermal cameras), surveying and a large exploratory trench more than 50 metres long and between two and six metres wide, it was finally found. Along the slope was a stone seat similar to others discovered in ancient Sicilian theatres. This element," explained the archaeologists, "together with others, such as the steps cut into the rock and the well-defined orchestra area flanked by a pavement, give us the certainty that it is a theatre, the fourteenth in Sicily!"

View of the Santuary of Apollo, at Halaesa, Tusa 
[Credit: Repubblica]

View of the Santuary of Apollo, at Halaesa, Tusa 
[Credit: Repubblica]

Cobblestone road recently discovered at the site of Halaesa, Tusa 
[Credit: Repubblica]

Both new findings seem to confirm the role of a city that Cicero called the first of the "beautiful and important" cities of his time. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus says the city was established in 403 BC, on a hill not far from the sea. It was founded after peace was brokered with the powerful Greek polis of Syracuse, then ruled by Dionysus I, by the Sicilian tyrant of Herbita, Arconide, who would name it Halaesa Arconidea in his honour.

Its strategic position immediately determined its importance, becoming a bulwark against a possible advancement of the Carthaginians in the area. It would grow enough to be able to mint its own money. A column surmounted by a dog was the symbol of the city, representing its control of the territory, an image that we find today on the coat of arms of Tusa.

Weathered head of statue found at the site of Halaesa, Tusa 
[Credit: Repubblica]

The city allied itself with the Romans when they arrived in Sicily in 263 B BC, and when the Roman province of Sicily was established in 241 BC, it obtained the status of civitas libera ac immunis (ie. autonomous and free of taxes), a privileged status that favoured its economic and demographic development. Under Augustus the city finally became a municipium and acquired full Roman citizenship.

Sources: La Repubblica & Fame di Sud [August 12, 2018]