Hybla (Latin Hyblaea) was an indigenous Sikel goddess of the earth and its fertility, worshipped at the several Sicilian towns that bore her name, the most important being Hybla Gereatis (Geleatis), a dependency of Catana. Pausanias, drawing on the Sicilian historian Philistus, reports that the people of Gereatis were the most devoted of all the inhabitants of Sicily and were famed as interpreters of dreams and portents, marking Hybla's sanctuary as a centre of incubation and divination. She was a goddess of the fertile, volcanic uplands celebrated for their wild flowers and the finest honey of the ancient world; her veiled head, sometimes accompanied by a bee, appears on local coinage. In Roman times she was assimilated to Venus, worshipped as Venus Victrix Hyblensis. She stands somewhat apart from the Etna-and-geyser cluster of Sikel gods, belonging instead to the honey-bearing Hyblaean hills.