Dionigi di Alicarnasso (Halicarnassus, c. 60 BC – 7 BC) was an ancient Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric who lived during the principate of Augustus.
Born in Halicarnassus (modern-day Bodrum), an ancient Greek colony of Caria, then part of the Roman province of Asia, Dionysius, like other Greek intellectuals of his time, moved to Rome, where he developed his cultural interests.
He soon became a leading figure of Atticism, the movement that sought to counter the pompous oratorical style that had become established during the Hellenistic period within the so-called “Asianism”: Dionysius, in opposition to this style, upheld the oratorical models of the Classical Age.
After the end of the Second Roman Civil War (31 BC), he spent years studying the Latin language and literature, producing his principal work, Roman Antiquities (7 BC), a historiographical work divided into twenty books, covering Roman history from the mythical period up to the beginning of the First Punic War (264 BC).
Dionysius sought to make Roman history known to the Greeks, a city that had conquered the world and had controlled Greece for centuries, and was particularly concerned with demonstrating the Greek ancestry of the Romans: seventeen centuries before the Trojan War, the people from whom the Aborigines descended (identified by historical sources as among the most ancient inhabitants of central Italy) would have emigrated from Arcadia and settled in Italy.

In Book I of the work, Dionysius reconstructs the origins of Italy by intertwining Greek myths and traditions.
In particular, in Chapter XXVI, he celebrates Scilla as the geographical, sacred, and symbolic boundary of that part of the peninsula which, under the authority of King Italus, was identified for the first time with the name Italy.
From this place, therefore, the ancient homeland takes shape and identity, consecrating Scilla as witness and guardian of the history, consciousness, and destiny of the ancient Italic peoples.

“A few years later other Greeks came to Italy from Arcadia, led by Hercules, who had subdued Spain and the regions as far as the setting sun. Some of them, having obtained from Hercules their discharge from military service, remained in these places; and finding a suitable hill, no more than three stadia distant from Pallanteum, they settled there: it was then called Saturnian, or Cronian as the Greeks would say, and is now called Capitoline.
Those who remained were for the most part from the Peloponnese, namely the Pheneatae and the Epeans of Elis, unwilling to return to their homeland because it had been devastated during the war with Hercules.
Among them were also some Trojans taken prisoner when Hercules had previously captured Troy, while Laomedon was king. And it seems to me that all those of that army who, either wearied by toil or by wandering, obtained release from military service, also settled there.
Some, as I have said, consider the name of the hill ancient, so much so that the Epeans became attached to it in memory of the hill called Cronius in Elis, in the territory of Pisa along the banks of the Alpheus. The Eleans, considering that hill sacred to Saturn, gather there at fixed times and honour it with sacrifices and other rites. Nevertheless, Euxenus and other Italian mythographers believe that the people of Pisa, because of the resemblance to their own Cronius, gave the same name to the other hill, and that the Epeans, together with Hercules, erected to Saturn the altar found at the foot of the hill near the road leading from the Forum to the Capitol: and that they instituted the sacrifice which the Romans still perform there according to Greek rites.
But I, after comparing the accounts, find that before the arrival of Hercules in Italy that place was already sacred to Saturn, and was called Saturnian by the natives: and that the whole region which is now called Italy was likewise dedicated to that deity, and was called Saturnia by its inhabitants, as is stated in the responses given by the Sibyls or by other gods.
And in many places of this land there are temples erected to that deity, and some cities bear his name, just as all Italy once did: and many places still bear the name of the god, especially mountains and cliffs.
With the passing of the years it was called Italy after a most powerful man named Italus.
Antiochus of Syracuse describes him as a wise and philosophical man who, persuading many peoples by speech and many by force, brought under his rule all the territory between the Gulf of Napitinum and that of Scilla: and that tract was the first to be called Italy after Italus.
After this, he writes that, having become more powerful, he caused many others to obey him; for he set his sights on neighbouring peoples and took many of their cities: and he finally writes that he was Oenotrian by nation.
Hellanicus of Lesbos relates that Hercules was driving the cattle of Geryon toward Argos, but that while already in Italy, the young calf of one of the cows strayed from the herd and wandered throughout the land; until, having crossed the intervening sea, it reached Sicily: that Hercules, searching for the animal and asking wherever he went whether any of the locals had seen it, and since they understood little Greek and called it by signs as it is still called in their native language, namely calf; thus he called the whole region traversed by it Vitalia. […] But whether it took that name, as Antiochus says, from the leader, which is perhaps more probable, or from the calf as Hellanicus thinks; it may be gathered from both that it received it around the time of Hercules, or a little before.”

The passage forms part of Dionysius’ broader discussion on the Greek origins of Italy and Rome. In particular, it serves to explain the antiquity of cults, place names, and political power even before the foundation of Rome. Dionysius recounts that, after Heracles’ expedition to the West, some Greeks — especially Arcadians and Epeans from Elis — together with Trojan prisoners, settled permanently in Latium on the hill that would later become the Capitoline.
Subsequently, in Chapter XXVI, Dionysius proceeds to explain the reasons why the region first came to assume the name Italy, introducing the figure of Italus, drawing mainly upon the Greek historian Antiochus of Syracuse.
Here the importance of Scilla emerges, to which this historical turning point is closely linked: it is stated that King Italus subdued the territories lying “between the Gulf of Napitinum and that of Scilla”, and that this was the first territory to be called “Italy”.
Scilla therefore functions as a precise geographical boundary, defining the original area of Italy and linking the birth of the name “Italy” not to a vague myth, but to a concrete geographical and political domain.
The mention of Scilla is neither accidental nor decorative: it serves to confer historical authority upon the narrative. Scilla was in fact a famous and well-known place to the Greeks, both from a mythological and a geographical point of view; using it as a point of reference therefore strengthens the historical credibility of the account.
In defining the power of Italus — who is not a legendary hero, but a civilizing king — the reference to Scilla shows how his authority possessed recognizable territorial boundaries.
At the same time, it establishes continuity between Greece and Italy: Scilla is a threshold between Greece, Italy, and Sicily, and naming it means placing the origin of Italy within a space already integrated into the Greek world, rather than a barbarian one. Within this framework, Scilla becomes the concrete sign of the historicization of myth: a real place that transforms the story of origins into geography and power.
Even when he reports the alternative tradition, that of Hellanicus, which links the name Italy to the lost calf of Heracles, Dionysius suggests that Antiochus’ version, connected to Italus, is more credible precisely because it is founded upon political power and recognizable boundaries.
Scilla thus becomes the place where myth, geography, and identity meet: not merely a name, but the sign that Italy, from its very origins, has defined itself through sacred and memorable boundaries worthy of remembrance.

Giuseppe Ribuffo