1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agira

AGIRA (formerly San Filippo d’Argiro), a town of the province of Catania, Sicily, with a railway station 41/2 m. to the south of the town, 35 m. W. of Catania. Pop. (1901) 17,738. It occupies the site of Agyrion, an ancient Sicel city which was ruled by tyrants, one of whom, Agyris, was the most powerful ruler in the centre of Sicily. He was a contemporary of Dionysius I., and with him successfully resisted the Carthaginians when they invaded the territory of Agyrium in 392 B.C. Agira was not colonized by the Greeks until Timoleon drove out the last tyrant in 339 B.C. and erected various splendid buildings of which no traces remain. Agyrion was the birthplace of the historian Diodorus Siculus.