Though Hermokrates, in his address to the soldiers, would doubtless find response when he invoked the remembrance of past victories, yet he would hardly have found the like response in a Syracusan assembly. For if we review the proceedings of the armament since he conducted it from Syracuse to join the Peloponnesian fleet, we shall find that on the whole his expedition had been a complete failure, and that his assurances of success against Athens had ended in nothing but disappointment. There was therefore ample cause for the discontent of his countrymen. But on the other hand, as far as our limited means of information enable us to judge, the sentence of banishment against him appears to have been undeserved and unjust. For we cannot trace the ill-success of Hermokrates to any misconduct or omission on his part; while in regard to personal incorruptibility, and strenuous resistance to the duplicity of Tissaphernes, he stood out as an honorable exception among a body of venal colleagues. That satrap, indeed, as soon as Hermokrates had fallen into disgrace, circulated a version of his own, pretending that the latter, having asked money from him and been refused, had sought by calumnious means to revenge such refusal.[851] But this story, whether believed elsewhere or not, found no credit with the other satrap Pharnabazus; who warmly espoused the cause of the banished general, presenting him with a sum of money even unsolicited. This money Hermokrates immediately employed in getting together triremes and mercenary soldiers to accomplish his restoration to Syracuse by force.[852] We shall presently see how he fared in this attempt. Meanwhile we may remark that the sentence of banishment, though in itself unjust, would appear amply justified in the eyes of his countrymen by his own subsequent resort to hostile measures against them.
The party opposed to Hermokrates had now the preponderance in Syracuse, and by their influence probably the sentence against him was passed, under the grief and wrath occasioned by the defeat of Kyzikus. Unfortunately we have only the most scanty information as to the internal state of Syracuse during the period immediately succeeding the Athenian siege; a period of marked popular sentiment and peculiar interest. As at Athens under the pressure of the Xerxeian invasion—the energies of all the citizens, rich and poor, young and old, had been called forth for repulse of the common enemy, and had been not more than enough to achieve it. As at Athens after the battles of Salamis and Platæa, so at Syracuse after the destruction of the Athenian besiegers—the people, elate with the plenitude of recent effort, and conscious that the late successful defence had been the joint work of all, were in a state of animated democratical impulse, eager for the utmost extension and equality of political rights. Even before the Athenian siege, the government had been democratical; a fact, which Thucydides notices as among the causes of the successful defence, by rendering the citizens unanimous in resistance, and by preventing the besiegers from exciting intestine discontent.[853] But in the period immediately after the siege, it underwent changes which are said to have rendered it still more democratical. On the proposition of an influential citizen named Dioklês, a commission of Ten was named, of which he was president, for the purpose of revising both the constitution and the legislation of the city. Some organic alterations were adopted, one of which was, that the lot should be adopted, instead of the principle of election, in the nomination of magistrates. Furthermore, a new code, or collection of criminal and civil enactments, was drawn up and sanctioned. We know nothing of its details, but we are told that its penalties were extremely severe, its determination of offences minute and special, and its language often obscure as well as brief. It was known by the name of the Laws of Dioklês, the chief of the Committee who had prepared it. Though now adopted at Syracuse, it did not last long; for we shall find in five or six years the despotism of Dionysius extinguishing it, just as Peisistratus had put down the Solonian legislation at Athens. But it was again revived at the extinction of the Dionysian dynasty, after the lapse of more than sixty years; with comments and modifications by a committee, among whose members were the Corinthians Kephalus and Timoleon. It is also said to have been copied in various other Sicilian cities, and to have remained in force until the absorption of all Sicily under the dominion of the Romans.[854]
We have the austere character of Dioklês illustrated by a story (of more than dubious credit,[855] and of which the like is recounted respecting other Grecian legislators), that having inadvertently violated one of his own enactments, he enforced the duty of obedience by falling on his own sword. But unfortunately we are not permitted to know the substance of his laws, which would have thrown so much light on the sentiments and position of the Sicilian Greeks. Nor can we distinctly make out to what extent the political constitution of Syracuse was now changed. For though Diodorus tells us that the lot was now applied to the nomination of magistrates, yet he does not state whether it was applied to all magistrates, or under what reserves and exceptions—such, for example, as those adopted at Athens. Aristotle too states that the Syracusan people, after the Athenian siege, changed their constitution from a partial democracy into an entire democracy. Yet he describes Dionysius, five or six years afterwards, as pushing himself up to the despotism, by the most violent demagogic opposition; and as having accused, disgraced, and overthrown certain rich leaders then in possession of the functions of government.[856] If the constitutional forms were rendered more democratical, it would seem that the practice cannot have materially changed, and that the persons actually in leading function still continued to be rich men.
