Such costly novelties added grandeur as well as security to Syracuse, and conferred imposing celebrity on the despot himself. They were dictated by the same aspirations as had prompted his ostentatious legation to Olympia in 384 B. C.; a legation of which the result had been so untoward and intolerable to his feelings. They were intended to console, and doubtless did in part console, the Syracusan people for the loss of their freedom. And they were further designed to serve as fuller preparations for the war against Carthage, which he was now bent upon renewing. He was obliged to look about for a pretext, since the Carthaginians had given him no just cause. But this, though an aggression, was a Pan-hellenic aggression,[81] calculated to win for him the sympathies of all Greeks, philosophers as well as the multitude. And as the war was begun in the year immediately succeeding the insult cast upon him at Olympia, we may ascribe it in part to a wish to perform exploits such as might rescue his name from the like opprobrium in future.
The sum of fifteen hundred talents, recently pillaged from the temple at Agylla,[82] enabled Dionysius to fit out a large army for his projected war. Entering into intrigues with some of the disaffected dependencies of Carthage in Sicily, he encouraged them to revolt, and received them into his alliance. The Carthaginians sent envoys to remonstrate, but could obtain no redress; upon which they on their side prepared for war, accumulated a large force of hired foreign mercenaries under Magon, and contracted alliance with some of the Italiot Greeks hostile to Dionysius. Both parties distributed their forces so as to act partly in Sicily, partly in the adjoining peninsula of Italy; but the great stress of war fell on Sicily, where Dionysius and Magon both commanded in person. After several combats partial and indecisive, a general battle was joined at a place called Kabala. The contest was murderous, and the bravery great on both sides; but at length Dionysius gained a complete victory. Magon himself and ten thousand men of his army were slain; five thousand were made prisoners; while the remainder were driven to retreat to a neighboring eminence, strong, but destitute of water. They were forced to send envoys entreating peace; which Dionysius consented to grant, but only on condition that every Carthaginian should be immediately withdrawn from all the cities in the island, and that he should be reimbursed for the costs of the war.[83]
The Carthaginian generals affected to accept the terms offered, but stated (what was probably the truth), that they could not pledge themselves for the execution of such terms, without assent from the authorities at home. They solicited a truce of a few days, to enable them to send thither for instructions. Persuaded that they could not escape, Dionysius granted their request. Accounting the emancipation of Sicily from the Punic yoke to be already a fact accomplished, he triumphantly exalted himself on a pedestal higher even than that of Gelon. But this very confidence threw him off his guard and proved ruinous to him; as it happened frequently in Grecian military proceedings. The defeated Carthaginian army gradually recovered their spirits. In place of the slain general Magon, who was buried with magnificence, his son was named commander; a youth of extraordinary energy and ability, who so contrived to reassure and reorganize his troops, that when the truce expired, he was ready for a second battle. Probably the Syracusans were taken by surprise and not fully prepared. At least the fortune of Dionysius had fled. In this second action, fought at a spot called Kronium, he underwent a terrible and ruinous defeat. His brother Leptinês, who commanded on one wing, was slain gallantly fighting; those around him were defeated; while Dionysius himself, with his select troops on the other wing, had at first some advantage, but was at length beaten and driven back. The whole army fled in disorder to the camp, pursued with merciless vehemence by the Carthaginians, who, incensed by their previous defeat, neither gave quarter nor took prisoners. Fourteen thousand dead bodies, of the defeated Syracusan army, are said to have been picked up for burial; the rest were only preserved by night and by the shelter of their camp.[84]
Such was the signal victory—the salvation of the army, perhaps even of Carthage herself—gained at Kronium by the youthful son of Magon. Immediately after it, he retired to Panormus. His army probably had been too much enfeebled by the former defeat to undertake farther offensive operations; moreover he himself had as yet no regular appointment as general. The Carthaginian authorities too had the prudence to seize this favorable moment for making peace, and sent to Dionysius envoys with full powers. But Dionysius only obtained peace by large concessions; giving up to Carthage Selinus with its territory, as well as half the Agrigentine territory—all that lay to the west of the river Halykus; and farther covenanting to pay to Carthage the sum of one thousand talents.[85] To these unfavorable conditions Dionysius was constrained to subscribe; after having but a few days before required the Carthaginians to evacuate all Sicily, and pay the costs of the war. As it seems doubtful whether Dionysius would have so large a sum ready to pay down at once, we may reasonably presume that he would undertake to liquidate it by annual instalments. And we thus find confirmation of the memorable statement of Plato, that Dionysius became tributary to the Carthaginians.[86]
