DIONYSIUS OF SYRACUSE
II. RISE OF DIONYSIUS. 405 BC.
Sicily was now in great peril; it looked as if the whole island might be enslaved by the Carthaginian invader. For the fall of Acragas the Syracusan generals were widely blamed; whether incompetent or corrupt they were not the men to deal with a great crisis.
But a deliverer arose, a friend of Hermocrates who had been left for dead in the last fight in the agora, who realized that this was a good opportunity to destroy the already weakened democracy of Syracuse. His name was Dionysius, and he made a speech in the Assembly so violent that he had to be fined, but he would not be silenced and carried his point, through the generosity of his friend Philistus, the historian, who promised to pay each fine as it was imposed. New generals were appointed of whom Dionysius was one. This was his first step to supreme power; he then worked against his colleagues spreading suspicions of their loyalty. He was elected sole general with unlimited powers - strategos autocrator. This was the second step towards tyranny. His next move was to march the Syracusan army to Leontini. The day after his arrival there, a rumour was spread abroad that he had been compelled to seek sanctuary in the Acropolis on account of an attempt on his life, and the citizens of Syracuse gave him a bodyguard of 600 soldiers. Dionysius thus attained the supreme power. He did not attempt to change the constitution; the Assembly still met.
Dionysius was one of those Greek politicians of the same order as Peisistratus and Themistocles, who had been prefigured in early Greek legend by Odysseus, the man of crafty counsels; never at a loss to find a way out of difficulties, far-seeing and extraordinarily astute, gaining his ends by tortuous paths. He was to become the most remarkable statesman in the Greek world of his day, and having secured the firm mastery of Syracuse he was to rule nearly the whole of Sicily and ultimately he was to create an Empire northwards into Italy, wielding a power not only such as no Sicilian potentate had ever wielded before, but so large and formidable that Greeks compared his position in Western Europe with that of the Persian King in the East.
The real reason of the rise of Dionysius to power was the crying need of a competent general to oppose Carthage, but at this time, although he was destined to live to be the defender of Hellenic Sicily, he did not fullfil the hopes of the Syracusans. In command of a large army and fleet he proceeded to Gela, which Himilco was besieging. One of the first incidents of the siege was the plunder of the precinct of Apollo outside the walls. The famous statue of the god was sent to Tyre, the mother city of Carthage. As at Acragas the Carthaginians had a strongly fortified camp which the relieving army hoped to take by a simultaneous assault from several sides. Dionysius and his mercenaries failed to carry out their part, the Italiote and Siceliote forces were defeated separately and the attack was a complete failure. The Geloans had defended their city stoutly; their fate was now debated in a private council. It was decided that the people should abandon their city immediately, and Dionysius on his march to Syracuse also persuaded the people of Camarina to leave their homes, and a piteous train of fugitives from both towns took the road to Syracuse. The south coast of Sicily was lost and the Carthaginian army might be expected on the heels of the fugitives. This extraordinary end to the campaign aroused suspicion that Dionysius was in league with the Carthaginians. The Italiote allies marched home and the Syracusan horsemen determined to overthrow the tyrant. They attacked his house and ill-treated his wife. Dionysius hurried to the city, which he entered by burning the gate of Achradina, and forced the rebels to fly to Aetna. There can be little question that in abandoning the defence of Gela and Camarina, Dionysius was deliberately playing into the hand of Himilco, and the treaty which he made with this general clearly shows his desire to conciliate Carthage. On the other hand the Carthaginian army had been weakened by sickness and Himilco may well have shrunk from undertaking the most arduous siege of all, that of Syracuse itself.
TREATY BETWEEN SYRACUSE AND CARTHAGE
The stipulations of the peace between Syracuse and Carthage now arranged by Dionysius and Himilco were as follows: Carthage was to keep Acragas, Selinus and Thermae and the Elymian and Sican towns were to remain her subjects. Gela and Camarina were to be tributary and unwalled cities. The Sicels were to be free, and Messana and Leontini were recognized as independent commonwealths. The Carthaginians were to guarantee the rule of Dionysius over Syracuse and the integrity of Syracusan territory.
It will be observed that in this treaty Carthage and Syracuse disposed of the whole island. The clause respecting Leontini was an exception to the general principles of the treaty and was evidently intended to cause future embarrassment to Syracuse. Dionysius cannot well have approved of this, but we must remember that the treaty was almost dictated by the victor. No mention was made of Catana or Naxos, ancient enemies of Syracuse, evidently an offset to the independence of Leontini. The clause about the Sicels is noteworthy, and we shall subsequently see its significance. Thus the Carthaginian invasion ended in the complete establishment of Dionysius as tyrant of Syracuse; he had not the least intention of observing the terms of the treaty, but he had gained Carthaginian recognition,
Syracuse under Dionysius was a military state, and as lord of Syracuse, he was primarily and above all a war-lord. The fleet of Syracuse was rapidly increased, and the forests of Italy and Aetna were felled to build new warships, some of them with four and five banks of oars. The Carthaginians had used against the Greeks all the devices of oriental siege-craft. Dionysius replied by the yet more effective inventions of his engineers, above all, great catapults which could batter the walls of towns from a range of some two or three hundred yards. But more fruitful than these material inventions was Dionysius' scientific study of the coordination of all arms, cavalry, heavy-armed infantry and light-armed troops on the field of battle. The outworn formulas of Greek warfare were cast aside, and with the campaigns of Dionysius, as with those of Napoleon, we enter on a new phase in the art of war. The boldness of Brasidas, the strategical talents of Cimon had performed wonders in the older style of warfare. Dionysius, even though he may have lacked their natural gifts, surpasses them as the first great scientific soldier, the forerunner of Epaminondas and the great Macedonians.
