Chapter LXXXIII (3)

In this year we hear of a fresh attack by Dionysius against the Carthaginians. Observing that they had been lately much enfeebled by pestilence and by mutiny of their African subjects, he thought the opportunity favorable for trying to recover what the peace of 383 B. C., had obliged him to relinquish. A false pretence being readily found, he invaded the Carthaginian possessions in the west of Sicily with a large land force of thirty thousand foot, and three thousand horse; together with a fleet of three hundred sail, and store ships in proportion. After ravaging much of the open territory of the Carthaginians, he succeeded in mastering Selinus, Entella, and Eryx—and then laid siege to Lilybæum. This town, close to the western cape of Sicily,[90] appears to have arisen as a substitute for the neighboring town of Motyê (of which we hear little more since its capture by Dionysius in 396 B. C.), and to have become the principal Carthaginian station. He began to attack it by active siege and battering machines. But it was so numerously garrisoned, and so well defended, that he was forced to raise the siege and confine himself to blockade. His fleet kept the harbor guarded, so as to intercept supplies from Africa. Not long afterwards, however, he received intelligence that a fire had taken place in the port of Carthage whereby all her ships had been burnt. Being thus led to conceive that there was no longer any apprehension of naval attack from Carthage, he withdrew his fleet from continuous watch off Lilybæum; keeping one hundred and thirty men-of-war near at hand, in the harbor of Eryx, and sending the remainder home to Syracuse. Of this incautious proceeding the Carthaginians took speedy advantage. The conflagration in their port had been much overstated. There still remained to them two hundred ships of war, which, after being equipped in silence, sailed across in the night to Eryx. Appearing suddenly in the harbor, they attacked the Syracusan fleet completely by surprise; and succeeded, without serious resistance, in capturing and towing off nearly all of them. After so capital an advantage, Lilybæum became open to reinforcement and supplies by sea, so that Dionysius no longer thought it worth while to prosecute the blockade. On the approach of winter, both parties resumed the position which they had occupied before the recent movement.[91]

[90] Diodor. xxii. p. 304.

[91] Diodor. xv. 73; xvi. 5.

The despot had thus gained nothing by again taking up arms, nor were the Sicilian dependencies of the Carthaginians at all cut down below that which they acquired by the treaty of 383 B. C. But he received (about January or February 367 B. C.) news of a different species of success, which gave him hardly less satisfaction than a victory by land or sea. In the Lenæan festival of Athens, one of his tragedies had been rewarded with the first prize. A chorist who had been employed in the performance—eager to convey the first intelligence of this success to Syracuse and to obtain the recompense which would naturally await the messenger—hastened from Athens to Corinth, found a vessel just starting for Syracuse, and reached Syracuse by a straight course with the advantage of favorable winds. He was the first to communicate the news, and received the full reward of his diligence. Dionysius was overjoyed at the distinction conferred upon him; for though on former occasions he had obtained the second or third place in the Athenian competitions, he had never before been adjudged worthy of the first prize. Offering sacrifice to the gods for the good news, he invited his friends to a splendid banquet, wherein he indulged in an unusual measure of conviviality. But the joyous excitement, coupled with the effects of the wine, brought on an attack of fever, of which he shortly afterwards died, after a reign of thirty-eight years.[92]

[92] Diodor. xv. 74.

