History of Greece, Volume 11 (of 12)

by George Grote

In my preceding volume, I have described the first eleven years of the reign of Dionysius called the Elder, as despot at Syracuse, down to his first great war against the Carthaginians; which war ended by a sudden turn of fortune in his favor, at a time when he was hard pressed and actually besieged. The victorious Carthaginian army before Syracuse was utterly ruined by a terrible pestilence, followed by ignominious treason on the part of its commander Imilkon.

Within the space of less than thirty years, we read of four distinct epidemic distempers,[1] each of frightful severity, as having afflicted Carthage and her armies in Sicily, without touching either Syracuse or the Sicilian Greeks. Such epidemics were the most irresistible of all enemies to the Carthaginians, and the most effective allies to Dionysius. The second and third,—conspicuous among the many fortunate events of his life,—occurred at the exact juncture necessary for rescuing him from a tide of superiority in the Carthaginian arms, which seemed in a fair way to overwhelm him completely. Upon what physical conditions the frequent repetition of such a calamity depended, together with the remarkable fact that it was confined to Carthage and her armies,—we know partially in respect to the third of the four cases, but not at all in regard to the others.

The flight of Imilkon with his Carthaginians from Syracuse left Dionysius and the Syracusans in the full swing of triumph. The conquests made by Imilkon were altogether lost, and the Carthaginian dominion in Sicily was now cut down to that restricted space in the western corner of the island, which it had occupied prior to the invasion of Hannibal in 409 B. C. So prodigious a success probably enabled Dionysius to put down the opposition recently manifested among the Syracusans to the continuance of his rule. We are told that he was greatly embarrassed by his mercenaries; who, having been for some time without pay, manifested such angry discontent as to threaten his downfall. Dionysius seized the person of their commander, the Spartan Aristoteles: upon which the soldiers mutined and flocked in arms around his residence, demanding in fierce terms both the liberty of their commander and the payment of their arrears. Of these demands, Dionysius eluded the first by saying that he would send away Aristoteles to Sparta, to be tried and dealt with among his own countrymen: as to the second, he pacified the soldiers by assigning to them, in exchange for their pay, the town and territory of Leontini. Willingly accepting this rich bribe, the most fertile soil of the island, the mercenaries quitted Syracuse to the number of ten thousand, to take up their residence in the newly assigned town; while Dionysius hired new mercenaries in their place. To these (including perhaps the Iberians or Spaniards who had recently passed from the Carthaginian service into his) and to the slaves whom he had liberated, he intrusted the maintenance of his dominion.[2]

These few facts, which are all that we hear, enable us to see that the relations between Dionysius and the mercenaries by whose means he ruled Syracuse, were troubled and difficult to manage. But they do not explain to us the full cause of such discord. We know that a short time before, Dionysius had rid himself of one thousand obnoxious mercenaries by treacherously betraying them to death in a battle with the Carthaginians. Moreover, he would hardly have seized the person of Aristoteles, and sent him away for trial, if the latter had done nothing more than demand pay really due to his soldiers. It seems probable that the discontent of the mercenaries rested upon deeper causes, perhaps connected with that movement in the Syracusan mind against Dionysius, manifested openly in the invective of Theodorus. We should have been glad also to know how Dionysius proposed to pay the new mercenaries, if he had no means of paying the old. The cost of maintaining his standing army, upon whomsoever it fell, must have been burdensome in the extreme. What became of the previous residents and proprietors at Leontini, who must have been dispossessed when this much-coveted site was transferred to the mercenaries? On all these points we are unfortunately left in ignorance.

Dionysius now set forth towards the north of Sicily to reëstablish Messênê; while those other Sicilians, who had been expelled from their abodes by the Carthaginians, got together and returned. In reconstituting Messênê after its demolition by Imilkon, he obtained the means of planting there a population altogether in his interests, suitable to the aggressive designs which he was already contemplating against Rhegium and the other Italian Greeks. He established in it one thousand Lokrians,—four thousand persons from another city the name of which we cannot certainly make out,[3]—and six hundred of the Peloponnesian Messenians. These latter had been expelled by Sparta from Zakynthus and Naupaktus at the close of the Peloponnesian war, and had taken service in Sicily with Dionysius. Even here, the hatred of Sparta followed them. Her remonstrances against his project of establishing them in a city of consideration bearing their own ancient name, obliged him to withdraw them: upon which he planted them on a portion of the Abakene territory on the northern coast. They gave to their new city the name of Tyndaris, admitted many new residents, and conducted their affairs so prudently, as presently to attain a total of five thousand citizens.[4] Neither here, nor at Messênê, do we find any mention made of the reëstablishment of those inhabitants who had fled when Imilkon took Messênê, and who formed nearly all the previous population of the city, for very few are mentioned as having been slain. It seems doubtful whether Dionysius readmitted them, when he reconstituted Messênê. Renewing with care the fortifications of the city, which had been demolished by Imilkon, he placed in it some of his mercenaries as garrison.[5]

