Now, the Phœnicians were evidently not people of the kind that are contented to sit still. They were energetic, pushing; and of course they came into conflict with the Greek colonies. The principal conflicts took place in, or around, Sicily, where the Phœnicians, as well as the Greeks, had long been settled. It was not until Carthage had grown to considerable power that the Phœnicians could hope to do much against the Greeks, and about that time some of the Greek cities also gained strength for military and naval enterprise by coming into rather closer union with each other.
The constitution of very many of the Greek city states went through the same succession of changes. After the rule of the aristocratic party, that is to say, of the best-born people, who were the rich landowners, there came a time of rule by the democracy, that is to say by the poorer, the common people. This democratic rule was so disorderly that a strong single ruler generally arose out of the disorder and established his power, somewhat as Napoleon I. did out of the disorder of the French Revolution. These rulers, or dictators, were called tyrants in Greece, and the changes of the constitutions in the government of their colonial cities in Sicily went on in exactly the same way as in Greece itself. A strong ruler established over one city would often be able to make good his power over another city near him. Thus began to be formed alliances of cities under the rule of one or of a few leading men; and so the Sicilian Greeks found some strength of their own to oppose to the strength of Carthage.
Historians tell us of such sweeping successes of the Phœnicians in the earliest conflicts that if we were to believe them all we should have to believe that hardly a Greek was left in Sicily. But evidently that is not exactly how it did happen, for it was just while the Persians were threatening Greece that Gelo, one of the greatest of the Sicilian "tyrants," established Syracuse as the capital city of Sicily and the headquarters of his power. The Greek colonists had largely assimilated the native peoples to themselves. There had been marriages between them, and Greek thought had penetrated here as it had everywhere that the Greeks went. So the strength of the Greeks in Sicily did not depend on the colonists. Only the Greek colonists seem to have been far more successful in getting help from the native people than the Phœnician colonists were. The Phœnicians, however, had their friends in Sicily, even among the Greeks themselves, for there were jealousies between the Greek cities in Sicily as everywhere else.
Phœnicians defeated
I told you that Xerxes for the safety of his fleet had made an alliance with Carthage before making his great attack on Greece. It was something more than a mere arrangement that his ships should not be meddled with as they went to and fro. It was an agreement for some more active help than this. Carthage was to attack the Greek colonial power in Sicily at the same time as Xerxes fell upon the mainland of Greece from the east. The two attacks were so well timed that it is said that the battle which decided the result of the Phœnician expedition against Sicily was fought on the very same day as the battle of Salamis which decided the fate of the Persian attack on Greece. And the result of the one battle was the same as that of the other. Gelo completely vanquished the Phœnicians; so completely that Sicily had rest from their troubling nearly all through what remained of that century—that is to say, for ninety years or so.
During that period the arts and civilisation made great advance in the cities of Sicily. Again, as before, it was really the jealousy and fighting of the Greek cities among themselves that brought them under fresh attack by what they called the barbarian power. Again the Carthaginians came upon them. They were disunited, fighting among themselves. The Athenian navy had come to Sicily to take its part in the fighting, as is told in the splendid history of Thucydides. It was fighting which all grew out of that Peloponnesian War which was fought between Athens, as the leading state in the main part of Greece, on the one side, and Sparta, as the great power of the Peloponnese, on the other. The Syracusans, of Sicily, were originally a Corinthian colony, from Corinth, on the Isthmus between the greater part of Greece and the Peloponnese. The Athenian navy came to Sicily in the year 415 B.C., and if it had made a vigorous attack on Syracuse at its first coming it is probable that the city would have fallen. The Athenian admiral, however, delayed; he allowed the Syracusans time to improve their defences, and he had to sit down to blockade the city both by land and sea. A small Spartan force came to the help of the besieged, they put all their own naval power into the struggle, and in the spring of 413 B.C. fought and defeated the Athenian fleet.
They were just in time, for the very next day strong reinforcements arrived from Athens. With this new force the besiegers tried to recover their lost positions, but were defeated. The Syracusans then blocked the mouth of the harbour in which the Athenian ships lay, and after a final struggle both by land and sea, the Athenians were hopelessly beaten; those who survived had a wretched fate as captives.
But even after this great defence and complete victory there were many different and opposing interests in Sicily. Sometimes a city which you would expect to find helping one side, is found fighting on just the opposite side. The story of the whole would be far too long to tell here. The effect of it all was that when a new Carthaginian force attacked the Sicilian Greeks in 409 B.C. the Greeks were weakened and disunited after all these contentions among themselves.
Dionysius of Syracuse