County of Sicily was created by Robert Guiscard in 1071 for his younger brother Roger Bosso. Guiscard himself had received the title Duke of Sicily ("dux Siciliae") in 1059 from Pope Nicholas II as encouragement to conquer it from the Muslims. In 1061 the first permanent Norman conquest (Messina) was made and in 1071, after the fall of Palermo, the capital of the emirate and future capital of the county, Guiscard invested Roger with the title of count and gave him full jurisdiction in the island save for half the city of Palermo, Messina, and the Val Demone, which he retained for himself.
Eryx (Sicily) his visit to this part of Sicily, and contended with that hero in a wrestling match, but was vanquished by him. This Eryx was a son of Aphrodite and Butes, a king of the country, and is hence repeatedly alluded to by Virgil as a brother of Aeneas, though that poet does not refer to him the foundation of the city. The legends which connected it with Aeneas and a Trojan chief named Elymus evidently pointed to what we learn from Thucydides as an historical fact, that Eryx as well as Segesta was a city of the Elymi, a Sicilian