Hybla Major or Hybla Maior or Hybla Magna (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: = Hybla Megálē) – the "Greater Hybla" – was a name used to identify the most important of the ancient cities named Hybla in

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

Controversy

There is much debate as to which of the cities named "Hybla" the name applied (

Hybla Gereatis Hybla Gereatis (Greek language, Greek: ), was an ancient city of Sicily, located on the southern slope of Mount Etna, not far from the river Symaethus, in the modern ''comune'' of Paternò. There were at least three (and possibly as many as five) ...

Megara Hyblaea Megara Hyblaea ( grc, Μέγαρα Ὑβλαία) – perhaps identical with Hybla Major – is an ancient Greek colony in Sicily, situated near Augusta on the east coast, north-northwest of Syracuse, Italy, on the deep bay formed by the Xiph ...

) and whether the name uniformly applied to the same city over the period during which the name was used. Initially Megara Hyblaea was the more important; it was founded c. 728 BCE and destroyed in c. 481 BCE. Hybla Gereatis, however, played an important role in the

Second Punic War The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Ital ...

, in the 3rd century BCE. A possible explanation of how the term arose is from a corruption of the

rho Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...

in Greek "Megara" to a

lambda Lambda (}, ''lám(b)da'') is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed . Lambda gave rise ...

generating "Megala" (meaning "greater"). The coins of Hybla Major bear the Greek legend "HYBLA MEGALAS".

References

* *T. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, (), (1968), pp. 19, 44. Colonies of Magna Graecia Ancient cities in Sicily Former populated places in Italy {{Sicily-geo-stub