CHAPTER LXXXV.
SICILIAN AFFAIRS DOWN TO THE CLOSE OF THE EXPEDITION OF TIMOLEON. B. C. 353-336.
The assassination of Dion, as recounted in my last chapter, appears to have been skilfully planned and executed for the purpose of its contriver, the Athenian Kallippus. Succeeding at once to the command of the soldiers, among whom he had before been very popular,—and to the mastery of Ortygia,—he was practically supreme at Syracuse. We read in Cornelius Nepos, that after the assassination of Dion there was deep public sorrow, and a strong reaction in his favor, testified by splendid obsequies attended by the mass of the population.[269] But this statement is difficult to believe; not merely because Kallippus long remained undisturbed master, but because he also threw into prison the female relatives of Dion—his sister Aristomachê and his pregnant wife Aretê, avenging by such act of malignity the false oath which he had so lately been compelled to take, in order to satisfy their suspicions.[270] Aretê was delivered of a son in the prison. It would seem that these unhappy women were kept in confinement during all the time, more than a year, that Kallippus remained master. On his being deposed, they were released; when a Syracusan named Hiketas, a friend of the deceased Dion, affected to take them under his protection. After a short period of kind treatment, he put them on board a vessel to be sent to Peloponnesus, but caused them to be slain on the voyage, and their bodies to be sunk in the sea. To this cruel deed he is said to have been instigated by the enemies of Dion; and the act shows but too plainly how implacable those enemies were.[271]
How Kallippus maintained himself in Syracuse—by what support, or violences, or promises—and against what difficulties he had to contend—we are not permitted to know. He seems at first to have made promises of restoring liberty; and we are even told, that he addressed a public letter to his country, the city of Athens;[272] wherein he doubtless laid claim to the honors of tyrannicide; representing himself as the liberator of Syracuse. How this was received by the Athenian assembly, we are not informed. But to Plato and the frequenters of the Academy, the news of Dion’s death occasioned the most profound sorrow, as may still be read in the philosopher’s letters.
Kallippus maintained himself for a year in full splendor and dominion. Discontents had then grown up; and the friends of Dion—or perhaps the enemies of Kallippus assuming that name—showed themselves with force in Syracuse. However, Kallippus defeated them, and forced them to take refuge in Leontini;[273] of which town we presently find Hiketas despot. Encouraged probably by this success, Kallippus committed many enormities, and made himself so odious,[274] that the expelled Dionysian family began to conceive hopes of recovering their dominion. He had gone forth from Syracuse on an expedition against Katana; of which absence Hipparinus took advantage to effect his entry into Syracuse, at the head of a force sufficient, combined with popular discontent, to shut him out of the city. Kallippus speedily returned, but was defeated by Hipparinus, and compelled to content himself with the unprofitable exchange of Katana in place of Syracuse.[275]
Hipparinus and Nysæus were the two sons of Dionysius the elder, by Aristomachê, and were therefore nephews of Dion. Though Hipparinus probably became master of Ortygia, the strongest portion of Syracuse, yet it would appear that in the other portions of Syracuse there were opposing parties who contested his rule; first, the partisans of Dionysius the younger, and of his family—next, the mass who desired to get rid of both the families, and to establish a free popular constitution. Such is the state of facts which we gather from the letters of Plato.[276] But we are too destitute of memorials to make out anything distinct respecting the condition of Syracuse or of Sicily between 353 B. C. and 344 B. C.—from the death of Dion to the invitation sent to Corinth, which brought about the mission of Timoleon. We are assured generally that it was a period of intolerable conflicts, disorders, and suffering; that even the temples and tombs were neglected;[277] that the people were everywhere trampled down by despots and foreign mercenaries; that the despots were frequently overthrown by violence or treachery, yet only to be succeeded by others as bad or worse; that the multiplication of foreign soldiers, seldom regularly paid, spread pillage and violence everywhere.[278] The philosopher Plato—in a letter written about a year or more after the death of Dion (seemingly after the expulsion of Kallippus) and addressed to the surviving relatives and friends of the latter—draws a lamentable picture of the state both of Syracuse and Sicily. He goes so far as to say, that under the distraction and desolation which prevailed, the Hellenic race and language were likely to perish in the island, and give place to the Punic or Oscan.[279] He adjures the contending parties at Syracuse to avert this miserable issue by coming to a compromise, and by constituting a moderate and popular government,—yet with some rights reserved to the ruling families, among whom he desires to see a fraternal partnership established, tripartite in its character; including Dionysius the younger (now at Lokri)—Hipparinus son of the elder Dionysius—and the son of Dion. On the absolute necessity of such compromise and concord, to preserve both people and despots from one common ruin, Plato delivers the most pathetic admonitions. He recommends a triple coördinate kingship, passing by hereditary transmission in the families of the three persons just named; and including the presidency of religious ceremonies with an ample measure of dignity and veneration, but very little active political power. Advising that impartial arbitrators, respected by all, should be invoked to settle terms for the compromise, he earnestly implores each of the combatants to acquiesce peaceably in their adjudication.[280]