Such are the painful gaps in Grecian history as it is transmitted to us, that we hear scarcely anything about Dionysius for thirteen years after the peace of 383-382 B. C. It seems that the Carthaginians (in 379 B. C.) sent an armament to the southern portion of Italy for the purpose of reëstablishing the town of Hipponium and its inhabitants.[87] But their attention appears to have been withdrawn from this enterprise by the recurrence of previous misfortunes—fearful pestilence, and revolt of their Libyan dependencies, which seriously threatened the safety of their city. Again, Dionysius also, during one of these years, undertook some operations, of which a faint echo reaches us, in this same Italian peninsula (now Calabria Ultra). He projected a line of wall across the narrowest portion or isthmus of the peninsula, from the Gulf of Skylletium to that of Hipponium, so as to separate the territory of Lokri from the northern portion of Italy, and secure it completely to his own control. Professedly the wall was destined to repel the incursions of the Lucanians; but in reality (we are told) Dionysius wished to cut off the connection between Lokri and the other Greeks in the Tarentine Gulf. These latter are said to have interposed from without, and prevented the execution of the scheme; but its natural difficulties would be in themselves no small impediment, nor are we sure that the wall was even begun.[88]
During this interval, momentous events (recounted in my previous chapters) had occurred in Central Greece. In 382 B. C., the Spartans made themselves by fraud masters of Thebes, and placed a permanent garrison in the Kadmeia. In 380 B. C., they put down the Olynthian confederacy, thus attaining the maximum of their power. But in 379 B. C., there occurred the revolution at Thebes achieved by the conspiracy of Pelopidas, who expelled the Lacedæmonians from the Kadmeia. Involved in a burdensome war against Thebes and Athens, together with other allies the Lacedæmonians gradually lost ground, and had become much reduced before the peace of 371 B. C., which left them to contend with Thebes alone. Then came the fatal battle of Leuktra which prostrated their military ascendency altogether. These incidents have been already related at large in former chapters. Two years before the battle of Leuktra, Dionysius sent to the aid of the Lacedæmonians at Korkyra a squadron of ten ships, all of which were captured by Iphikrates; about three years after the battle, when the Thebans and their allies were pressing Sparta in Peloponnesus, he twice sent thither a military force of Gauls and Iberians to reinforce her army. But his troops neither stayed long, nor rendered any very conspicuous service.[89]
In this year we hear of a fresh attack by Dionysius against the Carthaginians. Observing that they had been lately much enfeebled by pestilence and by mutiny of their African subjects, he thought the opportunity favorable for trying to recover what the peace of 383 B. C., had obliged him to relinquish. A false pretence being readily found, he invaded the Carthaginian possessions in the west of Sicily with a large land force of thirty thousand foot, and three thousand horse; together with a fleet of three hundred sail, and store ships in proportion. After ravaging much of the open territory of the Carthaginians, he succeeded in mastering Selinus, Entella, and Eryx—and then laid siege to Lilybæum. This town, close to the western cape of Sicily,[90] appears to have arisen as a substitute for the neighboring town of Motyê (of which we hear little more since its capture by Dionysius in 396 B. C.), and to have become the principal Carthaginian station. He began to attack it by active siege and battering machines. But it was so numerously garrisoned, and so well defended, that he was forced to raise the siege and confine himself to blockade. His fleet kept the harbor guarded, so as to intercept supplies from Africa. Not long afterwards, however, he received intelligence that a fire had taken place in the port of Carthage whereby all her ships had been burnt. Being thus led to conceive that there was no longer any apprehension of naval attack from Carthage, he withdrew his fleet from continuous watch off Lilybæum; keeping one hundred and thirty men-of-war near at hand, in the harbor of Eryx, and sending the remainder home to Syracuse. Of this incautious proceeding the Carthaginians took speedy advantage. The conflagration in their port had been much overstated. There still remained to them two hundred ships of war, which, after being equipped in silence, sailed across in the night to Eryx. Appearing suddenly in the harbor, they attacked the Syracusan fleet completely by surprise; and succeeded, without serious resistance, in capturing and towing off nearly all of them. After so capital an advantage, Lilybæum became open to reinforcement and supplies by sea, so that Dionysius no longer thought it worth while to prosecute the blockade. On the approach of winter, both parties resumed the position which they had occupied before the recent movement.[91]
The despot had thus gained nothing by again taking up arms, nor were the Sicilian dependencies of the Carthaginians at all cut down below that which they acquired by the treaty of 383 B. C. But he received (about January or February 367 B. C.) news of a different species of success, which gave him hardly less satisfaction than a victory by land or sea. In the Lenæan festival of Athens, one of his tragedies had been rewarded with the first prize. A chorist who had been employed in the performance—eager to convey the first intelligence of this success to Syracuse and to obtain the recompense which would naturally await the messenger—hastened from Athens to Corinth, found a vessel just starting for Syracuse, and reached Syracuse by a straight course with the advantage of favorable winds. He was the first to communicate the news, and received the full reward of his diligence. Dionysius was overjoyed at the distinction conferred upon him; for though on former occasions he had obtained the second or third place in the Athenian competitions, he had never before been adjudged worthy of the first prize. Offering sacrifice to the gods for the good news, he invited his friends to a splendid banquet, wherein he indulged in an unusual measure of conviviality. But the joyous excitement, coupled with the effects of the wine, brought on an attack of fever, of which he shortly afterwards died, after a reign of thirty-eight years.[92]
