Now that he had become tyrant through the folly of the people, Dionysius fought the Carthaginians with no more success than the generals whom he had accused of treason. He was able to save neither Gela nor Camarina, and the entire population of these two towns sought refuge in Syracuse. Displeased by these defeats, the Syracusans tried, but all too late, to rise against him. Supported by his mercenaries, he stifled the rebellion, caused some of his enemies to be put to death, drove the others from the town, and maintained his power by fear. A plague stopped the advance of the Carthaginians and induced them to make peace, but they kept all their conquests, that is to say, more than two-thirds of Sicily, in exchange for a clause of the treaty recognising Dionysius as tyrant of Syracuse. He fortified the isle of Ortygia, of which he made a citadel, after driving out the inhabitants so as to make room for his mercenaries. Then he gave the best part of the Syracusan territory to his friends and to the magistrates; the rest was distributed in equal shares between the citizens, the freed slaves and resident foreigners. This alteration of property caused a rebellion; he shut himself up in his fortress of Ortygia and his mercenaries re-established his authority. Some days later, while the inhabitants were in the fields, busy gathering in the harvest, he had all the houses searched and all weapons removed. When he believed himself absolute master of Syracuse, he wished to extend his rule over the whole of the eastern coast of Sicily. He seized Ætna and Enna, destroyed Naxos and Catana which had been delivered to him by traitors, and sold their inhabitants in order to give their land to the Sicels of the surrounding country and to his Campanian mercenaries. The terrified Leontines opened their gates to him, and were carried to Syracuse. The Rhegians, uneasy at his advance, sent an army into Sicily; but, abandoned by the Messenians, who had at first joined them, they made peace with Dionysius and returned to Italy.
In the meanwhile Dionysius was preparing to revenge himself on the Carthaginians. Syracuse was surrounded by ramparts which made it impregnable. Workmen from all the neighbouring countries, attracted by lure of high wages, were employed to make large supplies of arms and implements of war; it was at this time that the catapult was invented to cast stones and arrows. Numerous warships were built, some of them on a new model with four or five benches of rowers. When these preparations were completed, and mercenaries collected from all sides, Dionysius declared war on the Carthaginians, and, at the head of an army of eighty thousand men, successively re-captured all the towns which they had conquered seven years previously, Gela, Camarina, Agrigentum, Selinus, and Himera, besieged their principal fortress in the isle of Motya on the western point of Sicily, and took it by means of his implements of war (397). But the following year, Himilco landed at Panormus with one hundred thousand men, regained Motya and all the conquests of Dionysius, destroyed Messana, and after a naval victory in sight of Catana, besieged Syracuse by land and sea. Dionysius was obliged to restore to the citizens the arms which he had taken from them, and soon signs of rebellion were again perceived. But once more plague broke out in the Carthaginian army. Himilco paid three hundred talents [£60,000 or $300,000] for permission to withdraw with the Carthaginian citizens who were in his army, abandoning all his mercenaries who were taken and sold as slaves. Hostilities continued for two years longer and the Carthaginians finally made peace by giving up Tauromenium (392).
This treaty gave Dionysius the opportunity to turn his arms against Magna Græcia, the conquest of which he had long meditated. He took Caulonia, Hipponium, Scylacium, and gave their lands to the Locrians who had made an alliance with him. Croton also fell into his power in spite of a vigorous resistance. Rhegium, which he had besieged for eleven months, finally surrendered; he destroyed the town and sold all the inhabitants. The Syracusan exiles sought refuge on the Adriatic Sea and settled at Ancona (387). Dionysius then ravaged the coasts of Latium and Etruria, where he stole a thousand talents from the temple of Agylla, made alliance with the Gauls who had just taken Rome, enlisted a large number of them among his mercenaries and sent them to the assistance of Sparta which had lately renewed its alliance with Syracuse and was now at war with the Thebans. He founded the town of Lissus in Illyria, and re-established an exiled prince in Epirus. In 383 he made a third war against the Carthaginians; after an alternation of victories and defeats, a treaty was made which fixed the limits of their possessions at the river Halycus. In a fourth war he took Selinus, Entella, and Eryx, but, his fleet being destroyed opposite Lilybæum, he did not succeed in driving them from the island, and the war again ended in a treaty.
