Diodorus Siculus of Sicily was a Greek historian. He is known for writing the "Universal History" much of which survives, between 60 and 30 BC.
According to his own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily (now called Agira). The ancient city of Sicily was ruled by Tyrants, on of whom, Agyris, was the most powerful ruler in the centre of Sicilia.
ATyrant was an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or person or one who has usurped legitimate sovereignty. Plato and Aristotle define a Tyrant as "one who rules without law, and uses extreme and cruel tactics against his own people as well as others."
Agyris was a contemporary of Dionysius the Elder, and with him succesfully resisted the Carthaginians forces when they invaded Agyrum in 392BC. Dionysius was a Greek Tyrant of Syracuse, in what is now Sicily, Southern Italy and made Syracuse the most powerful of the Western Greek colonies. He was regarded by the ancients as an example of the worst kind of despot-cruel, suspicious and vindictive. His victory over the democratic Syracuse represents the very worst of the mercenary-leader in its intention towards human lives. He was given 600 personal mercenaries to guard his person after faking an attack on his own life. With this backing him up he was able to increase this guard to 1,000 and gradually consolidated his power and established himself as a tyrant.
Agyris was not colonized by the Greeks until the Corinthian general Timoleon drove out the last Tyrant in 339BC, settled 10,000 Greeks, according to Diodorus Siculus, a native of the city, and erected various splendid buildings that no traces remain as the modern city overlies the ancient one.
Diodorus' universal history was divided into 3 sections. The first 6 books recounts the history of the World from the Trojan War down to Alexander the Great. The last section, book XVII to the end, concerns historical events from successors os Alexander down to either 60BC or the beginning of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. He selected the name "Bibliotheca" in acknowledgement that he was assembling a composite work from many sources.
Diodorus' account of gold mining in Nubia, a region along the Nile River in Eastern Egypt, now Northern Sudan and Sothern Egypt, is one of the earliest extant texts on the topic, and describes in vivid detail the use of slave labor in terrible working conditions. The name Nubia is derived from that of the Noba people who settled the area in the area in the 4th century following the collapse of the kingdom of Meroe, given the name by the Persian king, Cambyses, in honor of his sister who was called by that name. Originally it was borne the ancient appellation Saba, named after its original founder. Seba was one of the sons of Cush.
Diodorus also gave an account of the Gauls (Celtic peoples): "The Gauls are terrifying in aspect and their voices are deep and altogether harsh; when they meet together converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for the most part and using one word when they mean another; they like to talk in superlatives, to the end that they may extol themselves and depreciate all other men. They are also boasters and threateners and are fond of pompous languages, and yet they have sharp wits and are not without cleverness at learning."
Diodorus Siculus credits Heracles with the foundation of the sacred precincts (Temenos) or cultic land assigned as an official domain and marked off from common uses and dedicated to cultic rituals dedicated to the gods of the Greeks. The precincts of Iolaus and of Geryon, and the creation of a nearby Lake are attested to him. C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalist, relates the "Tenemos" to spellbinding or magic circle, which acts as a square space or safe spot where mental work can take place. This "Tenemos" ressembles among others a symmetrical garden with a fountain in the middle acting as a squared circle in which an encounter with the unconscious world can be protected from the unconscious content of forces trying to knock him down mentally and can safely be brought back into the light of consciousness. In this manner one can meet its own shadow, or soul, and know the nature of it and increase the mental power to control it in the outside world. In the case of the Greek mythology all their gods were already defeated by the pleasures of the mortal nature and needed to form a place in which they had at least the mental illusion of being in control of the World in which they inhabited.
In the mid 5th century, Agyrium was the 1rst Sicilian city to mint bronze coinage in the Greek fashion.
Heracles was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae and champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. He was the son of Zeus and Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon. Alcmene was born to Electryon, the son of Perseus and Andromeda. Andromeda, mother of Alcmene, was the daughter of the Aethiopian king Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia's extreme quality in her personality of foolish pride and over-confidence led her to boast that Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sent the sea monster Cetus to ravage Aethiopia as divine punishment. Andromeda was stripped and chained naked to a rock as a sacrifice to the monster, but she was saved from death by Perseus. Heracles became the foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson and half-brother of Perseus.
In Rome and the modern West, Heracles is known as Hercules, with whom Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.
