To this great imperial state, Dionysius in the west formed a suitable counterpart. His recent victories in Southern Italy had already raised his power to a magnitude transcending all the far-famed recollections of Gelon; but he now still farther extended it by sending an expedition against Kroton. This city, the largest in Magna Græcia, fell under his power; and he succeeded in capturing, by surprise or bribery, even its strong citadel; on a rock overhanging the sea.[44] He seems also to have advanced yet farther with his fleet to attack Thurii; which city owed its preservation solely to the violence of the north winds. He plundered the temple of Hêrê near Cape Lakinium, in the domain of Kroton. Among the ornaments of this temple was one of pre-eminent beauty and celebrity, which at the periodical festivals was exhibited to admiring spectators: a robe wrought with the greatest skill, and decorated in the most costly manner, the votive offering of a Sybarite named Alkimenes. Dionysius sold this robe to the Carthaginians. It long remained as one of the permanent religious ornaments of their city, being probably dedicated to the honor of those Hellenic Deities recently introduced for worship; whom (as I have before stated) the Carthaginians were about this time peculiarly anxious to propitiate, in hopes of averting or alleviating the frightful pestilences wherewith they had been so often smitten. They purchased the robe from Dionysius at the prodigious price of one hundred and twenty talents, or about £27,600 sterling.[45] Incredible as this sum may appear, we must recollect that the honor done to the new gods would be mainly estimated according to the magnitude of the sum laid out. As the Carthaginians would probably think no price too great to transfer an unrivalled vestment from the wardrobe of the Lakinian Hêrê to the newly-established temple and worship of Dêmêtêr and Persephonê in their city—so we may be sure that the loss of such an ornament, and the spoliation of the holy place, would deeply humiliate the Krotoniates, and with them the crowd of Italiot Greeks who frequented the Lakinian festivals.
Thus master of the important city of Kroton, with a citadel near the sea capable of being held by a separate garrison, Dionysius divested the inhabitants of their southern possession of Skylletium, which he made over to aggrandize yet farther the town of Lokri.[46] Whether he pushed his conquests farther along the Tarentine Gulf so as to acquire the like hold on Thurii or Metapontum, we cannot say. But both of them must have been overawed by the rapid extension and near approach of his power; especially Thurii, not yet recovered from her disastrous defeat by the Lucanians.
Profiting by his maritime command of the Gulf, Dionysius was enabled to enlarge his ambitious views even to distant ultramarine enterprises. To escape from his long arm, Syracusan exiles were obliged to flee to a greater distance, and one of their divisions either founded, or was admitted into, the city of Ancona, high up the Adriatic Gulf.[47] On the other side of that Gulf, in vicinity and alliance with the Illyrian tribes, Dionysius on his part sent a fleet, and established more than one settlement. To these schemes he was prompted by a dispossessed prince of the Epirotic Molossians, named Alketas, who, residing at Syracuse as an exile, had gained his confidence. He founded the town of Lissus (now Alessio) on the Illyrian coast, considerably north of Epidamnus; and he assisted the Parians in their plantation of two Grecian settlements, in sites still farther northward up the Adriatic Gulf—the islands of Issa and Pharos. His admiral at Lissus defeated the neighboring Illyrian coast-boats, which harassed these newly-settled Parians; but with the Illyrian tribes near to Lissus, he maintained an intimate alliance, and even furnished a large number of them with Grecian panoplies. It is affirmed to have been the purpose of Dionysius and Alketas to employ these warlike barbarians, first in invading Epirus and restoring Alketas to his Molossian principality; next in pillaging the wealthy temple of Delphi—a scheme far-reaching, yet not impracticable, and capable of being seconded by a Syracusan fleet, if circumstances favored its execution. The invasion of Epirus was accomplished, and the Molossians were defeated in a bloody battle, wherein fifteen thousand of them are said to have been slain. But the ulterior projects against Delphi were arrested by the intervention of Sparta, who sent a force to the spot and prevented all further march southward.[48] Alketas however seems to have remained prince of a portion of Epirus, in the territory nearly opposite to Korkyra; where we have already recognized him, in a former chapter, as having become the dependent of Jason of Pheræ in Thessaly.
