thage. Fate had indeed delivered the barbarians into the hands of the DoubleGreeks; and the Greeks were determined to wreak their vengeance dealing of Dionysius to the uttermost and extirpate the destroyers of Messana. Dionysius had approved himself the successor of Gelon; the double victory of Dascon was worthy to be set beside the victory of Himera. But Dionysius was not capable of absolute sincerity in the part he played as the champion of Hellas; he could not act to the end as a Syracusan patriot with singleness of heart. This was the fatality of his position as a tyrant, conscious that his autocracy rested on unstable foundations. He fought against Carthage, but it was always with the resolve that the power of the Carthaginians should not be annihilated in Sicily. The Punic peril was a security for his tyranny, by making him necessary to Syracuse. The Syracusans must look to him as His policy their protector against the ever-present barbarian foe. This was in regard another secret of tyranny discovered by Dionysius. The Punic to Carsubtlety of Himilco, enlightened by passages in the tyrant's past career, formed no doubt a shrewd idea of this side of his policy; the Carthaginian saw that his hope of safety lay in bargaining with Dionysius. Secret messages passed; and Dionysius agreed to allow Himilco along with all those who were Carthaginian citizens to sail away at night. In payment for this collusion he received three Escape of hundred talents. Dionysius recalled his reluctant army from their Himilco by assaults on the camp, and left it in peace for three days. On the collusion of fourth night Himilco set sail with forty triremes, leaving his allies and his mercenaries to their fate. It was an act of desertion which was likely to repel mercenary soldiers from the Carthaginian service in the future; and this was doubtless foreseen by the crafty tyrant. But the squadron of fugitive triremes did not escape untouched. The noise of the oars as they sailed out of the Harbour was detected by the Corinthian allies, and they gave the alarm to Dionysius. But Dionysius was purposely slow in his preparations to pursue, and the impatient Corinthians sailed out without his orders and sank some of the hindmost of the Punic vessels. Having connived at the escape of Himilco, the tyrant was energetic in dealing with the remnant of Himilco's host. The Sicel allies had escaped to their own homes, and only the mercenaries were left. These were slain or made slaves, with the exception of a band of strong and valiant Iberians who were taken into the service of the tyrant. Thus ended the first struggle of Dionysius with Carthage, and it ended in a complete triumph for the Greek cause. The dominion of the African city was now circumscribed within its old western corner; and the greater part of the rest of Sicily was subject, directly or indirectly, to the rule of the lord of Syracuse. Both from Greek and from barbarian Sicily, a famous city had been blotted out; but Dionysius. Sicel conquests of Dionysius (between 396 and 393 B.C.) on Tauromenium. Motya had been revived in Lilybaeum, and Messana was soon to rise again upon her ruins. SECT. 6. SECOND PUNIC WAR, AND SICEL CONQUESTS OF DIONYSIUS The equivocal policy of Dionysius in his hostilities to Carthage was manifested clearly enough in the course which he pursued after his great victory. It was the most favourable moment that had yet come in the struggle of centuries, for driving the barbarians out and making Sicily a Greek island from the eastern to the western shore. Carthage could not readily gather together such another armament as that which had been destroyed. No patriot leader who was devoted to the Greek cause heart and soul, with singleness of aim, would have failed to follow up the great success by an invasion of western Sicily. But the preservation of his own precarious despotism was the guiding principle of Dionysius; and he saw in the barbarian corner of the island a palladium of his power. The next Punic War broke out five years later, and part of the meantime had been occupied by Dionysius in extending his power over the Sicels. He annexed to his dominion Morgantina, Cephaloedion, and Henna itself; he made treaties with the tyrants of Agyrion and Centuripa, and with other places. But among all the Sicel towns, that which it was most important for him to win was the Unsuccess new foundation of the Carthaginian on the heights of Taurus. He ful assault laid siege to Tauromenium in the depth of winter. Operations of war in the winter season are one of the features of the reign of Dionysius, which separate it from the habits of older Greece and link it to the age of the Macedonian monarchy. The tyrant himself led his men on a wild and moonless night up the steep ascent to