Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/29

 DISCONTENT OF THE MERCENARIES. 5 manage. But they do not explain to us the full cause of such discord. We know that a short time before, Dionjsius had rid himself of one thousand obnoxious mercenaries by treacherously betraying them to death in a battle with the Carthaginians, Moreover, he would hardly have seized the person of Aristoteles, and sent him away for trial, if the latter had done nothing more than demand pay really due to his soldiers. It seems probable that the discontent of the mercenaries rested upon deeper causes, perhaps connected with that movement in the Syracusan mind against Dionysius, manifested openly in the invective of Theodo rus. We should have been glad also to know how Dionysius proposed to pay the new mercenaries, if he had no means of pay ing the old. The cost of maintaining his standing army, upon whomsoever it fell, must have been burdensome in the extreme. What became of the previous residents and proprietors at Leon- tini, who must have been dispossessed when this much-coveted site was transferred to the mercenaries? On all these points we Rre unfortunately left in ignorance. Dionysius now set forth towards the north of Sicily to reestab- lish Messene ; while those other Sicilians, who had been expelled from their abodes by the Carthaginians, got together and returned. In reconstituting Messene after its demolition by Imilkon, he ob- tained the means of planting there a population altogether in his interests, suitable to the aggressive designs which he was already contemplating against llhegium and the other Italian Greeks. He established in it one thousand Lokrians, four thousand per- sons from another city the name of which we cannot certainly make out, 1 and six hundred of the Peloponnesian Messenians. These latter had been expelled by Sparta from Zakynthus and 1 Diodor. xiv. 78. &tovv<?io<; 6' elf Meffov/vj/v KaruKiac t/U'otf fiev AOK- poi)f, TerpaKiaxi?iiovf <5e Merft^ vai ovf, igaKoaiovf 6e TUV EK. TL&onovvfj* GOV MeaffT/vujv, IK re Zattiivdov KOL Nat>~d/c~ot> tyevyovruv. The Medimnscans are completely unknown. Cluverius and "Wesseling conjecture Medmceans, from Medmae or Medamse, noticed by Strabo as a town in the south of Italy. But this supposition cannot be adopted as cer- tain ; especially as the total of persons named is so large. The conjecture of Palmerius Mr/tivfivaiovc has still less to recommend it. 'Jee the note of Wesseling.