READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM 2025

HISTORY OF ROME

THE WAR FOR SUPREMACY IN THE WEST

CHAPTER II.

SICILY.

THE island of Sicily seems destined by its position to form the connecting link between Europe and Africa. Whilst almost touching Italy in the north-east, it stretches itself westwards towards the great African continent, which appears to approach it from the south with an outstretched arm. Thus this large island divides the whole basin of the Mediterranean sea into an eastern and a western, a Greek and a barbarian half. Few Greek settlers ventured westward beyond the narrow straits between Italy and Sicily. Etruscans and Carthaginians were the exclusive masters of the western sea, and in those parts where their power was supreme they allowed no Greek settlement or Greek commerce. The triangular island had one of her sides turned towards the country of the Greeks in the east; while the other two coasts, converging in a western direction, extended into the sea of the barbarians, and almost reached the very centre of Carthaginian power. Thus it happened that the east coast of the island and the nearest portions of the other two coasts were filled with Greek colonies; while the western part, with the adjacent islands, remained in possession of the Phoenicians, who, it seems, before the time of the Greek immigration, had settlements all-round the coast. The greater energy of the Greeks seemed destined to Hellenise the whole island. No native people could obstruct their progress. The aborigines of Sicily, the Sikeli or Sikani, no doubt a people of the same race as the oldest population of Italy, were cut off by the sea from their natural allies in a struggle with foreign intruders, and, being confined to their own strength alone, they could never become dangerous, as the Lucanian and Bruttian barbarians were to the Greeks in Italy. Only once there arose among them a native leader, called Duketius, who had the ambition, but not the ability, to found a national kingdom of Sicily. On the whole, Sicily was destined, from the beginning of history to modem times, to be the battlefield and the prize of victory for foreign nations.

The origin and the development of the Greek towns in Sicily belong, properly speaking, to the history of Greece. Their wars also with Carthage, for the possession of the island, have only an indirect relation with the history of Rome. We cast on them, therefore, only a passing glance. It will suffice for us to see how, in consequence of the unsteady policy of the quarrelsome Greeks and the aimless, fitful exertions of the Carthaginians, neither the one nor the other attained a complete and undisputed sovereignty over the island, and how each successively had to succumb to the judicious policy and the persevering energy of the Romans.

In the west of the island the Carthaginians had ancient Phoenician colonies in their possession, of which Motye, Panormus, and Solus were the most important. The Greeks had ventured on the south side as far as Selinus, and on the north as far as Himera, and it seemed that, in course of time, the last remaining Punic fortresses must fall into their hands. Carthage desired a peaceful possession for the purposes of trade and commerce, and until the fifth century before our era had not entered upon any great warlike enterprise. At the time of the Persian war, however, a great change took place in the policy of Carthage. Taking advantage of the internal dissensions of the Greeks, they sent for the first time a considerable army into Sicily, as if they contemplated the conquest of the whole island. This attack on the Greeks in the west happened at the time when there was every prospect of their mother country falling a victim to the Persians. But at the very time when Greek freedom came out victorious from the unequal struggle at Salamis, the Sicilian Greeks, under the command of Gelon, the ruler of Gela and Syracuse, defeated the great Carthaginian army before Himera, and thus put an end for a considerable time to the Carthaginian plans of conquest.

Syracuse from this time became more and more the head of the Greek cities. The rulers Gelon and Hiero, distinguished not less by their military abilities than by their wise policy, understood how to curb the excitable, active, and restless Greeks in Sicily, and to govern them with that kind of steadfast rule which alone seemed salutary for them. As soon, however, as the firm government of the tyrants gave place to what was called freedom, all wild passions broke loose within every town in the confederacy of the Sicilian Greeks. The empire of Syracuse, which under princes as vigorous as Gelon and Hero might probably have been extended over the whole of Sicily, was broken up. Every town again became independent. The arbitrary measures of the Syracusan princes were upset, democracy re-established, the expelled citizens brought back, and the friends of the tyrants banished. In spite of these revolutions, involving confiscation of property and confusion of all kinds, Sicily enjoyed great prosperity for half a century, and the Carthaginians made no attempt to extend the bounds of their dominion in the island. It was only after the unhappy termination of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, when this town, victorious but exhausted, and distracted by internal dissensions, continued the war against Athens in the Aegean Sea, that the Carthaginians, seventy years after their great defeat at Himera, again made a vigorous attack on the Greek cities of Sicily.

Segesta, which was only partially Greek, and had already caused the interference of the Athenians in the internal affairs of the island, invoked Carthaginian aid in a dispute with the neighbouring town Selinus. Hamilcar, the grandson of the Hannibal who had fallen at Himera, landed in Sicily with a large army, and conquered in quick succession Selinus and Himera, destroying them with all the horrors of barbarian warfare. But the greatest blow for the Sicilian Greeks was the fall of Akragas or Agrigentum, the second town of the island, whose glorious temples and strong walls were overthrown, and whose rich works of art were carried away to Carthage. Since the taking of Miletus by the Persians, such a dreadful misfortune had happened to no Hellenic town. The Punic conquerors pushed on irresistibly along the southern coast of the island towards the east.

