Legend about the origins of San Marco D'Alunzio
Davide Mauro - CC4.0
According to a legend, the village of San Marco D'Alunzio was founded by Patron dei Thuri who arrived in these places together with Aeneas.
The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived in Rome in 30 BC, writes that, after the destruction of Troy, Aeneas joined his companions in Epirus, a mountainous region in northern Greece, and headed towards the West. Together with Aeneas, a certain Patron left Thuri, a local Greek helmsman, who offered himself as a guide to cross the Ionian Sea. Thus Aeneas and his companions reached the coast of Sicily. According to what was written by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, having arrived on the banks of the Kidas river, today's Rosemary river, some men led by Patron from Thuri decided to settle in these places, founding the ancient Alwntion, which became Haluntium with the Romans, then Demenna with the Byzantines, San Marco with the Normans and, in 1867, today's San Marco d'Alunzio.