Thirty-eight years, of a career so full of effort, adventure, and danger, as that of Dionysius, must have left a constitution sufficiently exhausted to give way easily before acute disease. Throughout this long period he had never spared himself. He was a man of restless energy and activity, bodily as well as mental; always personally at the head of his troops in war—keeping a vigilant eye and a decisive hand upon all the details of his government at home—yet employing spare time (which Philip of Macedon was surprised that he could find[93]) in composing tragedies of his own, to compete for prizes fairly adjudged. His personal bravery was conspicuous, and he was twice severely wounded in leading his soldiers to assault. His effective skill as an ambitious politician—his military resource as a commander—and the long-sighted care with which he provided implements of offence as well as of defence before undertaking war,—are remarkable features in his character. The Roman Scipio Africanus was wont to single out Dionysius and Agathokles (the history of the latter begins about fifty years after the death of the former), both of them despots of Syracuse, as the two Greeks of greatest ability for action known to him—men who combined, in the most memorable degree, daring with sagacity.[94] This criticism, coming from an excellent judge, is borne out by the biography of both, so far as it comes to our knowledge. No other Greek can be pointed out, who, starting from a position humble and unpromising, raised himself to so lofty a pinnacle of dominion at home, achieved such striking military exploits abroad, and preserved his grandeur unimpaired throughout the whole of a long life. Dionysius boasted that he bequeathed to his son an empire fastened by adamantine chains;[95] so powerful was his mercenary force—so firm his position in Ortygia—so completely had the Syracusans been broken into subjection. There cannot be a better test of vigor and ability than the unexampled success with which Dionysius and Agathokles played the game of the despot, and to a certain extent that of the conqueror. Of the two, Dionysius was the most favored by fortune. Both indeed profited by one auxiliary accident, which distinguished Syracuse from other Grecian cities; the local speciality of Ortygia. That islet seemed expressly made to be garrisoned as a separate fortress,—apart from, as well as against, the rest of Syracuse,—having full command of the harbor, docks, naval force, and naval approach. But Dionysius had, besides, several peculiar interventions of the gods in his favor, sometimes at the most critical moments: such was the interpretation put by his enemies (and doubtless by his friends also) upon those repeated pestilences which smote the Carthaginian armies with a force far more deadly than the spear of the Syracusan hoplite. On four or five distinct occasions, during the life of Dionysius, we read of this unseen foe as destroying the Carthaginians both in Sicily and in Africa, but leaving the Syracusans untouched. Twice did it arrest the progress of Imilkon, when in the full career of victory; once, after the capture of Gela and Kamarina—a second time, when, after his great naval victory off Katana, he had brought his numerous host under the walls of Syracuse, and was actually master of the open suburb of Achradina. On both these occasions the pestilence made a complete revolution in the face of the war; exalting Dionysius from impending ruin, to assured safety in the one, and to unmeasured triumph in the other. We are bound to allow for this good fortune (the like of which never befel Agathokles), when we contemplate the long prosperity of Dionysius[96], and when we adopt, as in justice we must, the panegyric of Scipio Africanus.
The preceding chapter has detailed the means whereby Dionysius attained his prize, and kept it: those employed by Agathokles—analogous in spirit but of still darker coloring in the details—will appear hereafter. That Hermokrates—who had filled with credit the highest offices in the state and whom men had acquired the habit of following—should aspire to become despot, was no unusual phenomenon in Grecian politics; but that Dionysius should aim at mounting the same ladder, seemed absurd or even insane—to use the phrase of Isokrates.[97] If, then, in spite of such disadvantage he succeeded in fastening round his countrymen, accustomed to a free constitution as their birth-right, those “adamantine chains” which they were well known to abhor—we may be sure that his plan of proceeding must have been dexterously chosen, and prosecuted with consummate perseverance and audacity; but we may be also sure that it was nefarious in the extreme. The machinery of fraud whereby the people were to be cheated into a temporary submission, as a prelude to the machinery of force whereby such submission was to be perpetuated against their consent—was the stock in trade of Grecian usurpers. But seldom does it appear prefaced by more impudent calumnies, or worked out with a larger measure of violence and spoliation, than in the case of Dionysius. He was indeed powerfully seconded at the outset by the danger of Syracuse from the Carthaginian arms. But his scheme of usurpation, far from diminishing such danger, tended materially to increase it, by disuniting the city at so critical a moment. Dionysius achieved nothing in his first enterprise for the relief of Gela and Kamarina. He was forced to retire with as much disgrace as those previous generals whom he had so bitterly vituperated; and apparently even with greater disgrace—since there are strong grounds for believing that he entered into traitorous collusion with the Carthaginians. The salvation of Syracuse, at that moment of peril, arose not from the energy or ability of Dionysius, but from the opportune epidemic which disabled Imilkon in the midst of a victorious career.