Himera, today's Termini Imerese on the north coast of Sicily, was a Greek city founded in 648 BC. by settlers from Zancle (Messina). Its location, the westernmost of all the Greek cities on the island, made it a strategic enclave on the edge of the territory controlled by Carthage, which occupied the West.
The first clash with the Carthaginians occurred in 480 BC, in what is now known as the First Battle of Himera , and that it took place, they say, on the same day that the Greeks faced the Persians at Salamis.
In it, Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant of Agrigento, defeated the Carthaginian army commanded by Amílcar Magón and which, according to sources, although there is no evidence, numbered 300,000 men. Gelon came to Theron's aid at Himera with no less than 50,000 foot soldiers and more than 5,000 cavalry , which is why he could not come to the aid of the Greeks who resisted Xerxes' attack.
Seven decades later the Carthaginians took revenge, and in 409 B.C. under the command of Hannibal Mago, they completely destroyed Himera, which would never be rebuilt. In its place was built to the west of the ruins a new city, Termes, which was repopulated with Phoenicians and Greeks.
The remains of these two battles were discovered between 2008 and 2011, in what constitutes one of the most important archaeological finds in recent decades. During the expansion works of a railway line, a necropolis was found with more than 12,000 almost intact burials from the archaic and classical periods, with abundant pieces of grave goods.
Up to nine mass graves, seven of them associated with the battle of 480 and two with that of 409 BC, and a multitude of individual ones, house thousands of skeletons of men, curiously placed in an orderly fashion, one next to the other. Along with them, around thirty horse burials, probably from the first battle, were also placed in mass graves.
Among the objects found in the graves there are bronzes of the Iberian type, which confirms the presence in the Carthaginian army of mercenaries from various parts of the western Mediterranean:
The tombs were at a depth of three meters below ground level covered by a very compact and homogeneous layer that has protected the necropolis over the centuries. This could be due to flooding from the sea or the nearby river.
The high concentration of males in them is what links most tombs with battles. They are individuals between the ages of 15 and 57 who present traces of deep wounds caused by cutting or throwing weapons, some of which, such as arrows, spearheads, swords or daggers, were still found embedded in the skeletons, because they were not removed before burial.
Likewise, indications of the massacre of the year 409 B.C. which affected a large part of the civil population, appeared in the eastern part of the necropolis, in front of the old city walls and especially in the upper layers. Hundreds of skeletons were placed here in a chaotic manner, men and women of all ages, hastily buried by the survivors.
All these remains of the largest Greek necropolis discovered in Sicily, which have been locked up in sixteen boxes in a warehouse for ten years, are now going to be transferred to Palermo, where they will finally be exhibited to the public at the Real Albergo dei Poveri. However it is a temporary solution until a museum is built in Termini Imerese for them.