Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/79

 CHARACTER OF D10NYSIUS. 03 into Sicily laige bodies of mercenaries, by means of whrru he had gained his conquests, and for whom he had provided settlements at the cost of the subdued Hellenic cities. In Naxos, Katana, Leontini, and Mess<jne, the previous residents had been dispos- sessed and others substituted, out of Gallic and Iberian mercen- aries. Communities thus transformed, with their former free citizens degraded into dependence or exile, not only ceased to be purely Hellenic, but also became far less populous and flourishing. In like manner Dionysius had suppressed, and absorbed into Syracuse and Lokri, the once autonomous Grecian communities of Rhegium, Hipponium, and Kaulonia, on the Italian side of the strait. In the inland regions of Italy, he had allied himself with the barbarous Lucanians ; who, even without his aid, were gain- ing ground and pressing hard upon the Italiot Greeks on the coast. If we examine the results of the warfare carried on by Diony- sius against the Carthaginians, from the commencement to the end of his career, we shall observe, that he began by losing Gela and Kamarina, and that the peace by which he was enabled to preserve Syracuse itself, arose, not from any success of his own, but from the pestilence which ruined his enemies ; to say nothing about traitorous collusion with them, which I have already re- marked to have been the probable price of their guarantee to his dominion. His war against the Carthaginians in 397 B. c., was undertaken with much vigor, recovered Gela, Kamarina, Agri- gentum, and Selinus, and promised the most decisive success. But presently again the tide of fortune turned against him. He sustained capital defeats, and owed the safety of Syracuse, a sec- ond time, to nothing but the terrific pestilence which destroyed the army of Imilkon. A third time, in 383 B. c., Dionysius gratui- Thc /3d/)/3apot to whom Plato alludes in this last passage, are not the Carthaginians (none of whom could be expected to come in and fight for the purpose of putting down the despotism at Syracuse), but the Campa- nian and other mercenaries provided for by the elder Dionysius on the lands of the extruded Greeks. These men would have the strongest inter- est in upholding the despotism, if the maintenance of their own properties was connected with it. Dion thought it prudent to conciliate this powerful force by promising confirmation of their properties to sncb of them as would act upon the side of freedom. 5*