AUGUSTA  , a seaport of the

province of Syracuse, Sicily, 19 m . N. of it by rail . Pop . (1901) 16,402 . It occupies a part of the former peninsula of Xiphonia, now a small island, connected with the mainland by a bridge . It was founded by the emperor Frederick II. in 1232, and almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake in 1693, after which it was rebuilt . The castle is now a large prison . The fortified port, though unfrequented except as a naval harbour of refuge, is a very fine one . There are considerable saltworks at Augusta . To the south, on the left bank of the Molinello; 1a m. from its mouth, Sicel tombs and Christian catacombs, and farther up the river a cave village of the early middle ages, have been explored (Notizie degli Scavi, 1902, 411, 631 ; Romische Quartalschrift, 1902, 205) . Whether there was ever a town bearing the name Xiphonia is doubted by E . A .

Freeman (Hilt. of Sic. i . 583); cf., however, E . Pais, Atakta (Pisa, 1891), 55, who attributes its foundation, under the name of Tauromenion (which it soon lost), to the Zancleans of Hybla (afterwards Megara Hyblaea) . (T .