Agathocles died in 289 B.C. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, famous for the victories which he won over Rome, was the next to take up the part of the leader of the Sicilian Greeks in their long struggle with Carthage. He accomplished little. In fact he spent two years only in the Island. The most memorable incident of his stay was that Carthage offered him alliance on most advantageous terms, and that he refused it unless she would agree to evacuate the Island. This was an honourable action, for the offer would have given him a most important advantage in the renewed attack upon Rome which he was planning. But the Sicilian Greeks showed little gratitude for his self-denial; in fact, they became so hostile that he had no alternative left him but to leave the Island. "How fair a wrestling-ring," he is reported to have said as he took his last look of Sicily, "are we leaving to Rome and Carthage!" With this departure of Pyrrhus, Greece, we may say, disappears from the scene, and Rome takes her part. Pyrrhus left Sicily in 276, and Rome came for the first time into collision with Carthage twelve years afterwards in what is called the First Punic War. These wars will be the subject of my Fourth Book.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] It is difficult not to feel a certain satisfaction at knowing that the mutineers came to a bad end. They had a disreputable record, for they had taken the pay of the Phocians, knowing that it had been provided out of the sacred treasures of the temple at Delphi. On receiving their arrears they sailed to Southern Italy, where they attempted to form a settlement, were entrapped by the native inhabitants, and perished to a man.
[12] It is uncertain where this stream is to be located. Some geographers (Sir E. Bunbury among them, in the "Dictionary of Classical Geography") suppose it to be a little river that flows into the sea near Castellamare; by others it is identified with one that has its mouth on the south coast of the island, a few miles to the east of Selinus. This is the view taken by the author of the map recently published by Mr. John Murray, where the name is given to one of the upper tributaries of the Hypsas, now known as the Belici.
BOOK III
GREECE AND PERSIA. THE ATTACK
I. THE FIGHT ON THE RIVER
All danger to Greece from Persian attack, so far as the mainland and the islands in the Ægean were concerned, practically ceased with the victory of Mycalé. But the Greek cities in Asia Minor were not safe. In the years 466-5 B.C. Cimon, son of Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, conducted operations in South-Western Asia Minor, which had for their object the expulsion of the Persians from certain Greek settlements in that region. In 450 a formal convention was made which brought to an end, it may be said, the first act of the drama. The great king bound himself to leave the Asiatic Greeks free and untaxed, and not to send troops within a certain distance of the coast; Athens, on the other hand, agreed to leave Persia in undisturbed possession of Cyprus (though this island had a large Greek population) and of Egypt.
The next period was one in which the relations of Persia and Greece were largely determined by the exigencies of Greek politics. The two great rivals for supremacy, Athens and Sparta, found Persian help, especially in the shape of gold, very useful; and Persia, for her own purposes, played off the two against each other. There is an amusing scene in Aristophanes which illustrates this state of affairs. A pretended Persian envoy is introduced to the Assembly. He wears a mask which is made of one big eye, in token that he is the King's Eye, and mutters some gibberish which his introducer interprets as a promise to send some gold. The scene goes on:—
"Tell them about the gold; speak louder and more plainly."