Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/32

 18 SICILY [HISTORY. 413-392 B.C. time the mutual influence of Sicily and old Greece upon one another is far stronger than in earlier times. Phceni- But before the war in old Greece was over, seventy years cian iu- a ft er the great victory of Gelon (410), the Greeks of Sicily va ^ ion had to undergo barbarian invasion on a vaster scale than Haimi- ever - The disputes between Segesta and Selinous called bal. in these enemies also. Carthage stepped in as the ally of Segesta, the enemy of her old ally Selinous. Her leader was Hannibal, grandson and avenger of the Hamilkar who had died at Himera. In 408, at the head of a vast mer- cenary host, he sailed to Sicily, attacked Selinous, and stormed the town after a murderous assault of nine days, while the other Sikeliot cities, summoned to help, were still lingering. The walls and temples were overthrown ; the mass of the people were massacred; the few who escaped were allowed to return to the dismantled site as tributaries of Carthage; and the city never recovered its old greatness. Thence Hannibal went on to Himera, with the special mission of avenging his grandfather. By this time the other Greek cities were stirred to help, while Sikels and Sikans joined Hannibal ; the strife was distinctly a strife of Greeks and barbarians. At last Himera was stormed, and 3000 of its citizens were solemnly slaughtered on the spot where Hamilkar had died. Himera ceased to exist ; but the Carthaginians founded the new town of Thermal (Termini) not far off, to which the name is some- times laxly applied. The Phoenician possessions in Sicily now stretched across the island from Himera to Selinous. The next victim was Akragas ; its defenders, natives and allies, quarrelled among themselves ; the mass of the people forsook the city, and found shelter at Gela and elsewhere. The few who were left were slaughtered ; the town was sacked and the walls destroyed. Akragas was presently restored, and it has lived on to this day ; but it never recovered its old greatness. Diony- Meanwhile the revolutions of Syracuse affected the his- sios I. t or y o f Sicily and of the whole Greek world. Dionysios the tyrant began his reign of thirty-eight years in the first months of 405. Almost at the same moment, the new Carthaginian commander, Himilkon, attacked Gela and Kamarina. Dionysios, coming to the help of Gela, was defeated, and was charged with treachery. He now made the mass of the people of both towns find shelter at Syra- cuse. But now the plague led Himilkon to ask for peace. Carthage was confirmed in her possession of Selinous, Himera, and Akragas, with some Sikan districts which had opposed her. The people of Gela and Kamarina were allowed to occupy their unwalled towns as tributaries of Carthage. Leontinoi, latterly a Syracusan fort, as well as Messana and all the Sikels, were declared independent, while Dionysios was acknowledged as master of Syracuse. No war was ever more grievous to freedom and civiliza- tion. More than half Sicily was now under barbarian dominion ; several of its noblest cities had perished, and a tyrant was established in the greatest. The 5th century B.C., after its central years of freedom and prosperity, ended in far deeper darkness than it had begun. The minuter account of Dionysios belongs to Syracusan history ; but his position, one unlike anything that had been before seen in Sicily or elsewhere in Hellas, forms an epoch in the history of Europe. His only bright side is his cham- pionship of Hellas against the Phoenician, and this is balanced by his settlements of barbarian mercenaries in several Greek cities. Towards the native races his policy varied according to momentary interests ; but on the whole his reign tended to bring the Sikels more and more within the Greek pale. His dominion is Italian as well as Sicilian ; his influence, as an ally of Sparta, is important in old Greece ; while, as a hirer of mercenaries everywhere, he had wider relations than any earlier Greek with the nations of western Europe. He further opened new fields for Greek settlement on both sides of the Hadriatic. In short, under him Sicily became for the first time the seat of a great European power, while Syracuse, as its head, became the greatest of European cities. His reign was unusually long for a Greek tyrant, and his career furnished a model for other rulers and invaders of Sicily. With him in truth begins that wider range of Greek warfare, policy, and dominion which the Macedonian kingdoms carry on. The master of such a dominion becomes the improver of the military art. With him begins the employment of ships greater than the old triremes, of more effective engines in sieges, and that combined use of troops of various arms and nations which Alexander carried to perfection. The reign of Dionysios (405-367) is divided into marked His wars periods by four wars with Carthage, in 397-396, 392, 383, withCar- and 368. In the first war his home power was all but ^ c age> overthrown ; but he lived through the storm, and extended his dominion over Naxos, Katana, and Leontinoi. All three perished as Greek cities. Katana was the first Sikeliot city to receive a settlement of Campanian mer- cenaries, while others settled in non- Hellenic Entella. Naxos was settled by Sikels ; Leontinoi was again merged in Syracuse. Now begin the dealings of Dionysios with Italy, where the Rhegines, kinsmen of Naxos and Katana, planned a fruitless attack on him in common with Messana. He then sought a wife at Rhegion, but was refused with scorn, while Lokroi (Locri) gladly gave him Doris. The two cities afterwards fared accordingly. In the first war with Carthage, the Greek cities under Carthaginian dominion or dependence helped him ; so did Sikans and Sikels, which last had among them some stirring leaders; Elymian Segesta clave to Carthage. Dionysios took the Phoenician strong- hold of Motye ; but Himilkon recovered it, destroyed Mes- sana, founded the hill -town of Tauromenion (Taormina) above Naxos for Sikels who had joined him, defeated the fleet of Dionysios, and besieged Syracuse. Between in- vasion and home discontent, the tyrant was all but lost ; but the Spartan Pharakidas stood his friend ; the Cartha- ginians again suffered from pestilence ; and Himilkon went away defeated, taking with him his Carthaginian troops and forsaking his allies. Gela, Kamarina, Himera, Seli- nous, Akragas itself, now passed into the dependent alliance of Dionysios. The Carthaginian dominion was cut down to what it had been before Hannibal's invasion. The lord of Syracuse had grown at the cost of Greek and barbarian alike. He planted mercenaries at Leontinoi, conquered some Sikel towns, central Henna among them, and made alliances with others. He restored Messana, peopling it with motley settlers, among whom were some of the old Messenians from Peloponnesos. But the Spartan masters of the old Messenian land grudged this possible begin- ning of a new Messenian power. Dionysios therefore moved his Messenians to a point on the north coast, where they founded Tyndaris. He clearly had a special eye to that region. He took the Sikel Kephaloidion (Cefalu), and even the old Phoenician border -fortress of Solous was betrayed to him. He beat back a Rhegine expedi- tion ; but his advance was checked by a failure to take the new Sikel settlement of Tauromenion. His enemies of all races now declared themselves. Many of the Sikels forsook him ; Akragas declared herself independent ; Car- thage herself, stirred by the loss of Solous, again took the field. The Punic war of 392-391 was not very memorable. Both sides failed in their chief enterprises, and the main interest of the story comes from the glimpses which we get of the Sikel states. Most of them joined the Cartha-