“During the fifth century the eyes of Athenian statesmen often wandered to western Greece beyond the seas. We can surprise some oblique glances, as early as the days of Themistocles; and we have seen how under Pericles a western policy definitely began. An alliance was formed with the Elymian town of Segesta, and subsequently treaties of alliance (the stone records are still partly preserved) were concluded with Leontini and Rhegium. One general object of Athens was to support the Ionian cities against the Dorian, which were predominant in number and power, and especially against Syracuse, the daughter and friend of Corinth. The same purpose of counter-acting the Dorian predominance may be detected in the foundation of Thurii. But Thurii did not effect this purpose. The colonists were a mixed body; other than Athenian elements gained the upper hand; and, in the end, Thurii became rather a Dorian centre and was no support to Athens. It is to be observed that at the time of the foundation of Thurii, and for nigh thirty years more, Athens is seeking merely influence in the west, she has no thought of dominion. The growth of her connection with Italian and Sicilian affairs was forced upon her by the conditions of commerce and the rivalry of Corinth.” Adolph Holm[b] is equally positive in accusing the Athenians of an early desire to obtain a footing in Sicily.
[431-425 B.C.]
The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. found Sicily in a high state of prosperity, political equality, and intellectual health. According as the various cities had been founded by Dorian or Ionian colonists their family prejudices inclined them towards Sparta or Athens. The war in fact, according to Müller,[h] was called by the oracles, the Doric War. The preponderance in Sicily was largely toward Sparta and Corinth, for Corinth had been the mother-city to Syracuse. Grote[f] thus discusses the feelings of the various cities at this time:
“In that struggle the Italian and Sicilian Greeks had no direct concern, nor anything to fear from the ambition of Athens; who, though she had founded Thurii in 443 B.C., appears never to have aimed at any political ascendency even over that town—much less anywhere else on the coast. But the Sicilian Greeks, though forming a system apart in their own island, from which it suited the dominant policy of Syracuse to exclude all foreign interference, were yet connected by sympathy, and one side even by alliances, with the two main streams of Hellenic politics. Among the allies of Sparta were numbered all or most of the Dorian cities of Sicily—Syracuse, Camarina, Gela, Agrigentum, Selinus, perhaps Himera and Messana—together with Locri and Tarentum in Italy; among the allies of Athens, perhaps, the Chalcidic or Ionic Rhegium in Italy. Whether the Ionic cities in Sicily—Naxos, Catana, and Leontini—were at this time united with Athens by any special treaty, is very doubtful. But if we examine the state of politics prior to the breaking out of the war, it will be found that the connection of the Sicilian cities on both sides with central Greece was rather one of sympathy and tendency, than of pronounced obligation and action. The Dorian Sicilians, though sharing the antipathy of the Peloponnesian Dorians to Athens, had never been called upon for any co-operation with Sparta; nor had the Ionic Sicilians yet learned to look to Athens for protection against Syracuse.”
Sparta counted apparently upon the active assistance of Syracuse, and demanded that the Dorians in Italy and Sicily should contribute to her both ships and money. She realised no ships, a little money, and profuse expressions of interest and sympathy. The awakening of the old Dorio-Ionic blood feud suggested to the Syracusans, however, that while the Peloponnesian War was remote from them both geographically and commercially, it yet furnished a good excuse for attacking such cities in Sicily as were in any way attached to Athens. Naxos, Catana, and Leontini were looked upon as the first prizes to be seized. These towns were so far from being able to send aid to Athens that they were compelled to ask aid of her. They succeeded in forming an alliance with Camarina, which was a Dorian city but jealous of Syracuse, and with the town of Rhegium in Italy. The friendship of Rhegium brought over to Syracuse the Italian city of Locri. With the aid of Locri and practically all the Dorian cities, Syracuse was so strong that the Ionic allies were soon in desperate straits. They sent their eloquent orator Gorgias to implore the Athenians for aid and to advise them to grant it, lest when Syracuse had conquered all Sicily she should send her troops and ships to the aid of the Spartans and Corinthians. The Athenians sent twenty triremes under Laches, who after various minor successes fell under suspicion as to his honesty and efficiency, and was called home.
[425-416 B.C.]
The Ionians sent another appeal to Athens, and received the promise of forty more triremes. In the spring of 425 this fleet left Athens under command of Eurymedon and Sophocles. It was this fleet which, almost accidentally, paused on the Spartan coast at Pylos with the result that it gained for Athens the renowned victory of Sphacteria, as previously described. This victory was very profitable to Athens in its immediate glory, but was of very gloomy purport in the Sicilian matter, for the fleet having delayed to take part in the victory, and later pausing at Corcyra, did not reach Sicily before September. This delay had given the Syracusan allies time to undo what little had been achieved by Laches. He had won the friendship of the town of Messana, thus giving Athens command of the straits. The delay however had weakened the friendship of Messana, and lost its alliance. Furthermore, the cities which Athens had come to aid were found to be in a decided humour to put an end to the civil war. A congress of Sicilian cities was called at Gela.
This congress at Gela takes on a decided importance in political history because of the theories brought forward there by a Syracusan orator, Hermocrates, whose political creed has been compared to the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. The creed was not successfully carried out, and as has often happened in the history of the United States, the promulgators of the doctrine were by no means consistent in their actions. Hermocrates pleaded for a policy, which in modern phrase would be called “Sicily for the Sicilians.” He wished Sicily to regard herself as an entity, considering all foreigners to be outsiders, and all interference to be meddling. He was not rash enough or un-Grecian enough to deny the Sicilian cities the luxury of fighting with one another; but he called for unity against the invader or the intriguer from other shores. From his speech, as imagined by Thucydides,[i] the peroration is worth quoting for its cool common sense:
“And I call on you all, of your own free will, to act in the same manner as myself, and not to be compelled to do it by your enemies. For there is no disgrace in connections giving way to connections, whether a Dorian to a Dorian, or a Chalcidian to those of the same race; in a word, all of us who are neighbours, and live together in one country, and that an island, and are called by the one name of Sicilians. For we shall go to war again, I suppose, when it may so happen, and come to terms again amongst ourselves by means of general conferences; but to foreign invaders we shall always, if we are wise, offer united resistance, inasmuch as by our separate losses we are collectively endangered; and we shall never in future call in any allies or mediators. For by acting thus we shall at the present time avoid depriving Sicily of two blessings—riddance both of the Athenians and of civil war—and shall in future enjoy it by ourselves in freedom, and less exposed to the machinations of others.”