Entella: A Resilient Ancient Sicilian Community

The third-century BCE Sicilian inscribed bronze plaques collectively known as the Entella tablets constitute remarkable evidence of a community’s response to near destruction. The decrees inscribed on these bronze tablets attest to the experience of a small western Sicilian polis during the First Punic War (ca. 264–241 BCE). When the inhabitants of Entella were expelled from their city, they were able to survive both individually and as a community thanks to the intervention of benefactors who sheltered them, fed them, and eventually helped them return home. Although previous work on the inscriptions has discussed significant elements of the episode and noted the fact that the decrees strengthened diplomatic relations with their benefactors, this article sets the tablets in their full historical context, clarifies some remaining questions they raise, and reconstructs their overall program, with particular attention to group dynamics and social and political life. Drawing on theories of community and communal trauma, I show how the Entellinoi commemorated their disastrous dislocation and embraced interaction with communities across Sicily so that they would not suffer so much from an existential threat again.1