During the Congress of Gela, according to the testimony of Thucydides, Hermocrates, declaring the independence of the Sicelian people, said:«"It is no disgrace that fellow countrymen make concessions to fellow countrymen: Dorians to other Dorians and Chalcidians to others of the same race; and that in general concessions are made to neighboring peoples who inhabit the same identical land surrounded by the sea, and who by one name are called Siceliots.[...
]» (Thucydides IV, 64.3, Italian translation by Luciano Canfora - English translation)[4]The idyllic image that ancient historiography has given of the arrival of the Greeks on the island is far from what was in truth a coexistence that was anything but peaceful, characterized by the oppression of the natives, by the "economic and political, but also cultural and ideological pressure exerted by the colonizers, and the consequent dismantling of the parameters of self-identification of the indigenous world"[5] The contribution to literature made by the Siceliotes was remarkable.
In fact, some genres of Greek literature developed in Sicily: according to Aristotle, the technique of constructing plots was born in Sicily and the Doric-Siceliote comedy itself, whose main exponents were Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis, served as a model for the subsequent Attic Greek comedy of the 5th century BC.
Phrynichus and Aeschylus died in Sicily, the first considered "the most famous of the first tragedians", the second listed among the three greatest tragedians of ancient Greek theatre; Aeschylus also performed some of his tragedies in the Syracuse theatre, including The Persians, the oldest surviving Greek tragedy.
He was part of the court of intellectuals that surrounded the Syracuse tyrant Hiero II, which included, among others, the lyric poets Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides of Ceos and Xenophanes.