Sicily · 8th century BCE
Motya
Mṭw
The lagoon city
An island in the Stagnone, west of Sicily, facing what is now Marsala. Tyre’s people built it as they built Tyre: a rock in the water, a causeway at need.
Motya in the lagoon
Island city · Stagnone, western Sicily · Tyrian foundation
Mozia — a rock in the water, as Tyre was
Wikimedia Commons · Motya / Mozia, Sicily
Gad Yaton: They built it as they built Tyre. Dionysius took it. The Punic street is still a street.
A rock in the water
Motya sits in a lagoon as Tyre sat in the sea. The same gesture: island, harbor, lord of the city, a road the mainland could not drink without a causeway. Dionysius of Syracuse took it in 397 before the common era and meant the taking to be the end.
The survivors crossed the shallow to Lilybaeum. The lagoon still holds the island. The street they laid is still a street. This is not a stub. It is a Tyrian door in Sicily.
One island, two doors
Lilybaeum received the people. Rome would later take that too and write Sicily as a province. Panormus held the north of the same island — Ziz in the old name, a harbor the Greeks called all-harbor.
We do not paint ten Sicilian dots. Motya is the west. Panormus is the north. The lagoon and the coffin in Palermo are enough to say the island was ours before it was Rome’s.
Gad Yaton: Dionysius took it. The survivors crossed to Lilybaeum. The Punic street is still a street.