_Siceli_ and _Itali_ are the same, as was recognised even by the ancients; the names are also etymologically identical, _Italus_ being the same as _Vitulus_, the sibilant taking the place of the digamma. In a narrower sense, the name Siculi was applied to the Oenotrians, the inhabitants of the southernmost part of Italy. It is very strange to find that this very ancient mode of designation re-appears in the geography of the middle ages, for in the division of the Byzantine empire into provinces, the southernmost part of Italy was called Sikelia. This is generally referred to the vanity of the Byzantine court, which is said to have been desirous to have a province called Sicily, after the island had been taken from it by the Arabs. This indeed is not impossible; but I believe it to be a very arbitrary conjecture, and am rather inclined to believe that the country, in ordinary life, still continued to be called Sikelia, as the earliest Italians were called Siceli by Thucydides and Timaeus (in Polybius). In this manner, the name was probably propagated, and this also seems to have been the origin of the strange appellation of “the two Sicilies,” which at present is indeed quite absurd, but, in its origin, was probably quite intelligible. Besides these Siceli, which, in some districts that can no longer be defined, were called _Italietes_ and _Morgetes_, there existed in southern Italy yet another race of the Oenotrians, called CHAONIANS or CHONIANS. This name also re-appears in Epirus. The metropolis of the Chaonians was called Chone, and had been situated not far from Croton; it may have been destroyed by the Greeks.