The Historians' History of the World 03

The chief instruments of the Sicilian victory were the tyrants who had gathered to themselves supreme power in their own cities or groups of cities as the tyrants of the mother-country had previously done. In Sicily there were four powerful masters of four chief cities: Anaxilaus of Rhegium in Italy, who crossing the straits, took possession of Zancle; his father-in-law Terillus of Himera; Gelo of Syracuse and his father-in-law, Theron of Acragas. It was a quarrel between Theron and Terillus that gave the Carthaginians their immediate excuse for invading Sicily. Terillus being thwarted by Theron played a treacherous part like that of Hippias, and begged the Persians to attack Acragas. Terillus called in Carthage to his aid against Theron. There is a tradition that the defeat of the Carthaginians happened on the same day as the battle of Salamis. Such traditions are always subject to scepticism, and yet the coincidence of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in American history is hardly more incredible.

Theron had called on Gelo to aid him in expelling the Carthaginians, and Gelo had won the greater glory. He died two years later leaving his younger brother Hiero to succeed him. It was Hiero’s privilege to thwart the ambition of the Etruscans as his elder brother had foiled Carthage. The naval battle of Cyme was the brilliant victory which led Pindar to write one of his loftiest songs. He and Simonides, Æschylus, and Bacchylides, were all received with honour at the opulent court of Hiero. The glitter of court life, however, was small compensation for the tyranny of the various despots of Sicily. Their ambitions clashed at the least pretext, always at the cost of the blood of their subjects. They had a curious way of deporting the inhabitants of an entire city to some other place to suit their own whims. And gradually time took its revenge upon them. Theron left as his heir a weak son, Thrasydæus who went to battle with Hiero, and, losing the battle, lost also his prestige and his power, for the cities Himera and Acragas formed themselves into democracies. Five years later, in 467 B.C., Hiero died, and his tyranny fell to his brother Thrasybulus whose blood-thirsty and tax-hungry cruelties aroused a revolution. He was besieged in Syracuse, compelled to surrender and sent into exile.

Life in Sicily is not to this day so quiet as in certain other portions of the globe, and it was inevitable in the change from despotism to democracy that there should be much friction and bloodshed, but the cities lost none of the prosperity they had acquired under the tyrants. Syracuse continued to be the principal city and power in the island; Agrigentum, as the Romans named Acragas, being the second in power.

Now a new source of danger appeared, this time not from a foreign invasion, or from the ambition of such pretenders as had tried to re-establish the power of Gelo. The new threat came from a racial jealousy. The old inhabitants, the Sicels, who had been crowded into the interior, gave birth to a Napoleonic ambition. A young man named Ducetius who first appeared in 461, having fed upon certain small successes in acquiring power, showed his ingenuity in 453 by forming a federation of Sicel towns with himself as prince. He seized an early opportunity to assail the Greeks, and justified the fidelity of the Sicels by capturing the towns of Morgantium, Ætna, and the Acragantine stronghold of Motya, building a new city—Palice. He now became important enough to merit the anger of Syracuse, and a large force from Syracuse and Agrigentum marched against him. The toy Napoleon met his little Waterloo. His partisans deserted him and he found himself alone. A desperate resolve occurred to him as the only means of saving his life. He rode by night to the gates of Syracuse, entered the city secretly, and sat himself down before the altar in the market place. He was soon surrounded by a crowd who had too keen a sense of the dramatic not to forgive him and let him off with the easy exile to Corinth. From this Elba this Napoleon soon emerged. He violated his parole laying the blame on an oracle, and took a body of colonists to Sicily where he founded the city of Calacta (or Kale Akte). He began gradually to reach out for more power, but his death in 440 ended his schemes and left his federation as a prize for Syracuse.

[440-431 B.C.]