Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/481

 STRONGHOLD IN ORTYGIA. 459 erected a distinct citadel or acropolis within the islet and behind the new wall. The citadel was close to the Losser Harbor or Portus Lakkius. Its walls were so extended as to embrace the whole of this harbor, closing it up in such a way as to admit only one ship at a time, though there was room for sixty ships within. He was thus provided with an almost impregnable stronghold, not only securing him against attack from the more numerous popula lion in the outer city, but enabling him to attack them whenever he chose, and making him master, at the same time, of the grand means of war and defence against foreign enemies. To provide a fortress in the islet of Ortygia, was one step towards perpetual dominion at Syracuse ; to fill it with devoted ad- herents, was another. For Dionysius, the instruments of domin- ion were his mercenary troops and body-guards ; men chosen by himself from their aptitude to his views, identified with him in interest, and consisting in large proportion not merely of foreign- ers, but even of liberated slaves. To these men he now pro- ceeded to assign a permanent support and residence. He distri- buted among them the houses in the islet or inferior stronghold, expelling the previous proprietors, and permitting no one to reside there except his own intimate partisans and soldiers. Their quar- ters were in the islet, while he dwelt in the citadel, a fortress within a fortress, sheltering his own person against the very garri- son or standing army, by means of which he kept Syracuse in subjection. 1 Having provided houses for his soldiers, by extrud- ing the residents in Ortygia, he proceeded to assign to them a comfortable maintenance, by the like wholesale dispossession of proprietors, and reappropriation of lands, without. He distrib- uted anew the entire Syracusan territory; reserving the best lands, and the best shares, for his own friends and for the officers in command of his mercenaries, and apportioning the remain- ing territory in equal shares to all the inhabitants, citizens as well as non-citizens. By this distribution the latter became hencefor- ward citizens as well as the former ; so far at least, as any man 1 Diodor. xiv, 7. The residence of Dionysius in the acropolis, and the quarters of his mer- cenaries without the acropolis, but still within Ortygia, are noticed in Plato's account of his visit to the younger Dionysius (Plato, Epistol. vii, p 350; Epist. iii, p. 315).