Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/474

 452 HISTORY OF GREECE. hated at once as a despot and as a traitor, the Syracusan horsemen watched for an opportunity of setting upon Dionysius during the retreat, and killing him. But finding him too carefully guarded by the mercenaries who always surrounded his person, they went off in a body, and rode at their best speed to Syracuse, with the full purpose of reestablishing the freedom of the city, and keeping out Dionysius. As they arrived before any tidings had been received of the defeat and flight at Gela, they obtained admission without impediment into the islet of Ortygia ; the primitive interior city, commanding the docks and harbor, set apart by the despot for his own residence and power. They immediately assaulted and plun- dered the house of Dionysius, which they found richly stocked with gold, silver, and valuables of every kind. He had been despot but a few weeks ; so that he must have begun betimes to despoil others, since it seems ascertained that his own private property was by no means large. The assailants not only plundered his house with all its interior wealth, but also maltreated his wife so brutally that she afterwards died of the outrage. 1 Against this unfortunate woman they probably cherished a double antipathy, not only as the wife of Dionysius, but also as the daughter of Hermokrates. They at the same time spread abroad the news that Dionysius had fled never to return ; for they fully confided in the disruption which they had witnessed among the retiring army, and in the fierce wrath which they had heard universally expressed against him. 3 After having betrayed his army, together with Gela and Kamari- na, to the Carthaginians, by a flight without any real ground of necessity (they asserted), he had been exposed, disgraced, and forced to flee in reality, before the just displeasure of his own awakened fellow-citizens. Syracuse was now free ; and might, on the morrow, reconstitute formally her popular government. Had these Syracusans taken any reasonable precautions against adverse possibilities, their assurances would probably have proved correct. The career of Dionysius would here have ended. But Avhile they abandoned themselves to the plunder of his house and brutal outrage against his wife, they were so rashly confident in hw r-upposed irretrievable ruin, and in their own mastery of the insu- lar portion of the city, that they neglected to guard the gate cf 1 Diodor. xiii, 112 ; xiv, 44. Plutarch, Dion. c. 3.
 * Diodor. xiii, 112.