[Sidenote: [410-405 B.C.]]
The absence of federation which, in spite of the military superiority of
the Greeks, had enabled the king of Persia to become master of Asiatic
Greece and arbitrator of European Greece, was about to deliver the whole
of Sicily into the hands of the Carthaginians. Segesta, constantly at war
with Selinus, called them to its assistance in 410 B.C., as some years
previously it had called the Athenians. Carthage was then at the height
of its power; it raised an army of one hundred thousand mercenaries,
and sent them into Sicily under the command of Hannibal, grandson of
that Hamilcar who had been killed in the battle of Himera seventy years
before this time. He began by taking possession of Segesta in the name
of Carthage, then besieged Selinus, which was taken in 409, after a
heroic resistance. All the inhabitants, men and women, old and young,
were slain. The town was razed to the ground; the scattered ruins of its
temples are still to be seen. Himera was also entirely destroyed. The
greater number of the inhabitants had succeeded in escaping before the
last assault; about three thousand were left, whom Hannibal put to death
by torture in the very spot where his grandfather had fallen.
Two years later he again came to Sicily with Himilco, at the head of
180,000 mercenaries, Libyans, Numidians, Iberians, and Campanians, and
laid siege to the large commercial town of Agrigentum, the most important
in Sicily, after Syracuse. He caused the tombs to be destroyed for the
construction of an embankment; the plague which spread through his army,
and of which he himself died, was considered a vengeance of the gods.
His colleague, Himilco, offered up children to Moloch as an expiatory
sacrifice. The Syracusans, who had come to the help of Agrigentum,
completely defeated a body of forty thousand Iberians and Campanians.
But the town began to suffer from famine; a large convoy of corn was
seized by the Carthaginians. The inhabitants of Agrigentum, spoilt by
luxury and incapable of supporting the fatigues of military life, had
taken mercenaries into their service; these latter betrayed them and
passed over to the enemy. At the end of a siege of six months, most of
the inhabitants left the town by night and escaped to Gela. Himilco
immediately entered the town and gave it up to pillage, massacred all
the inhabitants who were left, and destroyed the buildings which had
been erected by the Carthaginian prisoners after the battle of Himera.
Magnificent ruins still bear witness to the splendour of Agrigentum, the
richest of the Greek cities and one of the most beautiful in the world
(406).
Since her victory over the Athenian armies and fleets, Syracuse had
become the capital of Sicily. A new code of laws, drawn up by Diocles,
had made her constitution still more democratic; magistrates were
chosen by vote. Little is known of this legislation, which is said to
have been adopted by other Siceliot towns. The chief of the aristocratic
party, Hermocrates, who had distinguished himself in the war against
the Athenians, commanded the fleet sent by Syracuse to the help of the
Peloponnesians and was defeated with them at Cyzicus. The Syracusans
withdrew from a war in which they had nothing to gain and exiled
Hermocrates. He tried to return to his country by armed force and
perished in the attempt. Among those who had fought with him was a scribe
named Dionysius, who was wounded and left for dead; this circumstance
enabled him to escape the sentence of exile which was pronounced on the
followers of Hermocrates.
The invasion of the Carthaginians was a cause of fresh dissensions in
Syracuse; the destruction of Agrigentum awoke alarm. In the assembly
of the people Dionysius accused the generals of having caused, either
through incapacity or treason, the misfortunes of Sicily. He was
condemned to a fine for factiousness; but a rich townsman, the historian
Philistus, promised to pay all the fines laid upon him. He continued
to stir up the people and persuaded them to choose a new government,
of which he himself was a member. The only thing still wanting was to
get rid of his colleagues. “They also are betraying the republic,” he
said, “and have sold themselves to the Carthaginians.” He recalled the
exiles in order to make partisans of them. He was sent to Gela to rescue
the people from the oppression of the rich; he condemned certain of the
nobles to death and distributed their wealth among his soldiers. On his
return to Syracuse he saw the people coming out of the theatre: “It is
thus that you are deceived,” he exclaimed, “they keep you amused by
entertainments while the soldiers are without the necessaries of life and
the enemy is at our gates. Take back the power you have confided to me; I
will not share it with traitors.” His friends said: “What honesty! He is
the only upright man!” And he was made generalissimo of the troops, whose
pay he immediately doubled. Then, as Pisistratus and so many others had
done, he declared that there were plots to kill him because he loved the
people. A bodyguard was given him of six hundred men; these he increased
to a thousand and chose them from among the poorest of the people. He
enlisted mercenaries, set the slaves free, filled all the government
appointments with men who were devoted to his fortune, and settled in the
isle of Ortygia where were situated the arsenals, and which commanded the
great port (405).
