MONTE

See also:

• SAN

SAN GIULIANO  , a town and episcopal see of Sicily, in the province of Trapani, 2 M . E.N.E. of Trapani, on the summit of an isolated bare hill, 2465 ft. above the sea . Pop. of commune (1901), 28,939; of town, about 3000 . The town occupies the site of the ancient Eryx, a city of the Elymi, a people who claimed to be sprung from a mixed settlement of Trojans and PhocianS after the fall of Troy (E . A . Freeman, History of Sicily, i . 195, 542), but regarded as f3ip0apoa by the Greeks . The city' was famous for the temple of Venus Erycina, to the foundations of which a wall of 12 courses of masonry in the castle probably belongs . The worship was a relic of the Phoenician cult of Astarte . In 415 B.C. the Athenian envoys were shown the treasure of the temple at Eryx as available for the expenses of the war, which treasure turned out to be only silver-gilt and not of solid gold (Thucydides vi . 46) . The town must have become a part of the Carthaginian dominion in 405 B.C .

It was seized by

Pyrrhus in 278 B.C., and was ceded to Rome at the end of the First Punic War . In Roman times the temple (like that of Diana Tifatana, near Capua) possessed territory of its own, being dependent neither on the state nor on any neighbouring town, and a considerable number of female slaves . The place was the residence of the quaestor in charge of the western half of the island, ard Verres, as praetor, seems to have spent a good deal of time here . Considerable portions of the city wall are preserved on the north-west; on the east and south the precipitous cliffs formed a sufficient defence . The remains date from a reconstruction of Roman times,' in which the material of two earlier periods has been used: the large blocks belonging to the original fortifications bear Phoenician masons' marks; but the long line of towers at regular intervals is a thoroughly Roman characteristic . The castle, dating from the middle ages, with three lofty towers guarding the entrance, occupies the south-eastern extremity of the town . The cathedral, founded in 1314, has a fine porch and Gothic facade .