In the opinion of the ancients, Dionysius was a type of the godless, avaricious, and suspicious tyrant. In the temple of Zeus, in Syracuse, he replaced by a woollen coat the god’s golden coat, which, he said, was too cold in winter and too warm in summer. He stole the gold beard of Æsculapius, saying that the son ought not to have a beard when his father, Apollo, had none. As he was returning with a favourable wind from an expedition in which he had pillaged the temples: “See,” he said, “how the gods protect the ungodly.”
Numerous anecdotes have been told concerning his perpetual fear: he always wore armour under his clothes; his room was surrounded by a moat which could only be crossed by a drawbridge; when he addressed the people it was from the summit of a tower; he did not dare to be shaved, and his daughters singed off his beard for him with red-hot nutshells; the prisons of the quarries were so arranged that he could hear the least sound. One of his courtiers named Damocles was vaunting the happiness of kings: Dionysius said that he would allow him to enjoy it for one hour; he let him lie on a couch of purple and gold before a well-spread table, and suddenly Damocles perceived above his head a sword suspended by a single hair. This anecdote has all the appearance of a philosophic parable. Those which have been related concerning the literary pretensions of Dionysius are scarcely more trustworthy. It is said that he sent Philoxenus, who found fault with his verses, to the quarries; some time later he had him brought back and read him other verses which he thought better; Philoxenus stood up and said, “Let them take me back to the quarries.”
[368-357 B.C.]
Dionysius had often sent tragedies to the Athenian competitions, but had had little success; however, at the time of the Theban war he had sent mercenaries to the help of the Spartans, then the allies of the Athenians; the latter, therefore, gave the prize to one of his tragedies called Hector’s Ransom. He celebrated this success by a magnificent feast at which he drank to excess. He was seized with a fever from which he died. Some say that he was poisoned by his son. He had reigned thirty-eight years (367).
Dionysius was a bigamist; he married on the same day a Locrian and a Syracusan, the latter the daughter of one of his most active partisans. The son of the former, named like himself Dionysius, and who is called Dionysius the Younger, succeeded him without difficulty. Dion, the brother of his second wife, had no trouble in taking the direction of the government, for the new tyrant had no thought for anything but pleasure. Dion, a great admirer of Plato, had caused him to come to Sicily during the lifetime of Dionysius the Elder, who received the philosopher somewhat badly and even, it is said, had him sold as a slave. This should have taught Plato that a king’s court is not the place for a philosopher; however, after the death of Dionysius and the accession of his son, he returned at the request of Dion, and was very well received by Dionysius the Younger, who took lessons in geometry, and decreased the magnificence of the table, but made no attempt to carry out Plato’s communistic theories in Syracuse. After a short time, however, he imagined that Dion was only interesting him in philosophy to distract his attention from public affairs. He intercepted a letter which Dion had written to the Carthaginian generals asking them to address their communications only to himself. Dionysius showed the letter to Dion, accused him of treason, and made him embark for Italy. Plato was unable to obtain his friend’s recall. Dionysius even forced his sister Arete, the wife of Dion, to marry some one else (360). Dion returned three years later with eight hundred men whom he had recruited in Greece and appeared before Syracuse during the absence of Dionysius. The inhabitants received him enthusiastically, but he was unable to seize the citadel of Ortygia (357). Dionysius, defeated in a naval fight, retired to Locris with his riches, but his son Apollocrates remained in the citadel whose garrison held out for a long time. There were disputes in the town; an agrarian law was demanded. Dion was driven away, then recalled, and famine having forced the garrison of Ortygia to surrender, he remained master of Syracuse. Now was the time to re-establish the republic as he had promised; but his love of philosophy did not carry him to the point of renouncing power. He even caused a demagogue to be put to death for having demanded the destruction of the fortress of Ortygia which had been built for the sole purpose of protecting tyranny against the people. A short time after this, he, himself, was assassinated by the Athenian Callippus, his intimate friend (354).
[357-343 B.C.]