The war carried on by the Syracusans against Naxos and Katana, after continuing more than three years,[857] was brought to a close by an enemy from without, even more formidable than Athens. This time, the invader was not Hellenic, but Phœnician—the ancient foe of Hellas, Carthage.
It has been already recounted, how in the same eventful year (480 B.C.) which transported Xerxes across the Hellespont to meet his defeat at Salamis, the Carthaginians had poured into Sicily a vast mercenary host under Hamilkar, for the purpose of reinstating in Himera the despot Terillus, who had been expelled by Theron of Agrigentum. On that occasion, Hamilkar had been slain, and his large army defeated, by the Syracusan despot Gelon, in the memorable battle of Himera. So deep had been the impression left by this defeat, that for the seventy years which intervened between 480-410 B.C., the Carthaginians had never again invaded the island. They resumed their aggressions shortly after the destruction of the Athenian power before Syracuse; which same event had also stimulated the Persians, who had been kept in restraint while the Athenian empire remained unimpaired, again to act offensively for the recovery of their dominion over the Asiatic Greeks. The great naval power of Athens, inspiring not merely reserve but even alarm to Carthage,[858] had been a safeguard to the Hellenic world both at its eastern and its western extremity. No sooner was that safeguard overthrown, than the hostile pressure of the foreigner began to be felt, as well upon Western Sicily as on the eastern coast of the Ægean.
From this time forward for two centuries, down to the conclusion of the second Punic war, the Carthaginians will be found frequent in their aggressive interventions in Sicily, and upon an extensive scale, so as to act powerfully on the destinies of the Sicilian Greeks. Whether any internal causes had occurred to make them abstain from intervention during the preceding generations, we are unable to say. The history of this powerful and wealthy city is very little known. We make out a few facts, which impart a general idea both of her oligarchical government and of her extensive colonial possessions, but which leave us in the dark as to her continuous history. Her possessions were most extensive, along the coast of Africa both eastward and westward from her city; comprehending also Sardinia and the Balearic isles, but (at this time, probably) few settlements in Spain. She had quite enough to occupy her attention elsewhere, without meddling in Sicilian affairs; the more so, as her province in Sicily was rather a dependent ally than a colonial possession. In the early treaties made with Rome, the Carthaginians restrict and even interdict the traffic of the Romans both with Sardinia and Africa (except Carthage itself), but they grant the amplest license of intercourse with the Carthaginian province of Sicily; which they consider as standing in the same relation to Carthage as the cities of Latium stood in to Rome.[859] While the connection of Carthage with Sicily was thus less close, it would appear that her other dependencies gave her much trouble, chiefly in consequence of her own harsh and extortionate dominion.