[Sidenote: [405-368 B.C.]]
Now that he had become tyrant through the folly of the people, Dionysius
fought the Carthaginians with no more success than the generals whom he
had accused of treason. He was able to save neither Gela nor Camarina,
and the entire population of these two towns sought refuge in Syracuse.
Displeased by these defeats, the Syracusans tried, but all too late, to
rise against him. Supported by his mercenaries, he stifled the rebellion,
caused some of his enemies to be put to death, drove the others from the
town, and maintained his power by fear. A plague stopped the advance
of the Carthaginians and induced them to make peace, but they kept all
their conquests, that is to say, more than two-thirds of Sicily, in
exchange for a clause of the treaty recognising Dionysius as tyrant of
Syracuse. He fortified the isle of Ortygia, of which he made a citadel,
after driving out the inhabitants so as to make room for his mercenaries.
Then he gave the best part of the Syracusan territory to his friends and
to the magistrates; the rest was distributed in equal shares between
the citizens, the freed slaves and resident foreigners. This alteration
of property caused a rebellion; he shut himself up in his fortress of
Ortygia and his mercenaries re-established his authority. Some days
later, while the inhabitants were in the fields, busy gathering in the
harvest, he had all the houses searched and all weapons removed. When
he believed himself absolute master of Syracuse, he wished to extend
his rule over the whole of the eastern coast of Sicily. He seized Ætna
and Enna, destroyed Naxos and Catana which had been delivered to him
by traitors, and sold their inhabitants in order to give their land to
the Sicels of the surrounding country and to his Campanian mercenaries.
The terrified Leontines opened their gates to him, and were carried to
Syracuse. The Rhegians, uneasy at his advance, sent an army into Sicily;
but, abandoned by the Messenians, who had at first joined them, they made
peace with Dionysius and returned to Italy.
In the meanwhile Dionysius was preparing to revenge himself on the
Carthaginians. Syracuse was surrounded by ramparts which made it
impregnable. Workmen from all the neighbouring countries, attracted by
lure of high wages, were employed to make large supplies of arms and
implements of war; it was at this time that the catapult was invented to
cast stones and arrows. Numerous warships were built, some of them on a
new model with four or five benches of rowers. When these preparations
were completed, and mercenaries collected from all sides, Dionysius
declared war on the Carthaginians, and, at the head of an army of eighty
thousand men, successively re-captured all the towns which they had
conquered seven years previously, Gela, Camarina, Agrigentum, Selinus,
and Himera, besieged their principal fortress in the isle of Motya on
the western point of Sicily, and took it by means of his implements
of war (397). But the following year, Himilco landed at Panormus with
one hundred thousand men, regained Motya and all the conquests of
Dionysius, destroyed Messana, and after a naval victory in sight of
Catana, besieged Syracuse by land and sea. Dionysius was obliged to
restore to the citizens the arms which he had taken from them, and soon
signs of rebellion were again perceived. But once more plague broke out
in the Carthaginian army. Himilco paid three hundred talents [£60,000
or $300,000] for permission to withdraw with the Carthaginian citizens
who were in his army, abandoning all his mercenaries who were taken
and sold as slaves. Hostilities continued for two years longer and the
Carthaginians finally made peace by giving up Tauromenium (392).
This treaty gave Dionysius the opportunity to turn his arms against
Magna Græcia, the conquest of which he had long meditated. He took
Caulonia, Hipponium, Scylacium, and gave their lands to the Locrians who
had made an alliance with him. Croton also fell into his power in spite
of a vigorous resistance. Rhegium, which he had besieged for eleven
months, finally surrendered; he destroyed the town and sold all the
inhabitants. The Syracusan exiles sought refuge on the Adriatic Sea and
settled at Ancona (387). Dionysius then ravaged the coasts of Latium and
Etruria, where he stole a thousand talents from the temple of Agylla,
made alliance with the Gauls who had just taken Rome, enlisted a large
number of them among his mercenaries and sent them to the assistance
of Sparta which had lately renewed its alliance with Syracuse and was
now at war with the Thebans. He founded the town of Lissus in Illyria,
and re-established an exiled prince in Epirus. In 383 he made a third
war against the Carthaginians; after an alternation of victories and
defeats, a treaty was made which fixed the limits of their possessions at
the river Halycus. In a fourth war he took Selinus, Entella, and Eryx,
but, his fleet being destroyed opposite Lilybæum, he did not succeed in
driving them from the island, and the war again ended in a treaty.