the town. One of the citadels was taken, and the assailants entered the place. But the Syracusan band was outnumbered and surrounded, six hundred were killed, and the rest were driven down the cliffs. Of these Dionysius was one; he reached the bottom barely alive, after that precipitous descent. Conquest of Solus. In the course of the extension of his power on the northern coast, Dionysius had advanced to the limits of the Phoenician corner, and had won possession, through domestic treachery, of Solus, the most easterly of the three Phoenician cities. Of the circumstances we know nothing, but the conquest would seem to have been rather a piece of luck than part of any deliberate plan of aggression on the part of the Greek tyrant. No treaty appears to have been concluded between Carthage and Syracuse after the defeat of Himilco, so that the capture of Solus was not a violation of peace, but only an occasion for the reawakening of hostilities which had been permitted to sleep by tacit consent. At all events, it must have had something to do with the renewal of the war,- -a renewal for which our records assign no causes. Punic War, 392 B.C. with Agyris. At the opening of the second war we find a Carthaginian general Second commanding the Phoenician forces of the island, but without any troops, so far as we know, from Africa. The general was Mago, who in the previous war had been commander of the fleet. His army was doubtless considerably inferior to the forces which Dionysius could muster; certain it is that on this occasion Dionysius did not hesitate to give him battle and did not fail to defeat him. Carthage saw that she must make a more vigorous effort, and she Victory of gave Mago a large army-80,000 men, it is said, to retrieve his Dionysius. ill success. To meet the invader, Dionysius entered into a close League of league with the strongest Sicel power in the land, his fellow-tyrant Dionysius Agyris of Agyrium. This is the special feature of the second Punic War: the cause of Europe is upheld by a federation of the two European powers of the island, Sicel and Greek. The Carthaginian army advanced into Sicel territory, seeking to win the Sicel towns. But Agyris and his men waged a most effectual manner of warfare, cutting off all the foraging parties of the enemy and thus starving them by degrees. This they were able to do from their knowledge of their native hills. But it seems that the Syracusans were dissatisfied with this slow method, which was thoroughly to the taste of Dionysius. What happened is not clear; but we learn that the Syracusans marched away from the camp, and that Dionysius replaced them by arming the slaves. Then the Greeks and the Sicels must have won some unrecorded success, or the Carthaginian host must have been already terribly deplenished by the want of food; for we next find Mago suing for peace. The Carthaginian power was This peace, although it is said to have been based on the Terms of treaty which Dionysius had made twelve years before, was in truth the Peace. altogether different; for the parts of the two powers were reversed. All the Greek communities of Sicily were now placed under the direct or indirect power of Syracuse. confined to the western corner. must have been now handed over to Carthage, if Mago had not already recovered it by arms. But the most striking provision of the treaty is that which placed "the Sicels" under the rule of Dionysius. Nothing is said of Agyrium, and we are almost driven to wonder whether there was here any treachery to Agyris, of whom we hear nothing further. But there was a special clause touching Dionysius Tauromenium; and acting on this clause Dionysius immediately wins took possession of the town, expelled the Sicels, and established in menium Tauro the fortress one of those mercenary settlements which were characteristic of his age. Such was the end of the two Punic wars, which were in truth rather but a single war broken by an interval of quiescence. Messana restored 396 B.C. SECT. 7. THE EMPIRE OF DIONYSIUS Having made himself master of all Greek Sicily, the lord of Syracuse began to' extend the compass of his ambition beyond the bounds of the island. He began to plan the conquest of Greek Italy. Hitherto the Sicilian cities, though they had constant dealings with the colonies of the Italian mainland, had never sought there, or anywhere out of their own island, a field for conquest or aggression. The restriction of Siceliot ambition to Sicilian territory was the other side of the doctrine preached by Hermocrates that the Siceliots should not allow Greeks from beyond the sea to interfere in the affairs of Sicily. We are reminded of the policy which has been followed on a greater scale by the United States on the American continent. Here, as in