All our positive information, scanty as it is, about Carthage and her institutions, relates to the fourth, third, or second centuries B.C., yet it may be held to justify presumptive conclusions as to the fifth century B.C., especially in reference to the general system pursued. The maximum of her power was attained before her first war with Rome, which began in 264 B.C.; the first and second Punic wars both of them greatly reduced her strength and dominion. Yet in spite of such reduction we learn that about 150 B.C., shortly before the third Punic war, which ended in the capture and depopulation of the city, not less than seven hundred thousand souls[860] were computed in it, as occupants of a fortified circumference of above twenty miles, covering a peninsula with its isthmus. Upon this isthmus its citadel Byrsa was situated, surrounded by a triple wall of its own, and crowned at its summit by a magnificent temple of Æsculapius. The numerous population is the more remarkable, since Utica (a considerable city, colonized from Phœnicia more anciently than even Carthage itself, and always independent of the Carthaginians, though in the condition of an inferior and discontented ally), was within the distance of seven miles from Carthage[861] on the one side, and Tunis seemingly not much farther off on the other. Even at that time, too, the Carthaginians are said to have possessed three hundred tributary cities in Libya.[862] Yet this was but a small fraction of the prodigious empire which had belonged to them certainly in the fourth century B.C., and in all probability also between 480-410 B.C. That empire extended eastward as far as the Altars of the Philæni, near the Great Syrtis,—westward, all along the coast to the Pillars of Herakles and the western coast of Morocco. The line of coast south-east of Carthage, as far as the bay called the Lesser Syrtis, was proverbial (under the name of Byzacium and the Emporia) for its fertility. Along this extensive line were distributed indigenous Libyan tribes, living by agriculture; and a mixed population called Liby-Phœnicians, formed by intermarriage and coalition of some of these tribes either with colonists from Tyre and Sidon, or perhaps with a Canaanitish population akin in race to the Phœnicians, yet of still earlier settlement in the country.[863] These Liby-Phœnicians dwelt in towns, seemingly of moderate size and unfortified, but each surrounded by a territory ample and fertile, yielding large produce. They were assiduous cultivators, but generally unwarlike, which latter quality was ascribed by ancient theory to the extreme richness of their soil.[864] Of the Liby-Phœnician towns the number is not known to us, but it must have been prodigiously great, since we are told that both Agathokles and Regulus in their respective invasions captured no less than two hundred. A single district, called Tuska, is also spoken of as having fifty towns.[865]
A few of the towns along the coast,—Hippo, Utica, Adrumetum, Thapsus, Leptis, etc.,—were colonies from Tyre, like Carthage herself. With respect to Carthage, therefore, they stood upon a different footing from the Liby-Phœnician towns, either maritime or in the interior. Yet the Carthaginians contrived in time to render every town tributary, with the exception of Utica. They thus derived revenue from all the inhabitants of this fertile region, Tyrian, Liby-Phœnician, and indigenous Libyan; and the amount which they imposed appears to have been exorbitant. At one time, immediately after the first Punic war, they took from the rural cultivators as much as one-half of their produce,[866] and doubled at one stroke the tribute levied upon the towns. The town and district of Leptis paid to them a tribute of one talent per day, or three hundred and sixty-five talents annually. Such exactions were not collected without extreme harshness of enforcement, sometimes stripping the tax-payer of all that he possessed, and even tearing him from his family to be sold in person for a slave.[867] Accordingly the general sentiment among the dependencies towards Carthage was one of mingled fear and hatred, which rendered them eager to revolt on the landing of any foreign invader. In some cases the Carthaginians seem to have guarded against such contingencies by paid garrisons; but they also provided a species of garrison from among their own citizens; by sending out from Carthage poor men, and assigning to them lots of land with the cultivators attached. This provision for poor citizens as emigrants (mainly analogous to the Roman colonies), was a standing feature in the Carthaginian political system, serving the double purpose of obviating discontent among their own town population at home, and of keeping watch over their dependencies abroad.[868]
