Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/31

 HISTORY.] SICILY 17 movement under Douketios, who, between force and per- suasion, came nearer towards uniting his people into one body than had ever been done before. From his native hill-top of Menai, rising above the lake dedicated to the Palikoi, the native deities whom Sikels and Greeks alike honoured, he brought down his people to the new city of Palikai in the plain. His power grew, and Akragas could withstand him only by the help of Syracuse. Alternately victorious and defeated, spared by Syracuse (451), sent to be safe at Corinth, he came back to Sicily only to form greater plans than before. War between Akragas and Syracuse enabled him to carry out his schemes, and, with the help of another Sikel prince who bore the Greek name of Archomides, he founded Kale Akte on the northern coast. But his work was cut short by his death in 440 ; the hope of the Sikel people now lay in assimilation to their Hellenic neighbours. Douketios's own foundation of Kale Akte lived on, and we presently hear of Sikel towns under kings and tyrants, all marking an approach to Greek life. Roughly speaking, while the Sikels of the plain country on the east coast became subject to Syracuse, most of those in other parts of the island re- mained independent. Of the Sikans we hear less; but Hykkara in the north-west was an independent Sikan town on bad terms with Segesta. On the whole, setting aside the impassable barrier between Greek and Phoenician, other distinctions of race within the island were breaking down through the spread of the Hellenic element. Segesta was on familiar terms with both Greek and Phoenician neighbours, and had the right of intermarriage (Thuc., vi. 6) with Hellenic Selinous. Among the Greek cities them- selves the distinction between the Dorian and the Ionian or Chalkidian settlements is still keenly felt. The Ionian is decidedly the weaker element; and it was most likely owing to the rivalry between the two great Dorian cities of Syracuse and Akragas that the Chalkidian towns were able to keep any independence at all. Up to this time the Italiot and Sikeliot Greeks have formed part of the general Greek world, while within that world they have formed a world of their own, and Sicily has again formed a world of its own within that. Wars and conquests between Greeks and Greeks, especially on the part of Syracuse, though not wanting, have been on the whole less constant than in old Greece. It is even possible to appeal to a vein of local Sicilian patriotism, to preach a kind of Monroe doctrine by which Greeks from other lands should be shut out as strangers (aAAd^uAoi, Thuc., vi. 61, 74). Presently this state of Sicilian isolation was broken in upon by the great Peloponnesian War. The Sikeliot cities were drawn into alliance with one side or the other, till the main interest of Greek history gathers for a while round the Athenian attack on Syracuse. At the very beginning of the war the Lacedaemonians looked for help from the Dorian Sikeliots. But the first active Interfer- intervention came from the other side. Conquest in Sicily euce of was a favourite dream at Athens (Thuc., vi. 1, cf. i. 48, and Diod., xii. 54), with a view to wider conquest or influ- ence in the western Mediterranean. An opportunity for Athenian interference was found in 427 in a quarrel be- tween Syracuse and Leontinoi and their allies. Leontinoi craved help from Athens on the ground of Ionian kindred. Her envoy was Gorgias ; his peculiar style of rhetoric was now first heard in old Greece (Diod., xii. 53, 54), and his pleadings were successful. For several years f rorS this time (427-422) Athens plays a part, chiefly unsuccessful, in Sicilian affairs. But the particular events are of little importance, except as leading the way to the greater events that follow. The steadiest ally of Athens was the Italiot Rhegion ; Messana, with its mixed population, was repeatedly won and lost ; the Sikel tributaries of Syracuse Athens. give zealous help to the Athenians. But in 424 all the 454-413 B.C. Sikeliot and most of the Italiot cities, under the guidance of Hermokrates of Syracuse, who powerfully set forth the doctrine of Sikeliot, perhaps of Sicilian unity, agreed on a peace. Presently an internal disturbance at Leontinoi led to annexation by Syracuse. This gave the Athenians a pretext for another attempt in 422. Little came of it, though Athens Avas joined by the Doric cities of Kamarina and Akragas, clearly out of jealousy towards Syracuse. For several years the island was left to itself. The far more memorable interference of Athens in Sicilian affairs in the year 415 was partly in answer to the cry of the exiles of Leontinoi, partly to a quite distinct appeal from the Elyrnian Segesta. That city, an ally of Athens, asked for Athenian help against its Greek neighbour Selinous. In a dispute, partly about bound- aries, partly about the right of intermarriage between the Hellenic and the Hellenizing city, Segesta was hard pressed. She vainly asked for help at Akragas some say at Syra- cuse (Diod., xii. 82) and even at Carthage. The last appeal was to Athens. But the claims of Segesta and Leontinoi are soon forgotten in the struggle for life and death between Syracuse and Athens. The details of the great Athenian expedition (415-413) Athenian belong partly to the political history of Athens, partly to expedi- that of SYRACUSE (q.v.). But its results make it a marked tlon- epoch in Sicilian history, and the Athenian plans, if suc- cessful, would have changed the whole face of the West. If the later stages of the struggle were remarkable for the vast number of Greek cities engaged on both sides, and for the strange inversion of relations among them on which Thucydides (vii. 57, 58) comments, the whole war was yet more remarkable for the large entrance of the barbarian element into the Athenian reckonings. The war was undertaken on behalf of Segesta ; the Sikels gave Athens valuable help ; the greater barbarian powers out of Sicily also came into play. Some help actually came from Etruria. But Carthage was more far-sighted. If Syra- cuse was an object of jealousy, Athens, succeeding to her dominion, creating a power too nearly alike to her own, would have provoked far greater jealousy. So Athens found no active support save at Naxos and Katana, though Akragas, if she would not help the invaders, at least gave no help to her own rival. The war is instruct- ive in many ways : it reminds us of the general conditions of Greek seamanship when we find that Korkyra was the meeting-place for the allied fleet, and that Syracuse was reached only by a coasting voyage along the shores of Greek Italy. We are struck also by the low military level of the Sicilian Greeks. The Syracusan heavy-armed are as far below those of Athens as those of Athens are below those of Sparta. The gwm'-continental character of Sicily causes Syracuse, with its havens and its island, to be looked on, in comparison with Athens, as a land power (>y-ei/)GJTGu, Thuc., vii. 21). That is to say, the Sikeliot level represents the general Greek level as it stood before the wars in which Athens won and defended her dominion. The Greeks of Sicily had had no such military practice as the Greeks of old Greece ; but an able commander could teach both Sikeliot soldiers and Sikeliot seamen to out- manoeuvre Athenians. The main result of the expedition, as regards Sicily, was to bring the island more thoroughly into the thick of Greek affairs. Syracuse, threatened with destruction by Athens, was saved by the zeal of her metropolis Corinth in stirring up the Peloponnesian rivals of Athens to help her. Gylippos came; the second Athenian fleet came and perished. Syracuse was saved ; all chance of Athenian dominion in Sicily or elsewhere in the West came to an end. Syracuse repaid the debt by good service to the Peloponnesian cause, and from that XXII. 3