Thirty-eight years, of a career so full of effort, adventure, and danger, as that of Dionysius, must have left a constitution sufficiently exhausted to give way easily before acute disease. Throughout this long period he had never spared himself. He was a man of restless energy and activity, bodily as well as mental; always personally at the head of his troops in war—keeping a vigilant eye and a decisive hand upon all the details of his government at home—yet employing spare time (which Philip of Macedon was surprised that he could find[93]) in composing tragedies of his own, to compete for prizes fairly adjudged. His personal bravery was conspicuous, and he was twice severely wounded in leading his soldiers to assault. His effective skill as an ambitious politician—his military resource as a commander—and the long-sighted care with which he provided implements of offence as well as of defence before undertaking war,—are remarkable features in his character. The Roman Scipio Africanus was wont to single out Dionysius and Agathokles (the history of the latter begins about fifty years after the death of the former), both of them despots of Syracuse, as the two Greeks of greatest ability for action known to him—men who combined, in the most memorable degree, daring with sagacity.[94] This criticism, coming from an excellent judge, is borne out by the biography of both, so far as it comes to our knowledge. No other Greek can be pointed out, who, starting from a position humble and unpromising, raised himself to so lofty a pinnacle of dominion at home, achieved such striking military exploits abroad, and preserved his grandeur unimpaired throughout the whole of a long life. Dionysius boasted that he bequeathed to his son an empire fastened by adamantine chains;[95] so powerful was his mercenary force—so firm his position in Ortygia—so completely had the Syracusans been broken into subjection. There cannot be a better test of vigor and ability than the unexampled success with which Dionysius and Agathokles played the game of the despot, and to a certain extent that of the conqueror. Of the two, Dionysius was the most favored by fortune. Both indeed profited by one auxiliary accident, which distinguished Syracuse from other Grecian cities; the local speciality of Ortygia. That islet seemed expressly made to be garrisoned as a separate fortress,—apart from, as well as against, the rest of Syracuse,—having full command of the harbor, docks, naval force, and naval approach. But Dionysius had, besides, several peculiar interventions of the gods in his favor, sometimes at the most critical moments: such was the interpretation put by his enemies (and doubtless by his friends also) upon those repeated pestilences which smote the Carthaginian armies with a force far more deadly than the spear of the Syracusan hoplite. On four or five distinct occasions, during the life of Dionysius, we read of this unseen foe as destroying the Carthaginians both in Sicily and in Africa, but leaving the Syracusans untouched. Twice did it arrest the progress of Imilkon, when in the full career of victory; once, after the capture of Gela and Kamarina—a second time, when, after his great naval victory off Katana, he had brought his numerous host under the walls of Syracuse, and was actually master of the open suburb of Achradina. On both these occasions the pestilence made a complete revolution in the face of the war; exalting Dionysius from impending ruin, to assured safety in the one, and to unmeasured triumph in the other. We are bound to allow for this good fortune (the like of which never befel Agathokles), when we contemplate the long prosperity of Dionysius[96], and when we adopt, as in justice we must, the panegyric of Scipio Africanus.

[93] Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 15.

[94] Polyb. xv. 35. Διὸ καὶ Πόπλιον Σκιπίωνά φασι, τὸν πρῶτον
καταπολεμήσαντα Καρχηδονίους, ἐρωτηθέντα, τίνας ὑπολαμβάνει
πραγματικωτάτους ἄνδρας γεγονέναι καὶ σὺν νῷ τολμηροτάτους,
εἰπεῖν, τοὺς περὶ Ἀγαθοκλέα καὶ Διονύσιον τοὺς Σικελιώτας.

[95] Plutarch, Dion, c. 7.

[96] The example of Dionysius—his long career of success and
quiet death—is among those cited by Cotta in Cicero (De Nat.
Deor. iii. 33, 81, 85) to refute the doctrine of Balbus, as to
the providence of the gods and their moral government over human
affairs.

The preceding chapter has detailed the means whereby Dionysius attained his prize, and kept it: those employed by Agathokles—analogous in spirit but of still darker coloring in the details—will appear hereafter. That Hermokrates—who had filled with credit the highest offices in the state and whom men had acquired the habit of following—should aspire to become despot, was no unusual phenomenon in Grecian politics; but that Dionysius should aim at mounting the same ladder, seemed absurd or even insane—to use the phrase of Isokrates.[97] If, then, in spite of such disadvantage he succeeded in fastening round his countrymen, accustomed to a free constitution as their birth-right, those “adamantine chains” which they were well known to abhor—we may be sure that his plan of proceeding must have been dexterously chosen, and prosecuted with consummate perseverance and audacity; but we may be also sure that it was nefarious in the extreme. The machinery of fraud whereby the people were to be cheated into a temporary submission, as a prelude to the machinery of force whereby such submission was to be perpetuated against their consent—was the stock in trade of Grecian usurpers. But seldom does it appear prefaced by more impudent calumnies, or worked out with a larger measure of violence and spoliation, than in the case of Dionysius. He was indeed powerfully seconded at the outset by the danger of Syracuse from the Carthaginian arms. But his scheme of usurpation, far from diminishing such danger, tended materially to increase it, by disuniting the city at so critical a moment. Dionysius achieved nothing in his first enterprise for the relief of Gela and Kamarina. He was forced to retire with as much disgrace as those previous generals whom he had so bitterly vituperated; and apparently even with greater disgrace—since there are strong grounds for believing that he entered into traitorous collusion with the Carthaginians. The salvation of Syracuse, at that moment of peril, arose not from the energy or ability of Dionysius, but from the opportune epidemic which disabled Imilkon in the midst of a victorious career.