other things, Dionysius was an innovator; he set the example of enterprises of conquest beyond the sea. Into the enterprise of Italian conquest he was naturally led on by his dealings with the fellow-cities of the strait, Messana and Rhegium. For Messana was a city once more; it had been rebuilt by Dionysius himself. He settled in it colonists from Locri and Medma in Italy, and 600 Messenians from old Greece, who had (Messenians driven from been wandering about homeless since Sparta had driven them from Naupactus, Naupactus. But this favour to the Messenians displeased the 400-1 B.C.) Spartans, and as Dionysius clave to the friendship of Sparta he Foundation yielded to their protests. He removed the exiles from Messana, but of Tyndaris he made for them a secure though less illustrious home. He founded Dionysius, the city of Tyndaris on a high hill to the west of Mylae, and fortified it strongly; the walls and towers, which still remain, are a good specimen of the fortifications of Dionysius. by 395 B.C. The restoration of Messana and the foundation of Tyndaris were no pleasant sight to the Ionian city across the strait; these new cities seemed to Rhegium a Syracusan menace. The men of Rhegium sought to make a counter-move by founding a city themFoundation selves between Tyndaris and Messana. They gathered together the of Mylae, exiles from Catane and Naxos and settled them on the peninsula of 394 B. C. Mylae; but the settlement lasted only for a moment; almost immediately the town of Mylae was captured by its neighbours of Messana, and the exiles were driven out to resume their wanderings. Apart from his political hostility to Rhegium, Dionysius is said to have borne it a private grudge. He had asked the men of Rhegium to give him one of their maidens to wife, and they had answered that they would give him none but the hangman's daughter. Locri, Rhegium's neighbour, then granted him the request which Rhegium refused; Locri was his faithful ally; and now, when the conclusion of peace with Carthage left him free to pursue his Italian designs, it was Locri that he made his base of operations. The first object was to capture Rhegium; its position on the Rhegium strait dictated this, apart from all motives of revenge or hatred. besieged, Accordingly starting from Locri with army and fleet, he laid siege to 391 B.C. Rhegium by land and sea. But the confederate cities of the Italian coast came to the assistance of a member of their league; the Italiot Naval armament worsted the fleet of Dionysius in or near the strait, and defeat of Dionysius. Dionysius escaped with difficulty to the opposite coast. Lucanians: Rhegium was thus relieved, and Dionysius now directed his Alliance of hostilities against the Italiot federation. He made an alliance with Dionysius the Lucanians, to the intent that they and he should carry on war in with the common against the Italiot cities, they by land and he by sea. In joint accordance with this treaty, the Lucanians invaded the land of Thurii. operations, The men of Thurii retorted by invading Lucania in considerable 390 B.C. force; but they sustained a crushing defeat at the hands of the barbarians. Most of the Thurians were slain, but some escaped to the Thurians shore and swam out to ships which they descried coasting along. defeated by By a curious chance, the ships were the fleet of Syracuse, and Leptines, the tyrant's brother, was once more the commander. He received the fugitives, and did more; he landed and ransomed them from the Lucanians. He did even more than this; he arranged Leptines an armistice between the Lucanians and the Italiots. In acting thus, concludes he clearly went beyond his powers; he had been sent to co-operate armistice with the Lucanians against the Italiots, and he had no right to con- and is clude an armistice in such circumstances, without consulting his deposed. brother. It is not surprising that Dionysius deposed him from the command. Lucanians. an Caulonia, 389 B. C. In the following year Dionysius took the field himself. He Dionysius opened the campaign by laying siege to Caulonia, the northern neigh- besieges bour of Locri. The Italiots, under the active lead of Croton, collected an army of 15,000 foot and 2000 horse, and entrusted the command to Helōris, a brave exile of Syracuse, who burned with hatred against the tyrant who had banished him. The federal army marched forth from Croton to relieve Caulonia, and when Dionysius learned of its approach, he decided to go forth to meet it; for his own forces, 20,000 foot and 3000 horse, were considerably superior. Luck favoured him. Near the river Elleporus which flows into the sea between Caulonia and Croton, the tyrant heard that the enemy were encamped within a distance of five miles, and he drew up his men in |