Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/478

 436 HISTORY OF GREECE. articles in the treaty, the express and formal provision that " The Syracusans shall be subject to Dionysius," we discern plainly, that there was also an additional cause for tLis timely overture, so suitable to his interests. There was real ground for those bit- ter complaints against Dionysius, which charged him with having betrayed Gela and Kamarina to the Carthaginians in order to assure his own dominion at Syracuse. The Carthaginians, in renouncing all pretensions to Syracuse and recognizing its auto- nomy, could have no interest in dictating its internal government. If they determined to recognize by formal treaty the sovereignty as vested in Dionysius, we may fairly conclude that he had pur- chased the favor from them by some underhand service previously rendered. In like manner both Hiketas and Agathokles, the latter being the successor, and in so many points the parallel of Dionysius, ninety years afterwards, availed themselves of Car- thaginian support as one stepping-stone to the despotism of Syra- cuse. 1 The pestilence, however, among the Carthaginian army is said to have been so terrible as to destroy nearly the half of their numbers. The remaining half, on returning to Africa, either found it already there, or carried it with them ; for the mortality at and around Carthage was not less deplorable than in Sicily. 2 tial dispersion of the army of Dionysius in its retreat, the struggle with- in the walls of Syracuse. There is nothing in all this to which dionep can refer. But a few lines farther on, after the conditions of peace have been specified, Diodorus alludes to the terrible disease (vnb rf/f voaov) which laid waste the Carthaginian army, as if he had mentioned it before. I find in Niebuhr (Vortrage iiber alte Geschichte, vol. iii, p. 212, 213) the opinion expressed, that here is a gap in Diodorus " intentionally disguised in the MSS., and not yet noticed by any editor." Some such conclusion seems to me unavoidable. Ncibuhr thinks, that in the lost portion of the text, it was stated that Imilkon marched on to Syracuse, formed the siege of the place, and was there visited with the terrific pestilence to which allusion ia made in the remaining portion of the text. This also is nowise improbable ; yet I do not venture to assert it, since the pestilence may possibly have broken out while Imilkon was still at Gela. Niebuhr farther considers, that Dionysius lost the battle of Gela through miserable generalship, that he lost it ty design, as suitable to his political projects, and that by the terms of the subsequent treaty, he held the ter- ritory around Syracuse only under Carthaginian supremacy. 1 Justin, xxii, 2 ; Plutarch, Timo'con, c. 2, 7, 9. 2 Diodor. xiii, 114.