A major factor in the life of Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, had for him. There were many illegitimate offspring sired by Zeus, and Heracles was known as the greatest hero, son of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon, returning home early from war, his real husband returned later the same night and she became pregnant with both sons at the same time, a case of heteropaternal super fecundation, when a woman carries twins sired by different fathers. Heracles' very existence proved one of Zeus' many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus' mortal offspring as revenge for her husband's infidelities. His twin mortal brother was Iphicles, father of Heracles' charioteer Iolaus.
Iolaus was worshiped as a Theban divine hero and became the famous Heracles's nephew, and also for being one of the Argonauts. Through his daughter Leipephilene, he was considered to have fathered the mythic and historic line of the king of Corinth, ending with Telestes. He always acted as a companion of Heracles. He was popular regarded as Heracles' s lover, and the shrine to him in Thebes was a place where males couples worshiped and made vows. The Theban gymnasium was also named after him, and Iolaia, an athletic festival consisting on gymnastic and equestrian events, was held yearly in Thebas in his honor. The victors were crowned with garlands of myrtle, an evergreen shrub.
According to Diodorus Siculus, Iolaus was sent by Heracles in Sardinia (the 2nd largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily and before Cyprus, and one of the most ancient bodies of land in Europe) together with 9 of the sons that he had with the daughters of Thespius to colonize the island, giving rise to the people of Iolaensi. Iolaus and the Thespians were buried in Sardinia.
Thespius was the legendary founder and king of Thespiae, Boeotia (part of the region of ancient Central Greece, with its capital Livadeia, and its largest city Thebes). He was the son of Erechtheus, King of Athens, and Praxithea. His maternal grandparents were Phrasimus and Diogenia, the daughter of the River god Cephissus. He married Megamede and had 50 daughters together. The daughters are often called the Thespiades. All his daughters came of marrying age and Thespius desired grandchildren from the hero Heracles. When Heracles was assigned to kill a lion, Thespius offered his 50 daughters as a price. The hunt of the lion lasted 50 days, and during each night of the hunt Heracles slept with each of them, who in turn gave birth to one son.
Aristotle said that Sardinia had practiced the rite of incubation, which is the liberation ritual of people affected by nightmares and obsessions. These rituals included that the sufferers should sleep next to the tombs of heroes. Aristotle adds in his commentaries that the places where the corpses of the 9 sons were deposited and preserved became the famous oracles. The Iolians added a Temple to Heracles' Tomb, because they believed that he had freed Sardinia from many ills.
Geryon, in Greek mythology, was a fearsome giant who dwelt on the island Erytheia. According to Hesiod the giant had one body and 3 heads. In the Bibliotheke of Pseudo- Apollodorus, Heracles was required to travel to Erytheia, in order to obtain the Cattle of Geryon as his 10th Labor.
The name Erytheia was applied to an island close to the coast of Souther Hispania, which was the site of the original colony of Gades (modern Cadiz). On the way there , heracles crossed the Libyan desert and became so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios, the Sun. Helios, in admiration of his courage, gave him the golden chariot he used to sail across the sea from East to West each night. Heracles used it to reach Erytheia, a favorite motif of the vase-painters. Such a magical conveyance undercuts any geography for Erytheia, the red island of the sunset.
The Hesperides were the nymphs of evening and the golden light of sunset, who were the Daughters of the Evening or Nymphs of the West. They tended a blissful garden in a far Western corner of the World, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the World-Ocean. By ancient Roman times, the garden of Hesperides had lost its archaic place in religion, but it was revived in Renaissance poetry. The name Heslerides means the evening star (Venus) and having a shared root with the English word "West."They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night (Nyx) either alone, or with Darkness (Erebus). Nevertheless, among the names given to them, they were either 3, 4, or 7 Hesperides and Erytheia was one of them. The island was known as the seat of Geryon, who was overcome by Heracles. The garden of the Hesperides is Hera's orchard in the West, where either a single apple tree or a grove grows, producing golden apples that grant immortality when eaten. The trees were planted from the fruited branches that Gaia gave to Hera as a wedding gift when Hera accepted Zeus. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden a never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. In the myth of the Judgment of Paris, it was from the garden that Eris, goddess of discord, obtained the Apple of Discord, which led to the Trojan War. Heracles was the only person to steal the apples, other than Perseus, although Athena later returned the apples to their rightful place in the garden.
