For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations

We Sicilians have become accustomed, by long, a very long hegemony of rulers who were not of our religion and did not speak our language, to split hairs. If we had not done so we’d never have coped with the Byzantine tax gatherers, with Berber Emirs, with Spanish Viceroys. Now the bent is endemic, we’re made like that. I said ‘support’, I did not say ‘participate’. 

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In Sicily it doesn‘t matter about doing things well or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of ‘doing’ at all. We are old, Chevalley, very old. For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call own own. We’re as white as you are, Chevalley, and as the queen of England; and yet for two thousand five hundred years we’ve been a colony. I don’t say that in complaint; it’s our fault. But even so we’re worn our and exhausted.’

G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (1958), tr. A. Colquhon (1961),122