[97] Isokratês, Or. v. (Philipp.) s. 73. Διονύσιος ... ἐπιθυμήσας
μοναρχίας ~ἀλόγως καὶ μανικῶς~, καὶ τολμήσας ἅπαντα πράττειν τὰ
φέροντα πρὸς τὴν δύναμιν ταύτην, etc.

Dionysius had not only talents to organize, and boldness to make good, a despotism more formidable than anything known to contemporary Greeks, but also systematic prudence to keep it unimpaired for thirty-eight years. He maintained carefully those two precautions which Thucydides specifies as the causes of permanence to the Athenian Hippias, under similar circumstances—intimidation over the citizens, and careful organization, with liberal pay among his mercenaries.[98] He was temperate in indulgencies; never led by any of his appetites into the commission of violence.[99] This abstinence contributed materially to prolong his life, since many a Grecian despot perished through desperate feelings of individual vengeance provoked by his outrages. With Dionysius, all other appetites were merged in the love of dominion, at home and abroad; and of money as a means of dominion. To the service of this master-passion all his energies were devoted, together with those vast military resources which an unscrupulous ability served both to accumulate and to recruit. How his treasury was supplied, with the large exigencies continually pressing upon it, we are but little informed. We know however that his exactions from the Syracusans were exorbitant;[100] that he did not hesitate to strip the holiest temples; and that he left behind him a great reputation for ingenious tricks in extracting money from his subjects.[101] Besides the large garrison of foreign mercenaries by whom his orders were enforced, he maintained a regular body of spies, seemingly of both sexes, disseminated among the body of the citizens.[102] The vast quarry-prison of Syracuse was his work.[103] Both the vague general picture, and the fragmentary details which come before us, of his conduct towards the Syracusans, present to us nothing but an oppressive and extortionate tyrant, by whose fiat numberless victims perished; more than ten thousand according to the general language of Plutarch.[104] He enriched largely his younger brothers and auxiliaries; among which latter, Hipparinus stood prominent, thus recovering a fortune equal to or larger than that which his profligacy had dissipated.[105] But we hear also of acts of Dionysius, indicating a jealous and cruel temper, even towards near relatives. And it appears certain that he trusted no one, not even them;[106] that though in the field he was a perfectly brave man, yet his suspicion and timorous anxiety as to every one who approached his person, were carried to the most tormenting excess, and extended even to his wives, his brothers, his daughters. Afraid to admit any one with a razor near to his face, he is said to have singed his own beard with a burning coal. Both his brother and his son were searched for concealed weapons, and even forced to change their clothes in the presence of his guards, before they were permitted to see him. An officer of the guards named Marsyas, having dreamt that he was assassinating Dionysius, was put to death for this dream, as proving that his waking thoughts must have been dwelling upon such a project. And it has already been mentioned that Dionysius put to death the mother of one of his wives, on suspicion that she had by incantations brought about the barrenness of the other—as well as the sons of a Lokrian citizen named Aristeides, who had refused, with indignant expressions, to grant to him his daughter in marriage.[107]

[98] Thucyd. vi. 55. ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὸ πρότερον ξύνηθες, τοῖς μὲν
πολίταις φοβερὸν, τοῖς δὲ ἐπικούροις ἀκριβὲς, πολλῷ τῷ περιόντι
τοῦ ἀσφαλοῦς ἐκράτησε (Hippias).

On the liberality of the elder Dionysius to his mercenaries, see
an allusion in Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 348 A.

The extension and improvement of engines for warlike purposes,
under Dionysius, was noticed as a sort of epoch (Athenæus, De
Machinis ap. Mathemat. Veteres, ed. Paris, p. 3).

