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JULY/AUGUST 2004
“Ear of Dionysius”
Submitted by
John Iorio
Many strange things have
happened in the Ear of Dionysius.
We know because the cave keeps
no secrets as Gorge and Lisa were
to discover.
On the second day of their ten-day
trip through Sicily, students of the
Florida State Program in Florence
had a busy scheduled, beginning
with the performance of a play at
the ancient theater in Syracuse
followed by a visit to the nearby
Ear of Dionysius.
The ancient city was much larger
than the Syracuse of today. Larger
than Athens itself, it had been
settled by Dorians, and soon
became not only the leading city of
Sicily but of the Greek world.
Archimedes, the great scientist,
was its famous son. Aeschylus
spent time here and Plato had even
spent a night in jail here when he
The Ear of Dionysius
told King Dionysius he spoke the
words of a tyrant. Its theater was
built in the 5 th century BC, and its
diameter of 453 feet makes it one
of the largest buildings remaining
from the classical world. Time and
gravity have reduced its 61 tiers of
seats to 46. Little is left of the
stage, but our students had no
problem staging part of “Oedipus
Rex.” I found the performance
stirring because it affirmed the
continuity of history. As I listened
to the American accents lacing the
sun-tamed air, I thought back 2300
years when the same play stirred
the air with Greek sounds. The
tragedy of Oedipus, vanquishing
time and space, made us one.
Breaking away from the group,
George and Lisa decided to
explore the countryside on their
own and walked to the back of the
theater. The wild vegetation amidst
the deep, cool, jagged gorges
softened the Sicilian sun. They
walked to a clearing and beheld a
large cave with a stony, vertical
lip-like entrance.
They glanced at one another and
their instant communication
provoked exciting tugging as they
approached the Ear of Dionysius.
A Sicilian worker smiled the smile
of a thousand years of knowledge.
He warned them about the cave,
but they smiled back benignly and
disappeared into the darkness to
profess their love for one another.
They emerged some time later, and
while making their way back to the
theater, they ran into their
classmates standing at the rim of
the cave, waiting and listening.
PAGE 10
The Greek Theatre
Normality recaptured, they listened
to the lecture.
The professor spoke about
Alcibiades and the Sicilian
expedition. “Alcibiades, playboy,
con man, adventurer — brilliant
and audacious — conceived and
planned the Sicilian expedition.
But trumped-up legal charges
prevented him from participation.
The expedition pitted Greek
coalition forces against Syracuse
and its coalition forces in 414 B.C.
as part of Athens’ larger war
against Sparta. Athens was
determined to put Syracuse in its
place. The colonists from Greece,
now Sicilians, had grown too
powerful much like the American
colonists vis a vis England.
Furthermore, Dionysius was
aggressively courting the best
technologists of warfare. The
battles by land and sea were fierce.
The best of the Athenians were
committed to the battles while
most of Sicily joined the
Syracusans. At the most dramatic
and decisive point, 200 vessels
heavy with soldiers fought a battle
won by the Syracusans after they
had sealed off the one-mile outlet
of the harbor. Many Greeks were
killed on land; many fled to
Continue on page 11.