La Sicilia, la più grande e popolosa isola del mar Mediterraneo separata dalla penisola italiana dallo Stretto di Messina. Una terra splendida e apprezzata in tutto il mondo per le sue spiagge e le sue coste che incontrano a nord il mar Tirreno, a est il mar Jonio, a sud e sud-ovest il mare del canale di Sicilia che separa l'sola dal continente africano. Sul territorio essenzialmente montuoso e collinare domina il vulcano Etna (3323 m) che dona all'isola siciliana un notevole fascino e rappresenta una meta ambita da escursionisti e appassionati di alta montagna. Altri piccoli vulcani si trovano nelle isole minori di Vulcano, Stromboli, Pantelleria e Ustica...

A charming journey between Greek Mythology characters represented on Villa Romana del Casale mosaic, in Piazza Armerina.

Daphnis] nymph of Greek Mythology, fluvial god Peneo’s daughter, courted by Apollo, implored her father who changed her into laurel. Apollo, after the metamorphosis of the nymph, decreed that from that moment the plant would be served to crown the poets, emperors and the bravest warriors.

Ciparisso] youngster appreciated by Apollo, after the wrongly killing of a golden horns deer which the god had given to him, wanted to die, but the god, moved to pity, changed him in cypress, symbol of the sadness and holy to Ades, god of dead.
Gigantomachy] fight between giants and gods. Giants were born from Uranus’ blood (fallen on the GEA earth), when it was emasculated by the Cronus’ son. The scene represents the moment in which they try to pull off from their body the arrows poisoned with the Lerna Hydra’s blood thrown by Heracles. The wicked giants had dared to challenge Zeus to overthrow the divine order. Were imagined with snakes in place of the feet and at the center their Eurimedonte head.

Endimione] he was a very beautiful Caria shepherd who was sentenced by Zeus to sleep for forty years on mount Latmo, because he had courted Hera. Artemis, moved to pity and in love with the young man, visited him every night, by the spoils of the moon (Selene), to kiss him with its pale rays of light. Another version wants that Artemis fell in love with Endimione giving him fifty daughters and then, not bearing the idea he died, she put him to sleep for ever in a cave on mount Latmo in Caria where he lays for the eternity keeping himself young and very beautiful.

Ambrosia] All characters of Licurgo and Ambrosia’s tragedy are present. On the center,  Licurgo’s naked figure is represented, Thrace king, which tryes to kill the maenad Ambrosia while is changing herself in a grapevine plant, by using a battle axe. Behind Licurgo it’s the Dionysiac cortege of three maenads of which one, with the thyrsus in hand, threatens Licurgo and a young man which throws the holy leopard. Behind Ambrosia are: Dionysus, Pan and Sileno. Licurgo didn’t like the Dionysac cult. The myth says that Dionysus, Semele and Zeus’ son, during a bacchanalia, was surprised by Licurgo that violently drove him away from his kingdom, killing satyrs and maenads, considering his behaviour as immoral. Licurgo forbade the grapevine cultivation cutting all the plants he encountered by the battle axe. Even killed his own son by mistake, having exchanged him for a grapevine bine and so the axe slipped through his fingers for the great rage he had, and cut off his legs. The other maenads and the satyrs Licurgo had imprisonned were miracolously freed instantly and the chains which were keeping them imprisonned were thrown on Licurgo killing him.

Pan] the myth tells that Pan, nymph Penelope and Mercury’s son, born with feet of goat, two horns on his forehead and beard of beak, was so ugly that, at the birth, his mother was nearly swooning. The father took him to the Olympus, but he was continously tormenting the nymphs for lechery. Pan, fallen in love with Siringa, Arcadia nymph, was chasing her to submit to his wishes and when he was about to reach her, Siringa’s father, Ladone, turned her into a cane thicket that, oscillating for the wind, was causing a sound exchanged by Pan as Siringa’s moan. Pan, in memory of the beloved, cut seven canes (as seven notes) and, arranging them in growing order, built the instrument called siringa.

