Note 694 — Chapter XXII · WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.
Reading edition
Of these Sikel or Sikan caverns many traces yet remain: see Otto Siefert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 39, 45, 49, 55, and the work of Captain W. H. Smyth,—Sicily and its Islands, London, 1824, p. 190.
“These cryptæ (observes the latter) appear to have been the earliest effort of a primitive and pastoral people towards a town, and are generally without regularity as to shape and magnitude: in after-ages they perhaps served as a retreat in time of danger, and as a place of security in case of extraordinary alarm, for women, children, and valuables. In this light, I was particularly struck with the resemblance these rude habitations bore to the caves I had seen in Owhyhee, for similar uses. The Troglodyte villages of Northern Africa, of which I saw several, are also precisely the same.”
About the early cave-residences in Sardinia and the Balearic islands, consult Diodor. v, 15-17.