Dionysius next undertook several expeditions against the Sikels in the interior of the island, who had joined Imilkon in his recent attack upon Syracuse. He conquered several of their towns, and established alliances with two of their most powerful princes, at Agyrium and Kentoripæ. Enna and Kephalœdium were also betrayed to him, as well as the Carthaginian dependency of Solûs. By these proceedings, which appear to have occupied some time, he acquired powerful ascendency in the central and north-east parts of the island, while his garrison at Messênê; ensured to him the command of the strait between Sicily and Italy.[6]

His acquisition of this important fortified position was well understood to imply ulterior designs against Rhegium and the other Grecian cities in the south of Italy, among whom accordingly a lively alarm prevailed. The numerous exiles whom he had expelled, not merely from Syracuse, but also from Naxus, Katana, and the other conquered towns, having no longer any assured shelter in Sicily, had been forced to cross over into Italy, where they were favorably received both at Kroton and at Rhegium.[7] One of these exiles, Helôris, once the intimate friend of Dionysius, was even appointed general of the forces of Rhegium; forces at that time not only powerful on land, but sustained by a fleet of seventy or eighty triremes.[8] Under his command, a Rhegine force crossed the strait for the purpose partly of besieging Messênê, partly of establishing the Naxian and Katanean exiles at Mylæ on the northern coast of the island, not far from Messênê. Neither scheme succeeded: Helôris was repulsed from Messênê with loss, while the new settlers at Mylæ were speedily expelled. The command of the strait was thus fully maintained to Dionysius; who, on the point of undertaking an aggressive expedition over to Italy, was delayed only by the necessity of capturing the newly established Sikel town on the hill of Taurus—or Tauromenium. The Sikels defended this position, in itself high and strong, with unexpected valor and obstinacy. It was the spot on which the primitive Grecian colonists who first came to Sicily, had originally landed, and from whence, therefore, the successive Hellenic encroachments upon the pre-established Sikel population, had taken their commencement. This fact, well known to both parties, rendered the capture on one side as much a point of honor, as the preservation on the other. Dionysius spent months in the siege, even throughout midwinter, while the snow covered this hill-top. He made reiterated assaults, which were always repulsed. At last, on one moonless winter night, he found means to scramble over some almost inaccessible crags to a portion of the town less defended, and to effect a lodgment in one of the two fortified portions into which it was divided. Having taken the first part, he immediately proceeded to attack the second. But the Sikels, resisting with desperate valor, repulsed him, and compelled the storming party to flee in disorder, amidst the darkness of night, and over the most difficult ground. Six hundred of them were slain on the spot, and scarcely any escaped without throwing away their arms. Even Dionysius himself, being overthrown by the thrust of a spear on his cuirass, was with difficulty picked up and carried off alive; all his arms, except the cuirass, being left behind. He was obliged to raise the siege, and was long in recovering from his wound: the rather as his eyes also had suffered considerably from the snow.[9]

So manifest a reverse, before a town comparatively insignificant, lowered his military reputation, and encouraged his enemies throughout the island. The Agrigentines and others, throwing off their dependence upon him, proclaimed themselves autonomous; banishing those leaders among them who upheld his interest.[10] Many of the Sikels also, elate with the success of their countrymen at Tauromenium, declared openly against him; joining the Carthaginian general Magon, who now, for the first time since the disaster before Syracuse, again exhibited the force of Carthage in the field.

Since the disaster before Syracuse, Magon had remained tranquil in the western or Carthaginian corner of the island, recruiting the strength and courage of his countrymen, and taking unusual pains to conciliate the attachment of the dependent native towns. Reinforced in part by the exiles expelled by Dionysius, he was now in a condition to assume the aggressive, and to espouse the cause of the Sikels after their successful defence of Tauromenium. He even ventured to overrun and ravage the Messenian territory; but Dionysius, being now recovered from his wound, marched against him, defeated him in a battle near Abakæna, and forced him again to retire westward, until fresh troops were sent to him from Carthage.[11]

Without pursuing Magon, Dionysius returned to Syracuse, from whence he presently set forth to execute his projects against Rhegium, with a fleet of one hundred ships of war. So skilfully did he arrange or mask his movements, that he arrived at night at the gates and under the walls of Rhegium, without the least suspicion on the part of the citizens. Applying combustibles to set fire to the gate (as he had once done successfully at the gate of Achradina),[12] he at the same time planted his ladders against the walls, and attempted an escalade. Surprised and in small numbers, the citizens began their defence; but the attack was making progress, had not the general Helôris, instead of trying to extinguish the flames, bethought himself of encouraging them by heaping on dry faggots and other matters. The conflagration became so violent, that even the assailants themselves were kept off until time was given for the citizens to mount the walls in force; and the city was saved from capture by burning a portion of it. Disappointed in his hopes, Dionysius was obliged to content himself with ravaging the neighboring territory; after which, he concluded a truce of one year with the Rhegines, and then returned to Syracuse.[13]