Dionysius' skill in fortification was first applied to his own security, and the Island (Ortygia) which was the Acropolis of Syracuse, became an impregnable fortress. It was completely cut off from the city by a wall, and this conversion of the Island into a separate fortified quarter was somewhat as if William III of England had seated himself in the Tower of London and, ejecting all the inhabitants from their abodes, had turned the City of London into barracks. It was impossible to enter the Island from Achradina except through five successive gates, and the ends of the Island were protected by two castles. In the lesser harbour new docks were built and it became the chief naval arsenal. A mole admitting only one ship at a time further secured the safety of the Syracusan navy. No citizens were allowed to dwell on the Island who were not definitely supporters and trusted friends of the tyrant, who was surrounded here by his foreign mercenaries.
CHARACTER AND POLICY OF DIONYSIUS
We may here pause a moment to consider the qualities of character that helped to establish the long reign of this singular man. The antecedents of Dionysius are unknown to us; he was what we may call a novus homo, that is, he was a political upstart; all we know of him is that his father's name was Hermocrates, and he was the son-in-law of Hermocrates the statesman; thus he probably began life as a political opportunist, having no attachments to any particular party, no sentiments or traditions to move him in any special direction. He seems to have been entirely free from superstition, as he did not scruple to plunder temples: for example, he stripped off the golden garment of Zeus in the temple at Syracuse observing that such a robe was no use to the god, being too hot in summer and too cold in winter. He had no reverence or feeling for historical tradition. He was largely indifferent to public opinion, although he could make use of it when it suited him for his own purposes, and he took little account of Greek customs and conventions. He was a bigamist; contrary to the universal usage of the Greeks he married two wives, Doris of Locri and Aristomache of Syracuse, and lived happily with them both at the same time. His methods were utterly unscrupulous, but he was not a vulgar tyrant. He allowed nothing to stand in the way of his gaining his political ends, and consequently he was often cruel and oppressive, but he did not indulge in cruelty for its own sake. He was not a man of luxurious tastes or habits; orgies and debaucheries, such as we hear of in other tyrants, were, not the order of the day in his palace. At first, Syracusan citizens had not very much to fear from his covetousness for their private property, nor had they to dread outrages upon the honor of their families. We can in fact impute little blame to his private life, although we know little of it. These merits were probably the secret of his being able to preserve his tyranny safely. He showed his freedom from sentiment towards the past most conspicuously, perhaps, by his treatment of Naxos, which we shall presently narrate.
All Sicilians reverenced this city as the oldest Greek colony in the island, older than Syracuse itself. We cannot imagine any other Greek potentate in Sicily venturing to destroy the place and hand over the site to the Sicels. Free from the sentiments and prejudices common to nearly all Greek politicians, Dionysius looked upon the world in a detached manner, unlike most Hellenic statesmen. He approached every problem which presented itself in a temper of what we may perhaps call political realism. As examples of this attitude of mind may be mentioned his rich rewards to his friends and servants and his enfranchisement of slaves, out of whom he formed a class of New Citizens. But there was no lack of people in Syracuse who clearly saw that their constitutional tradition had been broken and who felt no loyalty to a tyrant surrounded by foreign mercenaries.
One of the first acts of Dionysius after the Carthaginians had gone was to attack Herbessus, a Sicel town on the, borders, of Syracusan and Leontine territory, probably to be ideatified with Pantalica. The citizens in the army were mutinously inclined and, having slain one of their officers, broke into open revolt. Dionysius fled back to Syracuse and took refuge in his own fortress. The rebellious citizens joined with exiled knights at Aetna and sent pressing messages to Messana and Rhegium for help, and they responded by sending eighty triremes (403 BC). Dionysius was so hard pressed by the besiegers that he called a council of his staunchest supporters, and how desperate these deemed the situation is shown by a famous remark of one Heloris, "Tyranny is a fair winding-sheet". Though most of his friends urged him to flee, Dionysius made up his mind to leave the city openly. He asked the besiegers to let him leave Syracuse and he was given five triremes. He succeeded in obtaining the help of some Campanian mercenaries who had been in the service of Carthage, and with them occupied the hills of Epipolae, In a quarter of the city for the first time called Neapolis Dionysius routed the insurgents, but this victory was followed by a policy of leniency and returning rebels were accepted again as citizens. The occupation of the Sican town of Entella by the Campanians was a notable result of this episode. By exterminating the men and marrying the women the Campanians made the first Italian settlement in Sicily.
During the rule of Dionysius the outward forms of a Commonwealth at Syracuse had been continued and Dionysius governed the State as a constitutional Magistrate of the Commonwealth. He was elected, so far as we know, every year by the Assembly as strategos autocrator or Supreme General without colleagues. This title lent itself extremely well to masking the position of tyrant. It regularized as it were the absolute military powers which he held and, just as at Athens under the tyranny of Peisistratus the forms of the Solonian constitution were still practised, and the Solonian magistrates still appointed, though of no political importance, so the ordinary affairs of Syracuse seem to have been conducted according to the old constitutional practices, though always at the discretion of the tyrant; just as Gelon and the Deinomenidae had in old days wielded their authority under the same title of strategos autocrator. Although there was only one Strategos there was a nauarch or commander of the fleet, who may have been appointed formally every year by the Assembly, but was actually chosen by Dionysius; in fact Leptines, the tyrant's brother, held this post continuously until he fell into disgrace and was succeeded by another brother of the tyrant. The Phrourarchs, or Wardens of Forts, about whose appointment we have no clear evidence, were completely subservient to Dionysius. Philistus the historian was at one time Phrourarch of Syracuse.
III. DIONYSIUS AND THE SICELS. 403 BC.
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