Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/235

 SICILIAN AFF^.(1?S.-GEL0 AND HIS DYNASTY. 211 Gelo thus belonged to an ancient and distinguished hierophan- tic family at Gela, being the eldest of four brothers, sons of Deinomenes, — Gelo, Hiero, Polyzelus, and Thrasybulus : and he further ennobled himself by such personal exploits in the army of the despot Hippokrates as to be promoted to the supreme command of the cavalry. It was greatly to his activity that the despot owed a succession of victories and conquests, in which the Ionic or Chalkidic cities of Kallipolis, Naxos, Leontini, and Zankle, were successively reduced to dependence.^ The fate of Zankle, — seemingly held by its despot Skythes, in a state of dependent alliance under Hippokrates, and in stand- ing feud with Anaxilaus of Rhegium, on the opposite side of the strait of Messina, — was remarkable. At the time when the Ionic revolt in Asia was suppressed, and Miletus reconquered by the Persians (b.c. 494—493), a natural sympathy was manifested by the Ionic Greeks in Sicily towards the sufferers of the same race on the east of the xEgean sea. Projects were devised for assisting the Asiatic refugee? to a new abode, and the Zanklteans especially, invited them to form a new Pan-Ionic colony upon the teiTitory of the Sikels, called Kale Akte, on the north coast of Sicily, — a coast presenting fertile and attractive situations, and along the whole line of which there was only one Grecian colony, — flimera. This invitation was accepted by the refugees from Samos and Miletus, who accordingly put themselves on shipboard for Zankle ; steering, as was usual, along the coast of Akarnania to Korkyra, from thence across to Tarentum, and along the Ital- ian coast to the strait of Messina. It happened that when they reached the town of Epizephyrian Lokri, Skythes, the despot of Zankle, was absent from his city, together with the larger portion of his military force, on an expedition against the Sikels, — perhaps undertaken to facilitate the contemplated colony at Kale Akte : and his enemy the Rhegian Anaxilaus, taking advantage of this accident, proposed to the refugees at Lokri that they should seize for themselves, and retain, the unguarded city of Zankle. They followed his suggestion, and possessed themselves of the what immense and wide-spread effect upon the human mind may he pi'O' duced, even in the nineteenth century, by Upu deiKvvfxeva. ' Herodot. vii, 134,