Syracuse and the Ear of Dionysius

In the Neapolis Archaeological Park of Syracuse, a few steps from the Greek theatre, opens an artificial cave more than twenty metres high, with a curious winding shape and an opening that recalls a human ear. This is the Ear of Dionysius, one of the most famous sites of ancient Sicily. Its extraordinary acoustics, able to amplify even a whisper, gave rise to a legend linking the cave to the tyrant Dionysius I and to his mistrust of enemies both real and imagined.

The quarries of Syracuse

The cave lies in the Latomia del Paradiso, one of the great limestone quarries from which the Syracusans extracted material to build temples, walls and houses. The quarries also served as prisons. The historian Thucydides relates that, after the defeat of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse in 413 BC, thousands of prisoners were shut in the quarries, where many died of hunger, thirst and hardship, exposed to the sun by day and the cold by night.

Next to the Ear is the Grotta dei Cordari, the Cave of the Ropemakers, so called because rope makers worked there, taking advantage of the constant humidity and the size of the space to twist their fibres. Today the quarries look like lush gardens, rich in citrus trees and Mediterranean plants, yet they keep the memory of a past of toil and suffering that ancient sources did not forget.

The legend of the tyrant

Dionysius I, who ruled Syracuse from 405 to 367 BC, was one of the most powerful rulers of the Greek world, but also one of the most feared. Ancient authors describe him as suspicious, surrounded by guards, obsessed with conspiracies. According to legend, the tyrant had the cave dug to imprison captives and, hidden in a small opening high up, listened to their conversations thanks to the echo amplified by the rock, thus discovering plans and secrets.

There is no historical evidence of this function. The shape of the cave is most probably the result of stone extraction, perhaps carried out along the course of an ancient water channel. But the legend fitted perfectly with the image of the tyrant handed down by the sources, the same one Cicero evokes when telling of the sword of Damocles hanging over the courtier's head.

The name given by Caravaggio

The name «Ear of Dionysius» is not ancient. According to the Syracusan historian Vincenzo Mirabella, it was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who arrived in Syracuse in 1608 after fleeing Malta, who coined it during a visit to the quarry made in Mirabella's own company. The painter, struck by the shape of the opening and by the legend, is said to have compared the cave to a great ear. During his stay in Syracuse Caravaggio painted the «Burial of Saint Lucy», still kept in the city.

The Ear of Dionysius thus brings together geology, ancient history and modern imagination. Next to it Syracuse offers other places of myth, such as the Fountain of Arethusa, where according to Ovid the nymph pursued by the river Alpheus was turned into a spring. Visiting the cave and testing its echo, one understands how a natural phenomenon can become a story, and a story become part of a city's identity.