CHAPTER III.
GLANCES AT ANCIENT SICILIAN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.
VICISSITUDES OF SICILIAN GOVERNMENT.—GLANCES AT PHALARIS, STESICHORUS, EMPEDOCLES, HIERO I., SIMONIDES, EPICHARMUS, DIONYSIUS I., DAMON AND PYTHIAS, DAMOCLES, DIONYSIUS II., DION, PLATO, AGATHOCLES, HANNIBAL, HIERO II., THEOCRITUS, ARCHIMEDES, MARCELLUS, VERRES; AND PARTICULARS RELATING TO GELLIAS.
icily being one of those small, beautiful, and abundant countries which excite the cupidity of larger ones, has had as many foreign masters as the poor Princess of Babylon in Boccaccio, who, on her way to be married to the King of Colchos, fell into the hands of nine husbands. First, in all probability, came subjugators from the Italian continent; then Phœnicians, or commercial invaders; then, undoubtedly, Greeks; then Carthaginians; then Romans, Goths, Saracens, Normans, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Gallo-Spaniards, Frenchmen again, Gallo-Spaniards again; and in the possession of these last it remains. Under the Greeks, its cities grew into powerful independent states. Syracuse was once twenty-two miles in circumference. The most prominent names in the ancient history of Sicily are touched upon in the following list.
Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, who roasted people in a brazen bull, in which he was ultimately made to roar himself. That is to say, if the bull be true. For the reign of this prince was at so remote a period, and the excitement of exaggeration is so tempting, that the sight of the bull in after times proves no more than was proved by the brazen wolf of Romulus and Remus. The age of Phalaris was that of the Prophet Daniel.
Stesichorus, a majestic lyrical poet, in one of whose fragments is to be found the beautiful fiction of the Golden Boat of the Sun. The Sun-God sails in it, invisibly, round the Northern Sea in the night-time, so as to be ready to re-appear in the East in the morning.
Empedocles, the Pythagorean philosopher. He is accused of leaping into Ætna, in the hope of being supernaturally missed, and so taken for a god—a project betrayed by the ejection of one of his brazen sandals. But a philosopher may perish by a volcano, as Pliny did, without giving envy a right to make him a laughing-stock.
Hiero the First, of Syracuse; a bad prince, but a possessor of good horses and charioteers; for whose victories in the Olympic games his name has become celebrated by means of Pindar. Hiero is the great name in the Racing Calendar of antiquity.