To Plato,—who saw before him the line double of Spartan kings, the only hereditary kings in Greece,—the proposition of three coördinate kingly families did not appear at all impracticable; nor indeed was it so, considering the small extent of political power allotted to them. But amidst the angry passions which then raged, and the mass of evil which had been done and suffered on all sides, it was not likely that any pacific arbitrator, of whatever position or character, would find a hearing, or would be enabled to effect any such salutary adjustment as had emanated from the Mantinean Dêmônax at Kyrênê—between the discontented Kyreneans and the dynasty of the Battiad princes.[281] Plato’s recommendation passed unheeded. He died in 348-347 B. C., without seeing any mitigation of those Sicilian calamities which saddened the last years of his long life. On the contrary, the condition of Syracuse grew worse instead of better. The younger Dionysius contrived to effect his return, expelling Hipparinus and Nysæus from Ortygia, and establishing himself there again as master. As he had a long train of past humiliation to avenge, his rule was of that oppressive character which the ancient proverb recognized as belonging to kings restored from exile.[282]
Of all these princes descended from the elder Dionysius, not one inherited the sobriety and temperance which had contributed so much to his success. All of them are said to have been of drunken and dissolute habits[283]—Dionysius the younger, and his son Apollokrates, as well as Hipparinus and Nysæus. Hipparinus was assassinated while in a fit of intoxication; so that Nysæus became the representative of this family, until he was expelled from Ortygia by the return of the younger Dionysius.
That prince, since his first expulsion from Syracuse, had chiefly resided at Lokri in Italy, of which city his mother Doris was a native. It has already been stated that the elder Dionysius had augmented and nursed up Lokri by every means in his power, as an appurtenance of his own dominion at Syracuse. He had added to its territory all the southernmost peninsula of Italy (comprehended within a line drawn from the Gulf of Terina to that of Skylletium), once belonging to Rhegium, Kaulonia, and Hipponium. But though the power of Lokri was thus increased, it had ceased to be a free city, being converted into a dependency of the Dionysian family.[284] As such, it became the residence of the second Dionysius, when he could no longer maintain himself in Syracuse. We know little of what he did; though we are told that he revived a portion of the dismantled city of Rhegium under the name of Phœbia.[285] Rhegium itself reappears shortly afterwards as a community under its own name, and was probably reconstituted at the complete downfall of the second Dionysius.
The season between 356-346 B. C., was one of great pressure and suffering for all the Italiot Greeks, arising from the increased power of the inland Lucanians and Bruttians. These Bruttians, who occupied the southernmost Calabria, were a fraction detached from the general body of Lucanians and self-emancipated; having consisted chiefly of indigenous rural serfs in the mountain communities, who threw off the sway of their Lucanian masters, and formed an independent aggregate for themselves. These men, especially in the energetic effort which marked their early independence, were formidable enemies of the Greeks on the coast, from Tarentum to the Sicilian strait; and more than a match even for the Spartans and Epirots invited over by the Greeks as auxiliaries.
It appears that the second Dionysius, when he retired to Lokri after the first loss of his power at Syracuse, soon found his rule unacceptable and his person unpopular. He maintained himself, seemingly from the beginning, by means of two distinct citadels in the town, with a standing army under the command of the Spartan Pharax, a man of profligacy and violence.[286] The conduct of Dionysius became at last so odious, that nothing short of extreme force could keep down the resentment of the citizens. We read that he was in the habit of practising the most licentious outrage towards the marriageable maidens of good family in Lokri. The detestation thus raised against him was repressed by his superior force—not, we may be sure, without numerous cruelties perpetrated against individual persons who stood on their defence—until the moment arrived when he and his son Apollokrates effected their second return to Ortygia. To ensure so important an acquisition, Dionysius diminished his military force at Lokri, where he at the same time left his wife, his two daughters, and his youthful son. But after his departure, the Lokrians rose in insurrection, overpowered the reduced garrison, and took captive these unfortunate members of his family. Upon their guiltless heads fell all the terrors of retaliation for the enormities of the despot. It was in vain that both Dionysius himself, and the Tarentines[287] supplicated permission to redeem the captives at the highest ransom. In vain was Lokri besieged, and its territory desolated. The Lokrians could neither be seduced by bribes, nor deterred by threats, from satiating the full extremity of vindictive fury. After multiplied cruelties and brutalities, the wife and family of Dionysius were at length relieved from farther suffering by being strangled.[288] With this revolting tragedy terminated the inauspicious marital connection begun between the elder Dionysius and the oligarchy of Lokri.