In the opinion of the ancients, Dionysius was a type of the godless,
avaricious, and suspicious tyrant. In the temple of Zeus, in Syracuse,
he replaced by a woollen coat the god’s golden coat, which, he said,
was too cold in winter and too warm in summer. He stole the gold beard
of Æsculapius, saying that the son ought not to have a beard when his
father, Apollo, had none. As he was returning with a favourable wind from
an expedition in which he had pillaged the temples: “See,” he said, “how
the gods protect the ungodly.”
Numerous anecdotes have been told concerning his perpetual fear: he
always wore armour under his clothes; his room was surrounded by a moat
which could only be crossed by a drawbridge; when he addressed the people
it was from the summit of a tower; he did not dare to be shaved, and
his daughters singed off his beard for him with red-hot nutshells; the
prisons of the quarries were so arranged that he could hear the least
sound. One of his courtiers named Damocles was vaunting the happiness
of kings: Dionysius said that he would allow him to enjoy it for one
hour; he let him lie on a couch of purple and gold before a well-spread
table, and suddenly Damocles perceived above his head a sword suspended
by a single hair. This anecdote has all the appearance of a philosophic
parable. Those which have been related concerning the literary
pretensions of Dionysius are scarcely more trustworthy. It is said that
he sent Philoxenus, who found fault with his verses, to the quarries;
some time later he had him brought back and read him other verses which
he thought better; Philoxenus stood up and said, “Let them take me back
to the quarries.”
[Sidenote: [368-357 B.C.]]
Dionysius had often sent tragedies to the Athenian competitions, but
had had little success; however, at the time of the Theban war he had
sent mercenaries to the help of the Spartans, then the allies of the
Athenians; the latter, therefore, gave the prize to one of his tragedies
called _Hector’s Ransom_. He celebrated this success by a magnificent
feast at which he drank to excess. He was seized with a fever from
which he died. Some say that he was poisoned by his son. He had reigned
thirty-eight years (367).
Dionysius was a bigamist; he married on the same day a Locrian and a
Syracusan, the latter the daughter of one of his most active partisans.
The son of the former, named like himself Dionysius, and who is called
Dionysius the Younger, succeeded him without difficulty. Dion, the
brother of his second wife, had no trouble in taking the direction of
the government, for the new tyrant had no thought for anything but
pleasure. Dion, a great admirer of Plato, had caused him to come to
Sicily during the lifetime of Dionysius the Elder, who received the
philosopher somewhat badly and even, it is said, had him sold as a slave.
This should have taught Plato that a king’s court is not the place for a
philosopher; however, after the death of Dionysius and the accession of
his son, he returned at the request of Dion, and was very well received
by Dionysius the Younger, who took lessons in geometry, and decreased
the magnificence of the table, but made no attempt to carry out Plato’s
communistic theories in Syracuse. After a short time, however, he
imagined that Dion was only interesting him in philosophy to distract
his attention from public affairs. He intercepted a letter which Dion
had written to the Carthaginian generals asking them to address their
communications only to himself. Dionysius showed the letter to Dion,
accused him of treason, and made him embark for Italy. Plato was unable
to obtain his friend’s recall. Dionysius even forced his sister Arete,
the wife of Dion, to marry some one else (360). Dion returned three
years later with eight hundred men whom he had recruited in Greece and
appeared before Syracuse during the absence of Dionysius. The inhabitants
received him enthusiastically, but he was unable to seize the citadel of
Ortygia (357). Dionysius, defeated in a naval fight, retired to Locris
with his riches, but his son Apollocrates remained in the citadel whose
garrison held out for a long time. There were disputes in the town; an
agrarian law was demanded. Dion was driven away, then recalled, and
famine having forced the garrison of Ortygia to surrender, he remained
master of Syracuse. Now was the time to re-establish the republic as he
had promised; but his love of philosophy did not carry him to the point
of renouncing power. He even caused a demagogue to be put to death for
having demanded the destruction of the fortress of Ortygia which had been
built for the sole purpose of protecting tyranny against the people. A
short time after this, he, himself, was assassinated by the Athenian
Callippus, his intimate friend (354).
[Sidenote: [357-343 B.C.]]
