Dionysius was fully sensible of the danger which he had thus been assisted to escape. Under the first impressions of alarm, he strove to gain something like popularity; by a conciliatory language and demeanor, by presents adroitly distributed, and by invitations to his table. Whatever may have been the success of such artifices, the lucky turn, which the siege was now taking, was the most powerful of all aids for building up his full power anew.
It was not the arms of the Syracusans, but the wrath of Demeter and Persephonê, whose temple (in the suburb of Achradina) Imilkon had pillaged, that ruined the besieging army before Syracuse. So the piety of the citizens interpreted that terrific pestilence which now began to rage among the multitude of their enemies without. The divine wrath was indeed seconded (as the historian informs us[1071]) by physical causes of no ordinary severity. The vast numbers of the host were closely packed together; it was now the beginning of autumn, the most unhealthy period of the year; moreover this summer had been preternaturally hot, and the low marshy ground near the Great Harbor, under the chill of morning contrasted with the burning sun of noon, was the constant source of fever and pestilence. These unseen and irresistible enemies fell with appalling force upon the troops of Imilkon; especially upon the Libyans, or native Africans, who were found the most susceptible. The intense and varied bodily sufferings of this distemper,—the rapidity with which it spread from man to man,—and the countless victims which it speedily accumulated,—appear to have equalled, if not surpassed, the worst days of the pestilence of Athens in 429 B.C. Care and attendance upon the sick, or even interment of the dead, became impracticable; so that the whole camp presented a scene of deplorable agony, aggravated by the horrors and stench of one hundred and fifty thousand unburied bodies.[1072] The military strength of the Carthaginians was completely prostrated by such a visitation. Far from being able to make progress in the siege, they were not even able to defend themselves against moderate energy on the part of the Syracusans; who (like the Peloponnesians during the great plague of Athens) were themselves untouched by the distemper.[1073]
Such was the wretched spectacle of the Carthaginian army, clearly visible from the walls of Syracuse. To overthrow it by a vigorous attack, was an enterprise not difficult; indeed, so sure, in the opinion of Dionysius, that in organizing his plan of operation, he made it the means of deliberately getting rid of some troops in the city who had become inconvenient to him. Concerting measures for a simultaneous assault upon the Carthaginian station both by sea and land, he entrusted eighty ships of war to Pharakidas and Leptines, with orders to move at daybreak; while he himself conducted a body of troops out of the city, during the darkness of night; issuing forth by Epipolæ and Euryalus (as Gylippus had formerly done when he surprised Plemmyrium[1074]), and making a circuit until he came, on the other side of the Anapus, to the temple of Kyanê; thus getting on the land-side or south-west of the Carthaginian position. He first despatched his horsemen, together with a regiment of one thousand mercenary foot-soldiers, to commence the attack. These latter troops had become peculiarly obnoxious to him, having several times engaged in revolt and disturbance. Accordingly, while he now ordered them up to the assault in conjunction with the horse, he at the same time gave secret directions to the horse, to desert their comrades and take flight. Both his orders were obeyed. The onset having been made jointly, in the heat of combat the horsemen fled, leaving their comrades all to be cut to pieces by the Carthaginians.[1075] We have as yet heard nothing about difficulties arising to Dionysius from his mercenary troops, on whose arms his dominion rested; and what we are here told is enough merely to raise curiosity without satisfying it. These men are said to have been mutinous and disaffected; a fact, which explains, if it does not extenuate, the gross perfidy of deliberately inveigling them to destruction, while he still professed to keep them under his command.
In the actual state of the Carthaginian army, Dionysius could afford to make them a present of this obnoxious division. His own attack, first upon the fort of Polichnê, next upon that near the naval station at Daskon, was conducted with spirit and success. While the defenders, thinned and enfeebled by the pestilence, were striving to repel him on the land-side, the Syracusan fleet came forth from its docks in excellent spirits and order to attack the ships at the station. These Carthaginian ships, though afloat and moored, were very imperfectly manned. Before the crews could get aboard to put them on their defence, the Syracusan triremes and quinqueremes, ably rowed and with their brazen beaks well directed, drove against them on the quarter or midships, and broke through the line of their timbers. The crash of such impact was heard afar off, and the best ships were thus speedily disabled.[1076] Following up their success, the Syracusans jumped aboard, overpowered the crews, or forced them to seek safety as they could in flight. The distracted Carthaginians being thus pressed at the same time by sea and by land, the soldiers of Dionysius from the land-side forced their way through the entrenchment to the shore, where forty pentekonters were hauled up, while immediately near them were moored both merchantmen and triremes. The assailants set fire to the pentekonters; upon which the flames, rapidly spreading under a strong wind, communicated presently to all the merchantmen and triremes adjacent. Unable to arrest this terrific conflagration, the crews were obliged to leap overboard; while the vessels, severed from their moorings by the burning of the cables, drifted against each other under the wind, until the naval station at Daskon became one scene of ruin.
