Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/853

 SYRACUSE 817 siderate ; his laws l as to the customs and the corn tithes were accepted and maintained under the Roman govern- ment, and one of the many bad acts of the notorious Verres, according to Cicero, was to set them aside (Cic., In Verr., ii. 13; iii. 8). It was a time too for great public works, works for defence at the entrance of the Lesser Harbour between the Island and Achradina, and temples and gym- nasia. Hiero through his long reign was the staunch friend and ally of Rome in her struggles with Carthage ; but his paternal despotism, under which Greek life and civilization at Syracuse had greatly flourished, was un- fortunately succeeded by the rule of a man who wholly reversed his policy. Hieronymus, the grandson of Hiero, thought fit to ally himself with Carthage ; he did not live, however, to see the mischief he had done, for he fell in a conspiracy which he had wantonly provoked by his arrogance and cruelty. There was a fierce popular outbreak and more bloodshed : the conspirators were put to death and Hiero's family was murdered; whilst the Carthaginian faction, under the pretence of delivering "the city from its tyrants, got the upper hand and drew the citizens into open defiance of Rome. Marcellus was then in command of the Roman army in Sicily, and he threatened the Syracusans with attack unless they would get rid of Epicydes and Hippo- crates, the heads of the anti-Roman faction. Epicydes did his best to stir up the citizens of Leontini against Rome and the Roman party at Syracuse. Marcellus there- fore struck his first blow at Leontini, which was quickly stormed ; and the tale of the horrors of the sack was at once carried to Syracuse and roused the anger of its population, who could not but sympathize with their near neigh- bours, Greeks like themselves. The general feeling was now against any negotiations with the Roman general, and, put- ting themselves under Epicydes and Hippocrates, they closed their gates on him. Marcellus, after an unsucessful attempt to negotiate, began the siege in regular form (214 B.C.) by both land and sea, establishing a camp on Polichne, where stood the old temple of Olympian Zeus ; but he made his chief assault on the northern side and on the defences of Tyche, particularly at the Hexapylum, the entrance facing Megara and Leontini. His assault sea- wards was made mainly on Achradina, but the city was defended by a numerous soldiery and by what seem to have been still more formidable, the ingenious contrivances of Archimedes, whose engines dealt havoc among the Roman ships, and frustrated the attack on the fortifications on the northern slopes of Epipolae (Liv., xxiv. 34). Marcellus had recourse to a blockade, but Carthaginian vessels from time to time contrived to throw in supplies. At length treachery began to work within. Information was given him in the spring of 212 (two years from the commence- ment of the siege) that the Syracusans were celebrating a great festival to Artemis; making use of this opportunity, he forced the Hexapylum entrance by night and established himself in Tyche and on the heights of Epipolse. The strong fortress of Euryalus held out for a time, but, being now isolated, it soon had to surrender. The " outer " and the "inner city" of Thucydides still held out, whilst a Carthaginian fleet was moored off Achradina and Cartha- ginian troops were encamped on the spot. But a pesti- lence broke out in the autumn of 212, which swept them clean away, and thinned the Roman ranks. The ships sailed away to Carthage ; on their way back to Syracuse with supplies they could not get beyond Cape Pachynus owing to adverse winds, and they were confronted by a Roman fleet. All hope for the city being now at an end, the Syracusans threw themselves on the mercy of Mar- 1 The laws of Hiero are often mentioned with approval in Cicero's speeches against Verres. cellus ; but Achradina and the Island still held out for a brief space under the Syracusan mercenaries, till one of their officers, a Spaniard, betrayed the latter position to the enemy, and at the same time Achradina was carried and taken. Marcellus gave the city up to plunder (Liv., xxv. 31), and the art treasures 2 in w T hich it was so rich many of the choicest of them no doubt were conveyed to Rome. From this time art seems to have become quite fashionable in certain Roman circles. Archimedes perished in the confusion of the sack, while he was calmly pursuing his studies (Liv., xxv. 31). Syracuse was now simply one of the provincial cities of Under Rome's empire, and its history is henceforward merged in Rome - that of Sicily. It retained much of its Greek character and many of its finest public buildings, even after the havoc wrought by Marcellus. Its importance and historic associations naturally marked it out as the residence of the Roman prsetor or governor of Sicily. Cicero often speaks of it as a particularly splendid and beautiful city, as still in his own day the seat of art and culture 3 (Tusc., v. 66 ; De Deor. Nat., iii. 81 ; De Bep. t i. 21), and in his speeches against Verres (iv. 52, 53) he gives an elaborate description of its four quarters (Achradina, Neapolis, Tyche, the Island), or rather the four cities which com- posed it. It seems to have suffered in the civil wars at the hands of Sextus Pompeius, the son of the triumvir, who for a short time was master of Sicily ; to repair the mischief, new settlers were sent by Augustus in 21 B.C., and established in the Island and in the immediately ad- joining part of Achradina (Strabo, vi. 270, ed. Kramer). It is in these districts that the remains of Roman works of amphitheatres and other public buildings are mainly to be traced. We hear nothing of any importance about Syracuse during the period of the empire. It had its own senate and its own magistrates. 4 Caius Caligula restored its decayed walls and some of its famous temples (Sue- tonius, Caius, 21). Tacitus, in a passing mention of it (Ann., xiii. 49), says that permission was granted to the Syracusans under Nero to exceed the prescribed number of gladiators in their shows. Hence the city by that time must have been provided with an amphitheatre. In the 4th century it is named by the poet Ausonius in his Ordo Nobilium Urbium, chiefly, perhaps, on the strength of its historic memories. Modern Syracuse is confined to the island of Ortygia, and is only Modern about 2 miles in circumference. The island is irregularly oval town, in shape, and extends from north to south on the east side of the fine natural harbour, the Porto Grande (Magnus Portus). On the north it is connected with the mainland by a dyke or narrow isthmus, and between the southern extremity and the opposite peninsula of Massolivieri, the ancient Plemmyrium, there is a stretch of 1300 yards, forming the entrance to the harbour. The approach to the town from the mainland is defended by a dilapi- dated citadel of the time of Charles V., and the southern extremity is occupied by a castle named after George Maniaces, the last Byzantine general by whom it was held in the llth century before it fell into the hands of the Saracens. The town is further de- fended by walls with bastions. The streets are in general narrow, and their chief feature consists in their numerous convents with wood en -latticed windows. One tolerably wide and handsome street crosses the island from east to west. Besides the fortifications, the principal objects of interest are the cathedral of Santa Maria delle Colonne (the ancient temple of Minerva), adjoining which is the archiepiscopal residence ; the arch Ecological museum, the finest works preserved in which are a statue of Venus in Parian marble and a colossal head of Zeus ; and the fountain of Arethusa, which still bubbles up as clear and abundant as ever on the west side of the island. Its waters, however, are no longer drinkable, an earth- quake in 1170 having allowed the sea water to become mingled with them. From the neighbourhood of this fountain a favourite promenade extends northwards along the shore of the Porto Grande. Syracuse has been a place of little importance since the year 878. when it was destroyed by the Saracens under Ibrahim ibn Ahmed. 2 Statues and pictures are particularized by Livy, xxv. 40. 3 The poets Theocritus and Moschus were Syracusans. 4 Local self-government, in fact, like most of the Greek cities. XXII. 103