Orpheus] in the center of the room, Orpheus plays the cithern sitting on a rock. The myth says that Orpheus, Muse Calliope and Eagro’s son, lost his wife Eurydice because of a snake bite trampled accidentally while she was running away chased by the shepherd Aristeo, Apollo’s son, that wanted to marry her. Orpheus, hopeless and inconsolable, descended in the kingdom of Hades and sent to sleep by the cithern the dog Cerbero. Then he moved to pity Ades and Persefone gods which released Euridice, provided that Orpheus never turn around to look her up to Hades exit. Orpheus didn’t resist and looked at Eurydice, vanishing like a shade for ever. He played the cithern again, in sadness, and no gods but all the animals of earth that looked at him were enchanted . Then Orpheus disdained and was killed by maenads so that, by death, he could reach Eurydice.

Arione] famous lyric poet and Lesbo Island musician, plays the cithern sitting on the back of a dolphin, under a curtain red stretched by two Cupids. All tritons, dolphins, griffons ridden by Cupids, etc. etc, are there. The myth sings that while Arione, Posidone’s son, was travelling for sea, he was plundered by the sailors of everything he had and was about to be killed too. As last desire he obtained to play the cithern and doing so, he attracted many dolphins that surrounded the ship, enchanted by music. Arione threw himself in the sea and was saved by a dolphin which carried him to homeland.

Kore, Zeus and Demetra's daughter, was the virgin goddess, symbol of the green grain (in this case was called Persefone, while Ecate as symbol of the gathered grain). However, these three names refers to her mother, Demetra, who remembers the field ploughed three times, connected to the rite of the fertility. Hades (Plutone), god of the Hell, fell in love with Persefone (the Romans' Proserpina) and asked to Zeus about marrying her. He  answered neither yes nor not,  fearing that Demetra would have never forgiven that her daughter was bordered in the Tartaro, but Hades felt authorized to kidnap the divine young girl.

So, while Persefone was gathering flowers near the Pergusa (Enna) lake together the nymphs (one of them is Ciane who, because of the stilled tears,  turned himself into an underground river and reappeared in Siracusa), when Hades kidnapped and led her to the Tartaro, the underground kingdom of the dead.

Demetra looked for Kore for nine days and nights, without eating nor drinking and desperately invoking her name. The tenth day she got to Eleusi, where a story about the vision of a mysterious waggon towed by black horses that had appeared and then disappeared in an abyss and whose invisible driver was keeping firmly a shouting young girl, was told to her. So, had the proof that  the ignoble kidnapping was happened with the probable Jupiter complicity, Demetra, instead to meet Zeus in the Olympus, wandered furious on earth, preventing the flourish of the nature and the harvesting of its produces, so that humanity could dying. Zeus was not daring to meet Demetra in Eleusi, but sent to her messages and gifts immediately refused by the goddess who, on the contrary, swore that earth would have remained sterile till the adored daughter was not returned to her. Zeus committed to Ermes a message for Hades: "if you don't give back Kore, wi will go broke". Then she sent a new message to Demetra: " You Will have back your daughter, only if she doesn't tasted the food of dead ". Because Kore had refused to eat since her kidnapping, Hades was forced to promise her liberation and get on the waggon. In Eleusi, Demetra was ready to hold her daughter, but just known that Persefone had been accused to have tasted seven grains of pomegranate in the kingdom of the dead, fell down in the despair and still threatened the earth. Zeus, with Rea's aid ( mother of him, of Demetra and Hades too ), made a compromise: Persefone would have spent three months every year togheter with Hades , as queen of the Tartaro, and the remaining nine with her mother. So, Demetra went to the Olimpo after having rewarded who had helped her: she gave to Trirrolemo seeds of grain, a plough of wood, a chariot and sent him to teach the agriculture to men all around the world. Persefone symbolizes the rotation of the seasons and represents the parable " if the grain does not die, the plants will not grow ". In the eleusinian mysteries Persefone, representing the candidate to the initiation, who passes through the death to revive and access to the knowledge.