e Pelasgic walls that protected the city in prehistoric ages are still
to be seen near the Trapani gate. The late Samuel Butler (author of
_Erewhon_) wrote _The Authoress of the Odyssey_ (Longmans, 1897) in
support of his view that the _Odyssey_ was written by a woman who lived
at Trapani and upon the mountain, and who in the poem described her own
country. In Chapter XII. he quotes Thucydides (vi. 2), to show that the
Sicans had inhabited this corner of the island from a very remote period,
having come probably from Spain. After the fall of Troy, some of the
Trojans, who had escaped the Greeks, migrated to Sicily, settled in the
neighbourhood of the Sicans and were all together called Elymi, their
cities being Eryx and Segesta. The city walls were originally built by
the Sicans, and restored by the Phoenicians when they came to the
mountain; on many of the stones the quarrymen's marks in Phoenician
characters are still visible.

It was believed that at certain seasons of the year the goddess left her
shrine on the mountain and went over into Africa accompanied by all the
pigeons of the neighbourhood, and this was the occasion for a festival of
Anagogia. {151} A little later, when the pigeons returned, the goddess
was believed to come back with them, and then there was another festival
of Catagogia. {151} Seeing that she would have had to go little more
than 120 miles in order to reach what is now Cape Bon, and then only to
cross the gulf of Tunis to arrive at the Phoenician colony of Carthage,
one may suppose it probable that these flittings began when Astarte was
in power.

In our own time the Madonna di Custonaci reigns upon the Mountain, and is
Protectress of the whole comune. Her sacred picture is normally in her
sanctuary down at Custonaci, about 15 kilometres distant, but when any
general calamity afflicts the district, it is brought up to the Matrice
or Mother Church of the comune on Mount Eryx. On these occasions three
days of humiliation are proclaimed, priests and men, their heads crowned
with thorns, their necks encircled with cords, go about the town
flagellating themselves; in the evening fires are lighted in the balio,
and all the villages below answer by lighting fires too, to show that
they are taking part in the general tribulation. A document is signed by
the sindaco, and then the picture is brought from Custonaci and set over
the great altar in the church of the Matrice. When it has become