After a reign of two years Callippus was overthrown by Hipparinus
and Nysæus, brothers of Dionysius and nephews of Dion. They reigned
successively. Then Dionysius, after ten years’ absence, seized the
city by surprise. But Hicetas, tyrant of the Leontines, forced him to
take refuge in the isle of Ortygia. In the midst of this anarchy, and
threatened, moreover, by an attack of the Carthaginians, the Syracusans
implored help from Corinth, who sent one of her citizens, Timoleon, to
the aid of her colony. Timoleon had previously saved the life of his
brother Timophanes in a battle. Later on Timophanes had tried to usurp
the tyranny at Corinth, and Timoleon joined his brother’s murderers.
Haunted by his mother’s curse and troubled by his conscience, he was
living in retirement when the Corinthians entrusted him with the mission
of delivering Syracuse from tyranny. He set out with twelve hundred men,
and after escaping the Carthaginian fleet, landed at Tauromenium, on the
east coast of Sicily. When he reached Syracuse, Dionysius was besieged in
his fortress by Hicetas; seeing that he could not defend himself against
two enemies at the same time, rather than make terms with Hicetas, he
offered to deliver Ortygia up to Timoleon on condition that he should be
sent to Corinth with his riches. He lived there for several years, and is
said to have opened a school for children, to have at least a similitude
of royalty.
Timoleon occupied Ortygia; but his position was difficult, for Hicetas
had called the Carthaginians to his assistance, and, under command of
Mago, they filled the port with one hundred and fifty vessels and the
town with six thousand men. Fortunately Timoleon received from Corinth
a reinforcement of ten vessels filled with troops. Catana and other
Greek towns along the coast declared for him. Mago, on learning that the
Corinthian garrison had succeeded in seizing Achradina, the principal
suburb of Syracuse, believed that Hicetas had betrayed him, and feared
lest all the Greeks should unite against him. He embarked his soldiers
and set sail for Carthage. Hicetas, left with only his own troops, could
no longer resist: he returned to Leontini with his army, and Timoleon,
without the loss of a single man, was master of Syracuse.
He began by doing what Dion had refused to do; he destroyed the fortress
of Ortygia, built on its site courts of justice and restored to power the
democratic legislation of Diodes. The town was half deserted; he recalled
the exiles, and caused it to be proclaimed at the public games in Greece
that Syracuse required colonists. Sixty thousand men answered this
appeal. In order to relieve public poverty, he distributed the unoccupied
lands to the poor, and sold the statues of the tyrants, except that of
Gelo, the conqueror of the Carthaginians. He then turned his attention
to the overthrow of tyranny in the other Siceliot towns, and began by
forcing Hicetas to live simply as a private citizen. Leptines, tyrant of
Engyum, consented to go to the Peloponnesus, as Dionysius had done, for
Timoleon was anxious to show the Greeks the tyrants whom he had driven
from Sicily. He also seized Apollonia and Entella and restored them
their freedom. All the Greek towns sided with him, because he allowed
them self-government according to their own inclination. Following their
example, several Sican and Sicel towns asked to be admitted into alliance
with him.
[Sidenote: [343-337 B.C.]]
Terrified by this commencement of a league between the towns, and by
the increasing prosperity of Syracuse, the Carthaginians landed seventy
thousand men at Lilybæum. Timoleon, who had only succeeded in collecting
an army of eleven thousand men, advanced nevertheless against the enemy,
whom he surprised on the banks of the brook Crimisus on Selinuntine
territory. He established himself in a strong position, attacked the
Carthaginians as they were crossing the river, and killed ten thousand
of them, of whom three thousand were Carthaginian citizens. He imposed
no onerous conditions, for Syracuse was not in a position to carry on
a prolonged war: the limits of their territory were fixed at the river
Halycus, to the west of Agrigentum, and they agreed to give no more
help to the tyrants (338). Timoleon overcame those who were still left;
Hicetas, who had again seized the power, was put to death, as were
also Mamercus, tyrant of Catana, Hippon, tyrant of Messana, and some
others. Timoleon then helped in the rebuilding and repeopling of the
towns destroyed by the Carthaginians, Gela and Agrigentum, for instance,
drove from Ætna a band of Campanians, Dionysius’ former mercenaries, who
had made the town into a retreat for brigands. At last, his work being
complete, he abdicated the power. But he always retained the great moral
authority; towards the end of his life he became blind, and whenever
there was an important discussion he was carried into the market place
and his advice was always followed. He died eight years after his arrival
in Sicily (337), and the expenses of his funeral were paid from the
public treasury. The Syracusans instituted annual games in his honour,
“because,” said the decree, “he drove away the tyrants, defeated the
barbarians, repeopled the towns, and restored to the Siceliots their laws
and institutions.”[b]
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