Such a volume of flame, though destroying the naval resources of the Carthaginians, must at the same time have driven off the assailing Syracusan ships of war, and probably also the assailants by land. But to those who contemplated it from the city of Syracuse, across the breadth of the Great Harbor, it presented a spectacle grand and stimulating in the highest degree; especially when the fire was seen towering aloft amidst the masts, yards, and sails of the merchantmen. The walls of the city were crowded with spectators, women, children, and aged men, testifying their exultation by loud shouts, and stretching their hands to heaven,—as on the memorable day, near twenty years before, when they gained their final victory in the same harbor, over the Athenian fleet. Many lads and elders, too much excited to remain stationary, rushed into such small craft as they could find, and rowed across the harbor to the scene of action, where they rendered much service by preserving part of the cargoes, and towing away some of the enemy’s vessels deserted but not yet on fire. The evening of this memorable day left Dionysius and the Syracusans victorious by land as well as by sea; encamped near the temple of Olympian Zeus which had so recently been occupied by Imilkon. Though they had succeeded in forcing the defences of the latter both at Polichnê and at Daskon, and in inflicting upon him a destructive defeat, yet they would not aim at occupying his camp, in its infected and deplorable condition.
On two former occasions during the last few years, we have seen the Carthaginian armies decimated by pestilence,—near Agrigentum and near Gela,—previous to this last and worst calamity. Imilkon, copying the weakness of Nikias rather than the resolute prudence of Demosthenes, had clung to his insalubrious camp near the Great Harbor, long after all hope of reducing Syracuse had ceased, and while suffering and death to the most awful extent were daily accumulating around him. But the recent defeat satisfied even him that his position was no longer tenable. Retreat was indispensable; yet nowise impracticable,—with the brave men, Iberians and others, in his army, and with the Sikels of the interior on his side,—had he possessed the good qualities as well as the defects of Nikias, or been capable of anything like that unconquerable energy which ennobled the closing days of the latter. Instead of taking the best measures available for a retiring march, Imilkon despatched a secret envoy to Dionysius, unknown to the Syracusans generally; tendering to him the sum of three hundred talents which yet remained in the camp, on condition of the fleet and army being allowed to sail to Africa unmolested. Dionysius would not consent, nor would the Syracusans have confirmed any such consent, to let them all escape; but he engaged to permit the departure of Imilkon himself with the native Carthaginians. The sum of three hundred talents was accordingly sent across by night to Ortygia; and the fourth night ensuing was fixed for the departure of Imilkon and his Carthaginians, without opposition from Dionysius. During that night forty of their ships, filled with Carthaginians, put to sea and sailed in silence out of the harbor. Their stealthy flight, however, did not altogether escape the notice of the Corinthian seamen in Syracuse; who not only apprised Dionysius, but also manned some of their own ships and started in pursuit. They overtook and destroyed one or two of the slowest sailers; but all the rest with Imilkon himself, accomplished their flight to Carthage.
