Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/254

 230 HISTORY OF GREECE. mean games, when their chariots gained victories ; on which occasion the assembled crowd heard for the first time of the new Hellenic city of -Sltna. We see, by the compliments of Pindar,i that Hiero was vain of his new title as founder ; but we must remark that it was procured, not, as in most cases, by planting Greeks on a spot previously barbarous, but by the dispossession and impoverishment of other Grecian citizens, who seem to have given no ground of offence. Both in Gelo and Hiero we see the first exhibition of that propensity to violent and wholesale trans- plantation of inhabitants from one seat to another, which was not uncommon among Assyrian and Persian despots, and which was exhibited on a still larger scale by the successors of Alexander the Great in their numerous new-built cities. Anaxilaus of Rhegium died shortly after that message of Hiero which had compelled him to spare the Lokrians ; but such was the esteem entertained for his memory, and so efficient the government of Mikythus, a manumitted slave whom he consti- tuted regent, that Rhegium and Messene were preserved for his children, yet minors.2 But a still more important change in Sicily was caused by the death of the Agrigentine Thero, which took place, seemingly, about 472 B.C. This prince, a partner with Gelo in the great victory over the Carthaginians, left a reputation of good government as well as ability among the Agrigentines, which we find perpetuated in the laureate strains of Pindar, — and his memory doubtless became still farther endeared from comparison with his son and successor. Thrasy- doeus, now master both of Himera and Agrigentum, displayed on a larger scale the same oppressive and sanguinary dispositions which had before provoked rebellion at the former city. Feeling himself detested by his subjects, he enlarged the military force which had been left by his father, and engaged so many new mercenaries, that he became master of a force of twenty thou- sand men, hors^ and foot. And in his own territory, perhaps, he might long have trodden with impunity in the footsteps of Phal- ' Pindar. Pyth. i, 60 (= 117) ; iii, 69 (= 121). Pindar, ap. Strabo. vi, p. 269. Compare Nemea, ix, 1-30, addressed to Chromius. Hiero is pro- claimed in some odes as a Syracusan ; but Syracuse and the newly-founded ^tna are intimately joined together: see Nemea, i, init. ^ Justin, iv, 2.