[99] Cornelius Nepos, De Regibus, c. 2. “Dionysius prior, et
manu fortis, et belli peritus fuit, et, id quod in tyranno non
facile reperitur, minime libidinosus, non luxuriosus, non avarus,
nullius rei denique cupidus, nisi singularis perpetuique imperii,
ob eamque rem crudelis. Nam dum id studuit munire, nullius
pepercit vitæ, quem ejus insidiatorem putaret.” To the same
purpose Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 20.

[100] Aristotel. Politic. v. 9, 5.

[101] Pseudo-Aristotel. Œconomic. ii. c. 21, 42; Cicero, De Nat.
Deorum, iii. 34, 83, 84; Valerius Maxim. i. 1.

[102] Plutarch, Dion, c. 28; Plutarch, De Curiositate, p.
523 A; Aristotel. Politic. v. 9, 3. The titles of these
spies—αἱ ποταγωγίδες καλούμεναι—as we read in Aristotle; or οἱ
ποταγωγεῖς—as we find in Plutarch—may perhaps both be correct.

[103] Cicero in Verrem, v. 55, 143.

[104] Plutarch, De Fortunâ Alexandr. Magni, p. 338 B. What were
the crimes of Dionysius which Pausanias had read and describes by
the general words Διονυσίου τὰ ἀνοσιώτατα—and which he accuses
Philistus of having intentionally omitted in his history—we
cannot now tell (Pausan. i. 13, 2: compare Plutarch, Dion, c.
36). An author named Amyntianus, contemporary with Pausanias, and
among those perused by Photius (Codex 131), had composed parallel
lives of Dionysius and the Emperor Domitian.

[105] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 332 A; Aristotel. Politic. v. 5, 6.

[106] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 332 D. Διονύσιος δὲ εἰς μίαν πόλιν
ἀθροίσας πᾶσαν Σικελίαν ὑπὸ σοφίας, ~πιστεύων οὐδενὶ, μόγις
ἐσώθη~, etc.

This brief, but significant expression of Plato, attests the
excessive mistrust which haunted Dionysius, as a general fact;
which is illustrated by the anecdotes of Cicero, Tuscul. Disput.
v. 20, 23; and De Officiis, ii. 7; Plutarch, Dion, c. 9; Diodor.
xiv. 2.

The well-known anecdote of Damoklês, and the sword which
Dionysius caused to be suspended over his head by a horsehair, in
the midst of the enjoyments of the banquet, as an illustration
how little was the value of grandeur in the midst of terror—is
recounted by Cicero.

[107] Plutarch, Dion, c. 3; Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 6.

Such were the conditions of existence—perpetual mistrust, danger even from the nearest kindred, enmity both to and from every dignified freeman, and reliance only on armed barbarians or liberated slaves—which beset almost every Grecian despot, and from which the greatest despot of his age enjoyed no exemption. Though philosophers emphatically insisted that such a man must be miserable,[108] yet Dionysius himself, as well as the great mass of admiring spectators, would probably feel that the necessities of his position were more than compensated by its awe-striking grandeur, and by the full satisfaction of ambitious dreams, subject indeed to poignant suffering when wounded in the tender point, and when reaping insult in place of admiration, at the memorable Olympic festival of 384 B. C., above-described. But the Syracusans, over whom he ruled, enjoyed no such compensation for that which they suffered from his tax-gatherers—from his garrison of Gauls, Iberians, and Campanians, in Ortygia—from his spies—his prison—and his executioners.

[108] This sentiment, pronounced by Plato, Isokratês, Cicero,
Seneca, Plutarch, etc., is nowhere so forcibly laid out as in the
dialogue of Xenophon called _Hiero_—of which indeed it forms the
text and theme. Whoever reads this picture of the position of a
Grecian τύραννος, will see that it was scarcely possible for a
man so placed to be other than a cruel and oppressive ruler.

