The ruins of the ancient Phoenician colony of Motya, well known to history as one of the three main Phoenician settlements in Sicily (Thucydides vi.2,6), are situated on the small island of Mozia (S. Pantaleo) within the shallow lagoon which stretches from Marsala towards Trapani. The city had an eventful history as one of the mainstays of Punic power in Sicily; but it was destroyed by Dionysius of Syracuse after an epic siege in 397 B.C., and thereafter, ceding place to Lilybaeum on the mainland nearby, its ruins remained virtually deserted. The object of some scientific curiosity during the late seventeenth and eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the site had to wait for systematic exploration until the beginning of the twentieth. It was then that the little island passed into the hands of Mr. Joseph Whitaker, and was partly excavated by him: he revealed large stretches of the circuit walls, two monumental gateways, ruins of a big public building or temple, and several cemeteries.