My current research is the last stage of a journey, which I embarked on five years ago at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. There, I defended a Master’s thesis (now published as a monograph) which already dealt with a Sicilian cult: the goddess (Astarte/Aphrodite/Venus) of Eryx, in Western Sicily.During my research on this goddess, worshipped by Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans from the 5th c. BC to the 3rd c. AD, I soon discovered the republican period as the richest of its history. Many ...