Sicily – and especially Syracuse – seems to have had an ongoing preoccupation with paired eyes as an apotropaic or magico-religious symbol. This brief paper explores some signature pieces and speculates that the excised eyes of Santa Lucia, patron saint of Syracuse, may be but a recent embodiment of a propensity that dates back to the Neolithic era.

This preface introduces in the main issues of the volume.

The article focuses on one of the most famous accounts of the events of 1204: the De Signis by Niketas Choniates. It demonstrates how Choniates constructed a (semi)fictional account of the assaults against the Byzantine culture and identity through a constellation of symbols and passages drawn from the Greek Classics. The article comprises three…[Read more]

This paper proposes a novel source for – or at least influence on – the iconography of the Moon trump in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which preserves the design from the Tarot de Marseille. In fact, the Moon template appears to date back to the earliest days of the Tarot. The proposed source or prototype is a Greco-Roman talismanic design aga…[Read more]

The establishment of an Aghlabid, then Fāṭimid-Kalbid dominion in Sicily had a deep impact not only on the island and on Mediterranean power constellations, but also on mainland Italy, especially in its Southern parts. Although the Peninsula was under continuous attack between the ninth and eleventh centuries, all attempts to place it under su…[Read more]