Nor did Syracuse suffer alone. The reign of the elder Dionysius was desolating for the Hellenic population generally, both of Sicily and Italy. Syracuse became a great fortress, with vast military power in the hands of its governor, “whose policy[109] it was to pack all Sicily into it;” while the remaining free Hellenic communities were degraded, enslaved, and half depopulated. On this topic, the mournful testimonies already cited from Lysias and Isokrates, are borne out by the letters of the eye-witness Plato. In his advice, given to the son and successor of Dionysius, Plato emphatically presses upon him two points: first, as to the Syracusans, to transform his inherited oppressive despotism into the rule of a king, governing gently and by fixed laws; next, to reconstitute and repeople, under free constitutions, the other Hellenic communities in Sicily, which at his accession had become nearly barbarised and half deserted.[110] The elder Dionysius had imported into Sicily large bodies of mercenaries, by means of whom 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 Messênê, the previous residents had been dispossessed and others substituted, out of Gallic and Iberian mercenaries. 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 gaining ground and pressing hard upon the Italiot Greeks on the coast.

[109] See the citation from Plato, in a note immediately
preceding.

[110] Plato, Epistol. iii. p. 315 E. (to the younger Dionysius).
Φασὶ δ᾽ οὐκ ὀλίγοι λέγειν σε πρός τινας τῶν παρά σε πρεσβευόντων,
ὡς ἄρα σοῦ ποτὲ λέγοντος ἀκούσας ἐγὼ μέλλοντος ~τάς τε Ἑλληνίδας
πόλεις ἐν Σικελίᾳ οἰκίζειν, καὶ Συρακουσίους ἐπικουφίσαι~, τὴν
ἀρχὴν ἀντὶ τυραννίδος εἰς βασιλείαν μεταστήσαντα, ταῦτ᾽ ἄρα
σὲ μέν τοτε διεκώλυσα, σοῦ σφόδρα προθυμουμένου, νῦν δὲ Δίωνα
διδάσκοιμι δρᾷν αὐτὰ ταῦτα, καὶ τοῖς διανοήμασι τοῖς σοῖς τὴν σὴν
ἀρχὴν ἀφαιρούμεθά σε.

Ibid. p. 319 C. Μή με διάβαλλε λέγων, ὡς οὐκ εἴων σε πόλεις
Ἑλληνίδας ἐῤῥούσας ὑπὸ βαρβάρων οἰκίζειν, οὐδὲ Συρακουσίους
ἐπικουφίσαι ... ~ὡς ἐγὼ μὲν ἐκέλευον, σὺ δ᾽ οὐκ ἤθελες πράττειν
αὐτά~.

Again, see Epistol. vii. p. 331 F. 332 B. 334 D. 336 A.-D.—and
the brief notice given by Photius (Codex, 93) of the lost
historical works of Arrian, respecting Dion and Timoleon.

Epistol. viii. p. 357 A. (What Dion intended to do, had he not
been prevented by death)—Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα Σικελίαν ἂν τὴν ἄλλην
κατῴκισα, ~τοὺς μὲν βαρβάρους ἣν νῦν ἔχουσιν ἀφελόμενος, ὅσοι
μὴ ὑπὲρ τῆς κοινῆς ἐλευθερίας διεπολέμησαν πρὸς τὴν τυραννίδα,
τοὺς δ᾽ ἔμπροσθεν οἰκητὰς τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν τόπων εἰς τὰς ἀρχαίας καὶ
πατρῴας οἰκήσεις κατοικίσας~. Compare Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 2.
αἱ δὲ πλεῖσται πόλεις ὑπὸ βαρβάρων μιγάδων καὶ στρατιωτῶν ἀμίσθων
κατείχοντο.

The βάρβαροι 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 Campanian and other mercenaries provided for by the elder
Dionysius on the lands of the extruded Greeks. These men would
have the strongest interest 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 such of them as would act
upon the side of freedom.

If we examine the results of the warfare carried on by Dionysius 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 remarked 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, Agrigentum, 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 second time, to nothing but the terrific pestilence which destroyed the army of Imilkon. A third time, in 383 B. C., Dionysius gratuitously renewed the war against Carthage. After brilliant success at first, he was again totally defeated, and forced to cede to Carthage all the territory west of the river Halykus, besides paying a tribute. So that the exact difference between the Sicilian territory of Carthage—as it stood at the beginning of his command and at the end of his reign—amounts to this: that at the earlier period it reached to the river Himera—at the later period only to the river Halykus. The intermediate space between the two comprehends Agrigentum with the greater part of its territory; which represents therefore the extent of Hellenic soil rescued by Dionysius from Carthaginian dominion.