Dionysius,—while he affected to obey the warning of the Corinthians, with movements intentionally tardy and unavailing,—applied himself with earnest activity to act against the forsaken army remaining. During the same night he led out his troops from the city to the vicinity of their camp. The flight of Imilkon speedily promulgated, had filled the whole army with astonishment and consternation. No command,—no common cause,—no bond of union,—now remained among this miscellaneous host, already prostrated by previous misfortune. The Sikels in the army, being near to their own territory and knowing the roads, retired at once, before daybreak, and reached their homes. Scarcely had they passed, when the Syracusan soldiers occupied the roads, and barred the like escape to others. Amidst the general dispersion of the abandoned soldiers, some perished in vain attempts to force the passes, others threw down their arms and solicited mercy. The Iberians alone, maintaining their arms and order with unshaken resolution, sent to Dionysius propositions to transfer to him their service; which he thought proper to accept, enrolling them among his mercenaries. All the remaining host, principally Libyans, being stripped and plundered by his soldiers, became his captives, and were probably sold as slaves.[1077]
The heroic efforts of Nikias, to open for his army a retreat in the face of desperate obstacles, had ended in a speedy death as prisoner at Syracuse,—yet without anything worse than the usual fate of prisoners of war. But the base treason of Imilkon, though he insured a safe retreat home by betraying the larger portion of his army, earned for him only a short prolongation of life amidst the extreme of ignominy and remorse. When he landed at Carthage with the fraction of his army preserved, the city was in the deepest distress. Countless family losses, inflicted by the pestilence, added a keener sting to the unexampled public loss and humiliation now fully made known. Universal mourning prevailed; all public and private business was suspended, all the temples were shut, while the authorities and the citizens met Imilkon in sad procession on the shore. The defeated commander strove to disarm their wrath, by every demonstration of a broken and prostrate spirit. Clothed in the sordid garment of a slave, he acknowledged himself as the cause of all the ruin, by his impiety towards the gods; for it was they, and not the Syracusans, who had been his real enemies and conquerors. He visited all the temples, with words of atonement and supplication,—replied to all the inquiries about relatives who had perished under the distemper,—and then retiring, blocked up the doors of his house, where he starved himself to death.
But the season of misfortune to Carthage was not closed by his decease. Her dominion over her Libyan subjects was always harsh and unpopular, rendering them disposed to rise against her at any moment of calamity. Her recent disaster in Sicily would have been in itself perhaps sufficient to stimulate them into insurrection; but its effect was aggravated by their resentment for the deliberate betrayal of their troops serving under Imilkon, not one of whom lived to come back. All the various Libyan subject towns had on this matter one common feeling of indignation; all came together in congress, agreed to unite their forces, and formed an army which is said to have reached one hundred and twenty thousand men. They established their head-quarters at Tunês (Tunis), a town within a short distance of Carthage itself, and were for a certain time so much stronger in the field, that the Carthaginians were obliged to remain within their walls. For a moment it seemed as if the star of this great commercial city was about to set for ever. The Carthaginians themselves were in the depth of despondency, believing themselves to be under the wrath of the goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephonê; who, not content with the terrible revenge already taken in Sicily, for the sacrilege committed by Imilkon, were still pursuing them into Africa. Under the extreme religious terror which beset the city, every means were tried to appease the offended goddesses. Had it been supposed that the Carthaginian gods had been insulted, expiation would have been offered by the sacrifice of human victims,—and those too the most precious, such as beautiful captives, or children of conspicuous citizens. But on this occasion, the insult had been offered to Grecian gods, and atonement was to be made according to the milder ceremonies of Greece. The Carthaginians had never yet instituted in their city any worship of Demeter or Persephonê; they now established temples in honor of these goddesses, appointed several of their most eminent citizens to be priests, and consulted the Greeks resident among them, as to the form of worship most suitable to be offered. After having done this, and cleared their own consciences, they devoted themselves to the preparation of ships and men for the purpose of carrying on the war. It was soon found that Demeter and Persephonê were not implacable, and that the fortune of Carthage was returning. The insurgents, though at first irresistible, presently fell into discord among themselves about the command. Having no fleet, they became straitened for want of provisions, while Carthage was well supplied by sea from Sardinia. From these and similar causes, their numerous host gradually melted away, and rescued the Carthaginians from alarm at the point where they were always weakest. The relations of command and submission, between Carthage and her Libyan subjects, were established as they had previously stood, leaving her to recover slowly from her disastrous reverses.[1078]
But though the power of Carthage in Africa was thus restored, in Sicily it was reduced to the lowest ebb. It was long before she could again make head with effect against Dionysius, who was left at liberty to push his conquests in another direction, against the Italiot Greeks. The remaining operations of his reign,—successful against the Italiots, unsuccessful against Carthage,—will come to be recounted in my next succeeding chapter and volume.