Ortygia in Syracuse is a small island which is the oldest part of the city of Syracuse. Its name derives from the ancient greek ortyx (ὄρτυξ) which means “quail”. Its extension does not exceed 1 km² and its population totals 4,269 (2011) inhabitants. After the Ear of Dyonisius we would like to tell you something more about Syracuse

Name

The island was known in antiquity with three denominations that succeeded according to the historical period.

The poet Nicandro di Colofone was the first to affirm that in ancient times the island of Ortigia was called with the name of Homothermon, a term Italianized in Omotermon and literally translated from Omo-termon as “Equal bath” or “Equal baths” by Tommaso Fazello and Vincenzo Mirabella. The ethic origin of the name unites, in part, Nicandro’s theory to that of Pausanias, which recognizes that there have been relations between the Syracusans and the Greek region.

The name Ortigia (in ancient Greek: Ὀρτυγία), with which Syracuse is known since the Greek era, derives from rock partridge, widespread in the Mediterranean and in Asia Minor, or from quail (in ancient Greek: ὄρτυξ), widespread in what for the Greeks it was the known world, more common and more ancient. Nicandro instead says that this name is connected to the fact that the Etoli – from him, as others – indicated that founders, having abandoned their homeland to reach the Mediterranean island, decided to give the new land the same name of the etolic place. The term Ὀρτυγία, present in the Greek language and translated by the scholars Henry Liddell and Robert Scott as an island of quails, originally possessed according to the lexicon Hesychiographer of Alexandria an initial ϝ, which would be pronounced as a kind of v (* ϝόρτυξ).

Although the island had a series of ancient names, the inhabitants later did not lose the use of identifying it as Nasos, a word that in the Doric dialect means Isola.

Physical geography

Ortygia is an island located on the eastern coast of Sicily.
Its geological conformation is composed of a rock with natural fractures, this type of rock lends itself to filter the water naturally, this reason that explains why the island is connected “hydrologically” to the Syracusan mainland. The feeding of this relationship with the water can be attributed to a deep water table placed in correspondence of a fault, currently inactive, rich in water, which is compressed by the impermeable layer of the quaternary clays that lie in the lower valley of the Anapo and surround the island of Ortigia and the Plemmirio.

From the Porta Marina to the Castello Maniace (which is the extreme point of the island), there is a succession of sources and natural sources that come out below or at the middle level of the sea; an example is the well-known Fonte Aretusa, a freshwater mirror located in Ortigia, which comes into contact with salt water from the sea. The presence of these springs is due to the natural slope of the fluences and the already mentioned fracture system existing in the Ortigiane rocks, both of which are favorable factors for the emergence of water.

Other examples of natural springs in Ortigia are given by the Fontana degli Schiavi; from one of the most evocative miqwè (Jewish baths) in Europe; from the Bath of the Queen (natural spring located below sea level, in the Castello Maniace) and the almost completely disappeared manifestations of Occhi di Zivillica (or Eyes of Zilica).

Another very interesting morphological aspect of the island of Ortigia, are its hypogea; the Syracusans have dug them over the centuries, from the Greek times up to the war times of the Second World War, when these hypogea were used as air-raid shelters for the population. The most important is that of Piazza Duomo, recently opened to the public, on whose walls there are also some Byzantine frescoes. Ortigia has many underground hypogea, in some, as in that of the Jewish quarter, the Giudecca, there is also the presence of fresh water, with the same characteristics of the other natural water polls described above.

Its coastline forms the natural entrance to a large gulf, whose other end is represented by the Plemmirio coast. It is thought that the island, after the Greek colonization, was connected almost immediately to the mainland using an embankment, or an accumulation of artificially created land. Later the embankment was replaced by a bridge. Its coast, in ancient times, had to be more prolonged, in fact from the various archaeological studies made at the Porto Piccolo of Syracuse, it is visible under water part of the marble quay that distinguished the Syracusan landing place. The type of coast is rocky and jagged, in its majority, except for a few sandbags.

Finally its vegetation (not extensive since the island has been densely populated and built in the past) is composed of plants typical of the Mediterranean climate; therefore palms and ficus among all, moreover it attracts curiosity, and often amazement, the presence of the papyrus plant that grows spontaneously inside the Fonte Aretusa. Its fauna, on the other hand, features characteristic ducks that are part of the landscape culture, just think that the Fonte Aretusa, has been renamed by the Syracusans “fountain of the ducks”, just for the numerous ducks that are inside it. As well as freshwater fish and many other species that live in the sea.

Delos and Ortygia

Ortigia has a link with the Greek island of the Aegean Sea, Delos (Delo in Italian). Both islands in ancient times were called Ortigia.

Greek Ortigia changed its name to “Delos”, a word that derives from the Greek word “deloo”, meaning “she who shows” “bright island”, since legend tells that the god of the sun, Apollo and the goddess of hunting, Artemis (identifiable with the goddess Diana). According to Greek mythology, Latona, to escape the wrath of Hera, the betrayed wife of Zeus, sought a refuge where to give birth to the sons of the sovereign of the gods and identified it on an island that wandered among the waves of the Aegean sea, Ortigia precisely. Here he gave birth to the twins Apollo and Artemis and to thank the barren island for having welcomed it, gave it the gift of prosperity, transforming the arid soil of that island into a land full of light, fixing it with pillars in the seabed and thus stopping his wandering for the Mediterranean. In return he wanted from it permission to build there the sanctuary of the god Apollo; for this reason, over the centuries, that island remained sacred to the Greeks and to those who preached the cult of the sun god. Pindar and other poets have subsequently narrated this link between the two Ortigia, highlighting the points they had in common; Pindar calls it “worthy sister of Delos” and dedicates to the Sicilian Ortigia of the verses; Antonio Mezzanotte, professor of Greek letters, translates them into the book “Le odi di Pindaro”.

The Sicilian Ortigia had as its protectress goddess Artemis, also called Diana. This was because she transformed the nymph Arethusa (symbol of the entire city and loved by the god Alphaeus, son of the god Oceano, who wanted to escape) in the famous source that still flows inside the rocks of Ortigia close to the sea. And in addition to Ortigia, there is the oldest Doric Temple of Apollo in Sicily, testifying that here the cult of the sun god was present and important. These similarities therefore led poets to compose verses on the two islands that initially bore the same name. But it is not known, however, which of the two first took the name of “Ortigia” since the cult of Apollo in Delos is present in the sixth century BC. and the foundation of Syracuse dates back a century before, in the seventh century BC, and it was not specified when and how the island of Ortigia took the name that still bears today. There is therefore a certain mystery that makes the origins of the Sicilian islet even more fascinating, proving to have roots that are lost in time and merge with those of Greek mythology.