The answer which the Greek Council sent to the Argives, as reported by Diodorus, may be an invention of later times, but is so peculiarly apt as to be worthy of quotation:—
“If,” it ran, “you think it a more dreadful thing to have a Greek commander than a barbarian master, you are right in biding quiet; but if you are ambitious to get the hegemony of Greece, you must earn a position so splendid by doing something worthy of it.”
But the greatest military power in the Greek world at this time was not situated in the mother country. Gelo, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, had at his command an armed force superior to that of any other Greek State. His land army may not, indeed, have been greater than the force which Sparta could put in the field; but he possessed, besides, a navy as powerful as that of Athens. He seems to have been a man of unusual capacity who, had death spared him for a while, might have made Syracuse the centre of a considerable dominion in the West. He was manifestly a desirable acquisition for the league of defence; and it was very natural that a joint embassy should be sent to him to ask his help in the coming peril. Herodotus describes the embassy with considerable detail, but his account raises some difficulties which cast a doubt, not perhaps on his truthfulness, but on the correctness of his version of what took place.
It may be assumed that the speeches made by Gelo and the Greek ambassadors are in their form the creation of the historian. The real historical question is not as to the form, but as to the matter. H. vii. 157. In the speech of the Greeks two points are peculiarly prominent; it shows that there was an idea in certain quarters in Greece that the expedition was directed against Athens alone; it is further asserted that if Greece is subdued, Sicily’s turn for attack will not fail to come quickly. The first of these is important as throwing further light on the attitude of the Delphic oracle; the second is an argument in accord with Herodotus’ own impression of the situation at the time.
GELO OF SYRACUSE.
It is quite easy to see that there prevailed in antiquity two views as to the exact significance of the coincidence of the Carthaginian attack on Sicily with the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. Herodotus never saw any connection between them. It is possible that no hint of such a connection was apparent in the sources from which he drew his story of the relations between Gelo and the embassy. H. vii 158. He represents the former as being willing to send a very considerable contingent to aid the Greeks at home, provided that the latter will give him the command of the united force. The condition, if the offer was ever made, was in no wise a surprising one. Considering the magnitude of the help which Gelo is reported to have offered, it was reasonable. H. vii 159. And yet it was refused, and that, too, in language which cannot be regarded as otherwise than insulting. So Gelo reduced his terms to the command of either the sea or land force. And now the Athenian section of the embassy had a word to say. Their refusal of the command by sea was, perhaps, somewhat more polite, but hardly less explicit than had been that of the Spartans to the original condition. Gelo’s answer, as reported, is brief, but marked by a wit not unworthy of the distinguished literary society of his court: “My Athenian friend, you seem to have commanders, without the likelihood of any troops to command.”
After this, it may well be imagined, there was nothing more to be said or done, and the embassy went home.
Gelo, however, is reported to have sent a treasure-ship to Delphi, to watch the course of the war, with orders, in case the Persian won the day, to surrender the treasure to him and offer the earth and water of submission. The general origin of the tale so far is plainly indicated by Herodotus. It is a story which existed—perhaps indeed was current—in European Greece, for the historian, before proceeding to add further details, expressly mentions that they were derived from Sicily.
H. vii. 165.
The Sicilians say, so he relates, that in spite of what had occurred, Gelo would have aided the Greeks and submitted to the Lacedæmonian command, had not circumstances arisen at home, in the shape of a Carthaginian invasion, which prevented him from so doing. Herodotus ascribes the invasion to the intervention of the Carthaginians in favour of Terillos, tyrant of Himera, who had been driven out of his government by Thero of Akragas. An immense army, 300,000 in number, composed, after the manner of the Carthaginian armies, of nearly all the peoples in the Western Mediterranean, invaded Sicily by way of Himera.