Another enterprise undertaken by Dionysius about this time was a maritime expedition along the coasts of Latium, Etruria, and Corsica; partly under color of repressing the piracies committed from their maritime cities; but partly also, for the purpose of pillaging the rich and holy temple of Leukothea, at Agylla or its seaport Pyrgi. In this he succeeded, stripping it of money and precious ornaments to the amount of one thousand talents. The Agyllæans came forth to defend their temple, but were completely worsted, and lost so much both in plunder and in prisoners, that Dionysius, after returning to Syracuse and selling the prisoners, obtained an additional profit of five hundred talents.[49]
Such was the military celebrity now attained by Dionysius,[50] that the Gauls from Northern Italy, who had recently sacked Rome, sent to proffer their alliance and aid. He accepted the proposition; from whence perhaps the Gallic mercenaries whom we afterwards find in his service as mercenaries, may take their date. His long arms now reached from Lissus on one side to Agylla on the other. Master of most of Sicily and much of Southern Italy, as well as of the most powerful standing army in Greece—the unscrupulous plunderer of the holiest temples everywhere[51]—he inspired much terror and dislike throughout Central Greece. He was the more vulnerable to this sentiment, as he was not only a triumphant prince, but also a tragic poet; competitor, as such, for that applause and admiration which no force can extort. Since none of his tragedies have been preserved, we can form no judgment of our own respecting them. Yet when we learn that he had stood second or third, and that one of his compositions gained even the first prize at the Lenæan festival at Athens,[52] in 368-367 B. C.—the favorable judgment of an Athenian audience affords good reason for presuming that his poetical talents were considerable.
During the years immediately succeeding 387 B. C., however, Dionysius the poet was not likely to receive an impartial hearing anywhere. For while on the one hand his own circle would applaud every word—on the other hand, a large proportion of independent Greeks would be biassed against what they heard by their fear and hatred of the author. If we believed the anecdotes recounted by Diodorus, we should conclude not merely that the tragedies were contemptible compositions, but that the irritability of Dionysius in regard to criticism was exaggerated even to silly weakness. The dithyrambic poet Philoxenus, a resident or visitor at Syracuse, after hearing one of these tragedies privately recited, was asked his opinion. He gave an unfavorable opinion, for which he was sent to prison:[53] on the next day the intercession of friends procured his release, and he contrived afterwards, by delicate wit and double-meaning phrases, to express an inoffensive sentiment without openly compromising truth. At the Olympic festival of 388 B. C., Dionysius had sent some of his compositions to Olympia, together with the best actors and chorists to recite them. But so contemptible were the poems (we are told), that in spite of every advantage of recitation, they were disgracefully hissed and ridiculed; moreover the actors in coming back to Syracuse were shipwrecked, and the crew of the ship ascribed all the suffering of their voyage to the badness of the poems entrusted to them. The flatterers of Dionysius, however (it is said), still continued to extol his genius, and to assure him that his ultimate success as a poet, though for a time interrupted by envy, was infallible; which Dionysius believed, and continued to compose tragedies without being disheartened.[54]
Amidst such malicious jests, circulated by witty men at the expense of the princely poet, we may trace some important matter of fact. Perhaps in the year 388 B. C., but certainly in the year 384 B. C. (both of them Olympic years), Dionysius sent tragedies to be recited, and chariots to run, before the crowd assembled in festival at Olympia. The year 387 B. C. was a memorable year both in Central Greece and in Sicily. In the former, it was signalized by the momentous peace of Antalkidas, which terminated a general war of eight years’ standing: in the latter, it marked the close of the Italian campaign of Dionysius, with the defeat and humiliation of Kroton and the other Italiot Greeks, and subversion of three Grecian cities,—Hipponium, Kaulonia, and Rhegium—the fate of the Rhegines having been characterized by incidents most pathetic and impressive. The first Olympic festival which occurred after 387 B. C. was accordingly a distinguished epoch. The two festivals immediately preceding (those of 392 B. C. and 388 B. C.) having been celebrated in the midst of a general war, had not been visited by a large proportion of the Hellenic body; so that the next ensuing festival, the 99th Olympiad in 384 B. C., was stamped with a peculiar character (like the 90th Olympiad[55] in 420 B. C.) as bringing together in religious fraternity those who had long been separated.[56] To every ambitious Greek (as to Alkibiades in 420 B. C.) it was an object of unusual ambition to make individual figure at such a festival. To Dionysius, the temptation was peculiarly seductive, since he was triumphant over all neighboring enemies—at the pinnacle of his power—and disengaged from all war requiring his own personal command. Accordingly he sent thither his Theôre, or solemn legation for sacrifice, decked in the richest garments, furnished with abundant gold and silver plate, and provided with splendid tents to serve for their lodging on the sacred ground of Olympia. He farther sent several chariots-and-four to contend in the regular chariot races: and lastly, he also sent reciters and chorists, skilful as well as highly trained, to exhibit his own poetical compositions before such as were willing to hear them. We must remember that poetical recitation was not included in the formal programme of the festival.
