Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/238

 214 mSTOEY OP GREECE. probably unable to resist their political opponents when backed by such powerful foreign aid, surrendered to him without strik- ing a blow.i But instead of restoring the place to the previous olio-archy, Gelo appropriated it to himself, and left Gela to be governed by his brother Hiero. He greatly enlarged the city of Syracuse, and strengthened its fortifications : probably it was he Tvho first carried it beyond the islet of Ortygia, so as to include a larger space of the adjacent mainland (or rather island of Sicily) which bore the name of Achradina. To people this enlarged space, he brought all the residents in Kamarina, which town he dismantled, — and more than half of those in Gela ; which was thus reduced in importance, while Syracuse became the first city in Sicily, and even received fresh addition of inhabitants from ' Herodot. vii, 155. 'O yap drjfioQ b Tuv 'ZvpaKovciuv emovrt Ti?.iJi>c vapadiSoI t/jv tto^uv koI iuiJTov. Aristotle (Politic, v, 2, 6) alludes to the Syracusan democracy prior to the despotism of Gelo as a case of democracy ruined by its own lawless* ness and disorder. But such can hardly have been the fact, if the narrative of Herodotus is to be tnisted. The expulsion of the Gamori was not an act of lawless democracy, but the rising of free subjects and slaves against a governing oligarchy. After the Gamori were expelled, there was no time for the democracy to constitute itself, or to show in what degree it possessed capacity for government, since the narrative of Herodotus indicates that the restoration by Gelo followed closely upon the expulsion. And the su- perior force, which Gelo brought to the aid of the expelled Gamori, is quite sufficient to explain the submission of the Syracusan people, had they been ever so well administered. Perhaps Aristotle may have had before him reports different from those of Herodotus : unless, indeed, we might venture to suspect that the name of GeJo appears in Aristotle by lapse of memory in place of that of Dionysius. It is highly probable that the partial disorder into which the Syracusan democracy had fallen immediately before the des potism of Dionysius, was one of the main circumstances which enabled him to acquire thp supreme power; but a similar assertion can hardly be made applicable to the early times preceding Gelo, in which, indeed, democracy was only just beginning in Greece. The confusion often made by hasty historians between the names of Gelo and Dionysius, is severely commented on by Dionysius of Halikar- nassus (Antiq. Roman, vii, l,p. 1314) : the latter, however, in his own state- ment respecting Gelo, is not altogether free from error, since he describes Hjppokrates as brother of Gelo. We must accept the supposition of Larcher, that Pausanias (vi, 9, 2), while professing to give the date of Gelo's occupa- tion of Syracuse, has really given the date of Gelo's occupation of Gela, (see M. Pynes Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ad ann. 491 B.C.)