Etruscan maiden (Demeter or Kore/Persephone) 4th C. BCE

"The island in ancient times was called, after its shape, Trinacria, then Sicania after the Sicani who made their home there, and finally it has been given the name Sicily after the Siceli who crossed over in a body to it from Italy. Its circumference is some four thousand three hundred and sixty stades; for of its three sides, that extending from Pelorias to Lilybaeum is one thousand seven hundred stades, that from Lilybaeum to Pachynus in the territory of Syracuse is a thousand five hundred, and the remaining side is one thousand one hundred and forty stades. The Siceliotae who dwell in the island have received the tradition from their ancestors, the report having ever been handed down successively from earliest time by one generation to the next, that the island is sacred to Demeter and Corê; although there are certain poets who recount the myth that at the marriage of Pluton and Persephonê Zeus gave this island as a wedding present to the bride. That the ancient inhabitants of Sicily, the Sicani, were indigenous, is stated by the best authorities among historians, also that the Goddesses we have mentioned first made their appearance on this island, and that it was the first, because of the fertility of the soil, to bring forth the fruit of the corn, facts to which the most renowned of the poets also bears witness when he writes:

But all these things grow there for them unsown
And e'en untilled, both wheat and barley, yea,
And vines, which yield such wine as fine grapes give,
And rain of Zeus gives increase unto them."

-Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History: Book 5.2

Etruscan maiden (Demeter or Kore/Persephone) 4th C. BCE. Terracotta. Height: 8-1/4 inches (21 cm). Provenance: Private collection, Nicolas Koutoulakis – 1950s-1960s – thence by descent; Merrin Gallery, 1997; Private collection, Westchester, New York. Restoration: None

Source:

Found on auction site.

 

Quote:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/5A*.html#2