Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/286

256 Carthaginians in Sicily; and in B.C. 217, after the first disasters in the Second Punic War, Naples, Paestum, and Syracuse were foremost in the offers of help and encouragement to Rome. But the Italian campaigns of Hannibal were fatal to most of them, and in the next century all but Tarentum, Naples, and Rhegium lost not only material prosperity, but almost all traces of Hellenic life.

In Sicily that life lasted longer. The Greek cities there (about twenty) had from early times to contend with the encroaching power of the Carthaginians as well as with mutual jealousies and quarrels. They had, however, enjoyed a considerable period of prosperity. Letters and art had flourished; stately temples and other public buildings had attracted universal admiration, and the fertility of the soil gained them wealth and luxury. The most powerful of the cities were Agrigentum and Syracuse. But it was the latter which was the chief champion of freedom against the Carthaginians, and after the victory of its tyrant Gelo over them in B.C. 480 the Greek cities enjoyed about seventy years' immunity from this danger. After the destruction of the Athenian armament in B.C. 413 Syracusan ships had even been sent eastward to co-operate with the Spartans, as though Syracuse were now one of the great Hellenic powers. But after the Carthaginian invasions of B.C. 409-6, under the usual pretext of assisting one city against another, Agrigentum suffered so severely as to cease for many years to be of any importance. Henceforth the hegemony belonged to Syracuse without dispute. In Syracuse,