Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/33

 HISTORY.] SICILY 19 ginian leader Mago ; but lie was successfully withstood at Agyrion by Agyris, tlie ally of Dionysios, who is described as a tyrant second in power to Dionysios himself. This way of speaking would imply that Agyrion had so far advanced in Greek ways as to run the usual course of a Greek commonwealth. The two tyrants drove Carthage to a peace by which she abandoned all her Sikel allies to Dionysios. This time he took Tauromenion and settled it with his mercenaries. For new colonists of this kind the established communities of all races were making way. The transportations under the older tyrants had been move- ments of Greeks from one Greek site to another. Now all races are confounded. Dionysios, now free from Phoenician warfare, gave his mind to enterprises which raised his power to its greatest height. In the years 390-387 he warred against the Italiot cities in alliance with their Lucanian enemies. Khegion, Kroton (Croton), the whole toe of the boot, were conquered. Their lands were given to Lokroi; their citizens were taken to Syracuse, sometimes as slaves, sometimes as citizens. The master of barbarians fell below the lowest Hellenic level when he put the brave Rhegine general Phyton to a ' lingering death, and in other cases imitated the Cartha- ginian cruelty of crucifixion. Conqueror of southern Italy, he turned his thoughts yet further, and became the first ruler of Sicily to stretch forth his hands towards the eastern peninsula. In the Hadriatic he helped Hellenic extension. He planted directly and indirectly some settlements in Apulia, while Syracusan exiles founded the more famous Ankon or Ancona. On the east coast he founded Lissos ; he helped the Parians in their settlements of Issa and Pharos ; he took into his pay Illyrian warriors with Greek arms, and helped the Molottian Alketas to win back part of his kingdom. He was even charged with plotting with his Epeirot ally to plunder Delphoi. This even Sparta would not endure ; Dionysios had to content himself with sending a fleet along the west coast of Italy, to carry off the wealth of the great temple of Agylla or Caere. In old Greece men now said that the Greek folk was hemmed in between the barbarian Artaxerxes on the one side and Dionysios, master and planter of barbarians, on the other. These feelings found expression when Dionysios sent his embassy to the Olympic games of 384, and when Lysias bade Greece rise against both its oppressors. Dionysios vented his wrath on those who were nearest to him, banish- ing many, among them his brother Leptines and his earliest friend Philistos, and putting many to death. He was also once more stirred up to play the part of a Hellenic champion : he made ready for yet another Punic war. In this war (383-382) Dionysios seems for once to have had his head turned by a first success. His demand that Carthage should altogether withdraw from Sicily was met by a crushing defeat. Then came a treaty by which Carthage kept Selinous and part of the land of Akragas. The Halykos became the boundary. Dionysios had also to pay 1000 talents, which caused him to be spoken of as becoming tributary to the barbarians. In the last years of his reign we hear dimly of both Syracusan and Carthaginian operations in southern Italy. He also gave help to Sparta against Thebes, sending Gaulish and Iberian mercenaries to take part in Greek warfare. His last war with Carthage, which was going on at his death, was ended by a peace by which the Halykos remained the boundary. Diony- The tyranny of Dionysios fell, as usual, in the second sios II. generation ; but it was kept up for ten years after his Dion death by the energy of Philistos, now minister of his son Dionysios the Younger. It fell with the coming back of the exile Dion in 357. The tyranny had lasted so long that it was less easy than at the overthrow of the elder tyrants to fall back on an earlier state of things. It had been a time of frightful changes throughout Sicily, full of 392-337 B.( breaking up of old landmarks, of confusion of races, and of movements of inhabitants. But it also saw the founda- tion of new cities. Besides Tyndaris and Tauromenion, the foundation of Alaisa marks another step in Sikel pro- gress towards Hellenism, while the Carthaginians founded their strong town and fortress of Lilybaion. Among these changes the most marked is the settlement of Campanian mercenaries in Greek and Sikel towns. Yet they too could be brought under Greek influences ; they were distant kinsfolk of the Sikels, and they were the forerunners of Rome. They mark one stage of migration from Italy into Sicily. The reign of Dionysios was less brilliant in the way of art and literature than that of Hieron. Yet Dionysios himself sought fame as a poet, and his success at Athens shows that his compositions did not deserve the full scorn of his enemies. The dithyrambic poet Philoxenos, by birth of Kythera, won his fame in Sicily, and other authors of lost poems are mentioned in various Sikeliot cities. One of the greatest losses in all Greek history is that of the writings of Philistos (436-356), the Syracusan who had seen the Athenian siege and who died in the warfare between Dion and the younger Dionysios. Through the time of both tyrants, he was, next to the actual rulers, the first man in Sicily ; but of his record of his own times we have only what filters through the recasting of Diodoros. But the most remarkable intellectual movement in Sicily at this time was the influence of the Pythagorean philo- sophy, which still lived on in southern Italy. It led, through Dion, to the several visits of Plato to Sicily under both the elder and the younger Dionysios. To architecture the time was not favourable anywhere but in Syracuse. The time following the Dionysian tyranny was at Syra- cuse a time full of the most stirring local and personal interest, under her two deliverers Dion and Timoleon. It is less easy to make out the exact effect on the rest of Sicily of the three years' career of Dion. But we may mark that, in driving out the younger Dionysios, he was helped by a general movement of Greeks, Sikels, and Sikans. Between the death of Dion in 354 and the coming of Timoleon in 344 we hear of a time of confusion in which Hellenic life seemed likely to die out. The cities, Greek and Sikel, were occupied by tyrants. Syra- cuse was parted between several, Dionysios coming back to hold Ortygia. Timoleon's work was threefold the imme- Timo- diate deliverance of Syracuse, the restoration of Sicily in leon. general to freedom and Greek life, and the defence of the Greek cities against Carthage. The victory of the Krimisos in 340 led to a peace with Carthage with the old frontier ; but all Greek cities were to be free, and Carthage was to give no help to any tyrant. Timoleon drove out all the tyrants, and it specially marks the fusion of the two races that the people of the Sikel Agyrion were admitted to the citizenship of free Syracuse. From some towns he drove out the Campanians, and he largely invited Greek settlement, especially from the Italiot towns, which were hard pressed by the Bruttians. The Corinthian deliverer gave, not only Syracuse, but all Greek Sicily, a new lease of life, though a short one. With Timoleon begins a series of leaders who came from old Greece to deliver or to conquer among the Greeks of Italy and Sicily. The enterprise of Dion most likely sug- gested those that followed, but Dion, as a native Syracusan, does not belong altogether to the same class. Timoleon alone was a pure republican deliverer. The Macedonian kings had established a Greek dominion in the East, and a series of princes from Sparta and Epeiros came to estab- lish in the West a Greek dominion which should balance that of the Macedonians. Archidamos, Alexander of