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In what was the last resistance effort against the Greeks, Ducetius unified his people, the Sicels of eastern Sicily, in 452 BC. He succeeded in fortifying positions and redistributing land until suffering final defeat at the hands of Syracuse.

The Syracusan tyrants Heiron I, Gelon, and Dionysus I assured the ascendancy of Greek Sicily, with Syracuse at the helm. The Greek colonies continued to fight among themselves, but united when necessary, including the defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera in 480 BC, calling a halt to 50 years of Carthaginian aggression.

Rome’s successful siege of Syracuse in 212 BC marked the end of Greek power on the island. After centuries of warfare, Roman rule brought peace. Praetors were sent to Sicily to govern, including the infamous Verres, later prosecuted by Cicero for his misdeeds. Verres, who looted everything from Sicilian wheat to works of art, was the first in a long line of foreign plunderers.

After three centuries of long-distance Byzantine rule, North African Moors invaded in 827 AD at Mazara del Vallo. Four years later they took Palermo, made it their capital and transformed it into the cosmopolitan city it remains today. They brought infrastructure to rural Sicily, improved irrigation and introduced new methods of agriculture and fishing.

Norman crusader Roger de Hautville (also known as Count Roger or Roger I) took Sicily at the end of the 11th century. He was the first of a century of Norman rulers who slowly changed Sicily from an eastern to a western society, albeit one with exotic flair (see Norman Palermo).

Having been ruled for decades by the French Angevins, on Easter Monday 1282 an uprising began in Palermo. Using the excuse that a French soldier had insulted a woman, Sicilians killed every Frenchman on the island. Having successfully instigated revolt and done away with the unpopular foreign sovereign, Sicilians invited Peter of Aragón to become their king. Spanish domination lasted on the island for 500 years.

Centuries of foreign domination, misrule and the feudal system meant wealth, power and land fell into the hands of the few. Popular revolts began in 1820, reached a head in 1848, and in May 1860 opened the way for the Italian socialist Garibaldi. With the aid of Sicilian Redshirts, Garibaldi took the island and convinced the peasant class to vote for Italian Unification.

After Unification, however, Sicily found itself highly taxed and ignored as an outpost of a “foreign” government. Peasant farmers found themselves unable to feed their families and there was no means for improvement. Such poverty became the motivating factor for mass emigration to the Americas in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

In 1908 an earthquake killed more than 70,000 people and levelled more than 90 per cent of Messina. The next quake, in 1968, left scores of villages destroyed in the Belice Valley. Thousands were housed in shelters for 15 years, waiting for the Italian government to resolve the problem.

More than 350 mafiosi were convicted during the late 1980s, as a result of which the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were murdered in 1992. “Boss of Bosses” Salvatore “Totò” Riina was finally convicted of arranging the murders.