All this prodigious outfit, under the superintendence of Thearides, brother of Dionysius, was exhibited with dazzling effect before the Olympic crowd. No name stood so prominently and ostentatiously before them as that of the despot of Syracuse. Every man, even from the most distant regions of Greece, was stimulated to inquire into his past exploits and character. There were probably many persons present, peculiarly forward in answering such inquiries—the numerous sufferers, from Italian and Sicilian Greece, whom his conquests had thrown into exile; and their answers would be of a nature to raise the strongest antipathy against Dionysius. Besides the numerous depopulations and mutations of inhabitants which he had occasioned in Sicily, we have already seen that he had, within the last three years, extinguished three free Grecian communities—Rhegium, Kaulonia, Hipponium; transporting all the inhabitants of the two latter to Syracuse. In the case of Kaulonia, an accidental circumstance occurred to impress its recent extinction vividly upon the spectators. The runner who gained the great prize in the stadium, in 384 B. C., was Dikon, a native of Kaulonia. He was a man preëminently swift of foot, celebrated as having gained previous victories in the stadium, and always proclaimed (pursuant to custom) along with the title of his native city—“Dikon the Kauloniate.” To hear this well-known runner now proclaimed as “Dikon the Syracusan,”[57] gave painful publicity to the fact, that the free community of Kaulonia no longer existed,—and to the absorptions of Grecian freedom effected by Dionysius.
In following the history of affairs in Central Greece, I have already dwelt upon the strong sentiment excited among Grecian patriots by the peace of Antalkidas, wherein Sparta made herself the ostentatious champion and enforcer of a Persian rescript, purchased by surrendering the Asiatic Greeks to the Great King. It was natural that this emotion should manifest itself at the next ensuing Olympic festival in 384 B. C., wherein not only Spartans, Athenians, Thebans, and Corinthians, but also Asiatic and Sicilian Greeks, were reunited after a long separation. The emotion found an eloquent spokesman in the orator Lysias. Descended from Syracusan ancestors, and once a citizen of Thurii,[58] Lysias had peculiar grounds for sympathy with the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. He delivered a public harangue upon the actual state of political affairs, in which he dwelt upon the mournful present and upon the serious dangers of the future. “The Grecian world (he said) is burning away at both extremities. Our eastern brethren have passed into slavery under the Great King, our western under the despotism of Dionysius.[59] These two are the great potentates, both in naval force and in money, the real instruments of dominion:[60] if both of them combine, they will extinguish what remains of freedom in Greece. They have been allowed to consummate all this ruin unopposed, because of the past dissensions among the leading Grecian cities; but it is now high time that these cities should unite cordially to oppose farther ruin. How can Sparta, our legitimate president, sit still while the Hellenic world is on fire and consuming? The misfortunes of our ruined brethren ought to be to us as our own. Let us not lie idle, waiting until Artaxerxes and Dionysius attack us with their united force: let us check their insolence at once, while it is yet in our power.”[61]
Unfortunately we possess but a scanty fragment of this emphatic harangue (a panegyrical harangue, in the ancient sense of the word) delivered at Olympia by Lysias. But we see the alarming picture of the time which he labored to impress: Hellas already enslaved, both in the east and in the west, by the two greatest potentates of the age,[62] Artaxerxes and Dionysius—and now threatened in her centre by their combined efforts. To feel the full probability of so gloomy an anticipation, we must recollect that only in the preceding year Dionysius, already master of Sicily and of a considerable fraction of Italian Greece, had stretched his naval force across to Illyria, armed a host of Illyrian barbarians, and sent them southward under Alketas against the Molossians, with the view of ultimately proceeding farther and pillaging the Delphian temple. The Lacedæmonians had been obliged to send a force to arrest their progress.[63] No wonder then that Lysias should depict the despot of Syracuse as meditating ulterior projects against Central Greece; and as an object not only of hatred for what he had done, but of terror for what he was about to do, in conjunction with the other great enemy from the east.[64]