In the fifth century B.C., the Carthaginians had no apprehension of any foreign enemy invading them from seaward; an enterprise first attempted in 316 B.C., to the surprise of every one, by the boldness of the Syracusan Agathokles. Nor were their enemies on the land side formidable as conquerors, though they were extremely annoying as plunderers. The Numidians and other native tribes, half-naked and predatory horsemen, distinguished for speed as well as for indefatigable activity, so harassed the individual cultivators of the soil, that the Carthaginians dug a long line of ditch to keep them off.[869] But these barbarians did not acquire sufficient organization to act for permanent objects, until the reign of Masinissa and the second Punic war with Rome. During the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., therefore (prior to the invasion of Agathokles), the warfare carried on by the Carthaginians was constantly aggressive and in foreign parts. For these purposes they chiefly employed foreign mercenaries, hired for the occasion from Italy, Gaul, Spain, and the islands of the Western Mediterranean, together with conscripts from their Libyan dependencies. The native Carthaginians,[870] though encouraged by honorary marks to undertake this military service, were generally averse to it, and sparingly employed. But these citizens, though not often sent on foreign service, constituted a most formidable force when called upon. No less then forty thousand hoplites went forth from the gates of Carthage to resist Agathokles, together with one thousand cavalry, and two thousand war-chariots.[871] An immense public magazine,—of arms, muniments of war of all kinds, and provisions,—appears to have been kept in the walls of Byrsa, the citadel of Carthage.[872] A chosen division of two thousand five hundred citizens, men of wealth and family, formed what was called the Sacred Band of Carthage,[873] distinguished for their bravery in the field as well as for the splendor of their arms, and the gold and silver plate which formed part of their baggage. We shall find these citizen-troops occasionally employed on service in Sicily: but most part of the Carthaginian armies consists of Gauls, Iberians, Libyans, etc., a mingled host got together for the occasion, discordant in language as well as in customs. Such men had never any attachment to the cause in which they fought,—seldom, to the commanders under whom they served; while they were often treated by Carthage with bad faith, and recklessly abandoned to destruction.[874] A military system such as this was pregnant with danger, if ever the mercenary soldiers got footing in Africa; as happened after the first Punic war, when the city was brought to the brink of ruin. But on foreign service in Sicily, these mercenaries often enabled Carthage to make conquest at the cost only of her money, without any waste of the blood of her own citizens. The Carthaginian generals seem generally to have relied, like Persians, upon numbers,—manifesting little or no military skill; until we come to the Punic wars with Rome, conducted under Hamilkar Barca and his illustrious son Hannibal.
Respecting the political constitution of Carthage, the facts known are too few, and too indistinct, to enable us to comprehend its real working. The magistrates most conspicuous in rank and precedence were, the two kings or suffetes, who presided over the Senate.[875] They seem to have been renewed annually, though how far the same persons were reëligible, or actually rechosen, we do not know, but they were always selected out of some few principal families or Gentes. There is reason for believing that the genuine Carthaginian citizens were distributed into three tribes, thirty curiæ, and three hundred gentes—something in the manner of the Roman patricians. From these gentes emanated a Senate of three hundred, out of which again was formed a smaller council or committee of thirty principes representing the curiæ;[876] sometimes a still smaller, of only ten principes. These little councils are both frequently mentioned in the political proceedings of Carthage; and perhaps the Thirty may coincide with what Polybius calls the Gerusia, or Council of Ancients,—the Three Hundred, with that which he calls the Senate.[877] Aristotle assimilates the two kings (suffetes) of Carthage to the two kings of Sparta—and the Gerusia of Carthage also to that of Sparta;[878] which latter consisted of thirty members, including the kings who sat in it. But Aristotle does not allude to any assembly at Carthage analogous to what Polybius calls the Senate. He mentions two Councils, one of one hundred members, the other of one hundred and four; and certain Boards of Five,—the pentarchies. He compares the Council of one hundred and four to the Spartan ephors; yet again he talks of the pentarchies as invested with extensive functions, and terms the Council of one hundred the greatest authority in the state. Perhaps this last Council was identical with the assembly of one hundred Judges (said to have been chosen from the Senate as a check upon the generals employed), or Ordo Judicum; of which Livy speaks after the second Punic war, as existing with its members perpetual and so powerful that it overruled all the other assemblies and magistracies of the state. Through the influence of Hannibal, a law was passed to lessen the overweening power of this Order of Judges; causing them to be elected only for one year, instead of being perpetual.[879]