Other theories on the origin of the Giants of Messina

In a text by the sixteenth-century scholar Francesco Maurolico, the Giant is identified with the figure of King Zancloto (whose name, as noted by the author, is an obvious reference to the scythe of Saturn), the legendary founder of the city (assisted in the enterprise by the giant Orion) of Ethiopian origin. In the early years of the seventeenth century, Costanzo Giuseppe Buonfiglio, who, in his writings, was a pugnacious advocate of the superiority of Messina to rival Palermo, considered the two Giants as the progenitors of Messina, but called them Cam and Rea. According to him, the reference to the son of Noah, founder of the African lineages is confirmed by the dark colour of the skin of the male giant.

Despite all these mythographic acccounts, the most accepted version is successful to date is that which attributes the origin to Roger of Hauteville. The reasons for this are probably due to the ability to integrate the enigmatic figure of the camel into that historical context. This fact, however, has not avoided a mix of legend and historical themes from medieval cosmology: the two Giants pass from mythological epic to legendary historical accounts, allowing their viewers to link the origin of the city to the source of universal history (through the myth of Saturn), or to the foundation of the Kingdom, through the legend of Roger.