Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/45

 SIEGE OF RIIEGIUM. 1ft itssaults, Dionysius himself was seriously wounded by a speur thrust in the groin, from which he was long in recovering. He was at length obliged to convert the siege into a blockade, and to rely upon famine alone for subduing these valiant citizens. For eleven months did the Rhegines hold out, against the pressure of want gradually increasing, and at last terminating in the agony and destruction of famine. We are told that a medimnus of wheat came to be sold for the enormous price of five minaa ; at the rate of about 14 sterling per bushel: every horse and every beast of burthen was consumed : at length hides were boiled and eaten, and even the grass on parts of the wall. Many perished from absolute hunger, while the survivors lost all strength and en- ergy. In this intolerable condition, they were constrained, at the end of near eleven months, to surrender at discretion. So numerous were these victims of famine, that Dionysius, on entering Rhegium, found heaps of unburied corpses, besides six thousand citizens in the last stage of emaciation. All these cap- tives were sent to Syracuse, where those wlifrcould provide a mina (about 3 17s.) were allowed to ransom themselves, while the rest were sold as slaves. After such a period of suffering, the number of those who retained the means of ransom was probably very small. But the Rhegine general, Phyton, was detained with fill his kindred, and reserved for a different fate. First, his son ivas drowned, by order of Dionysius : next, Phyton himself was thained to one of the loftiest siege-machines, as a spectacle to the whole army. While he was thus exhibited to scorn, a messenger was sent to apprise him, that Dionysius had just caused his son to oe drowned. " He is more fortunate than his father by one day," was the reply of Phyton. After a certain time, the sufferer was taken down from his pillory, and led round the city, with atten- dants scourging and insulting him at every step ; while a herald proclaimed aloud, " Behold the man who persuaded the Rhegines to war, thus signally punished by Dionysius ! " Phyton, enduring all these torments with heroic courage and dignified silence, waa provoked to exclaim in reply to the herald, that the punishment was inflicted because he had refused to betray the city to Diony- sius, who would himself soon be overtaken by the divine ven- geance. At length the prolonged outrages, combined with the noble demeanor and high reputation of the victim, excited coin-