The Syracusans had tried in vain to arrest them at Agrigentum. The failure of their undertaking caused an internal revolution, which overthrew the republic and gave monarchical power to the elder Dionysius. But even Dionysius was not capable of stemming the further progress of the Carthaginians. Gela fell into their hands and Camarina was forsaken by its inhabitants. The whole of the south coast of the island was now in their power, and it seemed that Syracuse would experience the same fate. At length Dionysius succeeded in concluding a treaty, whereby lie gave over to them all the conquered towns, being himself recognized by them as governor of Syracuse. The Carthaginians now permitted the exiled inhabitants and other Greeks to return to the towns that had been destroyed. It seems never to have occurred to them that it was desirable to garrison the fortified places which they had taken, or to colonize them in the manner of the Romans. Probably they fancied that, having entirely broken and humbled their enemies in the field, they would be able, from their maritime stronghold of Motye, to overawe the conquered districts and to keep them in subjection.

But they had estimated the energy of the Greeks too low. Dionysius, established in his dominion over Syracuse, prepared himself for a new war against Carthage, and in 397 B.C. suddenly invaded the Carthaginian territory. His attack was irresistible. Even the island town of Motye, in the extreme west of Sicily, the chief stronghold of Carthaginian power, was besieged and finally taken by means of an artificial dam which connected it with the mainland.

The conquests of the Greeks, as those of the Carthaginians, in Sicily, were but of short duration. Dionysius retaliated for the destruction of Greek towns by laying waste Motye and severely punishing the surviving inhabitants; but when he had done this he withdrew, to occupy himself with other schemes, as if Carthage had been thoroughly humbled and expelled from Sicily. In the following year, however (396 BC), the Carthaginians again, with very little trouble, retook Motye, and advanced with a large army and fleet towards the east of the island, where they conquered Messana, and, after driving Dionysius back, besieged him in Syracuse.

So changeable was the fortune of war in Sicily, and so dependent on accidental circumstances, that the question whether the island was to be Greek or Carthaginian was almost within the space of one year decided in two opposite ways, and the hopes of each of the two rivals, after having risen to the highest point, were finally dashed to the ground. The victorious career of Carthage was arrested by the walls of Syracuse, just as, twenty years before, the flower of the Athenian citizens had perished in the same spot. A malignant distemper broke out in the army of the besiegers, compelling Himilco, the Carthaginian general, to a speedy flight and to the disgraceful sacrifice of the greater part of his army, which consisted of foreign mercenaries. Dionysius was now again, as with one blow, undisputed master of the whole of Sicily, and he had leisure to plan the subjection of all the Greek towns to the west of the Ionian Sea. He undertook now his piratical expeditions against Caulonia, Hipponium, Croton, and Rhegium, which brought unspeakable misery on these once-flourishing cities at the very time when they were being pressed by the Italian nations, the Lucanians and the Bruttians. The bloody defeat which the Thurians suffered from the Lucanians, and the conquest of Rhegium by Dionysius, accompanied with the most atrocious cruelty, were the saddest events of this period, so disastrous to the Greek nation. If Dionysius had pursued a national policy, and, instead of allying himself with the Lucanians to attack the Greek cities, had marshalled the Greeks against Carthage, he would most probably have become master of all Sicily. But the fainthearted manner in which he carried on the war against the enemies of the Greek race stood out in strong contrast with the perseverance which he exhibited in enslaving his own countrymen. After short hostilities (383 BC), he concluded a peace with Carthage, in which he ceded to her the western part of Sicily as far as the river Halycus. Then, after a long pause, he attempted, for the last time, an attack on the Carthaginian towns, conquering Selinus, Entella, and Eryx, and laying siege to Lilybaeum, which, after the destruction of Motye, had been strongly fortified by the Carthaginians and was now their principal stronghold in Sicily. After he had been driven back from Lilybaeum, the war ceased, without any treaty of peace. Dionysius died shortly afterwards.

The Carthaginians took no advantage either of the incapacity of his son, the younger Dionysius, or of the feebleness of Syracuse in the Dionian revolution, to extend their dominion further. It was only when Timoleon of Corinth ventured on the bold scheme of restoring the freedom of Syracuse that we find a Carthaginian army and fleet before the town, with the intention of anticipating Timoleon and of conquering Syracuse for Carthage after the overthrow of the tyrant Dionysius. Never did they seem so near the accomplishment of their long-cherished hope. Being joined with Hiketas, the ruler of Leontini, they had already made themselves masters of the town of Syracuse. Their ships had taken possession of the harbour. Only the small fortified island Ortygia, the key of Syracuse, was still in the hands of Dionysius, who, when he could no longer maintain his ground, had the choice to which of his enemies he would surrender, to Timoleon or to the Carthaginians and Hiketas. The good fortune or the wisdom of Timoleon carried the day. He obtained by agreement the possession of Ortygia and he sent Dionysius, with his treasures, as exile to Corinth. Again the Carthaginians saw the prize of all their efforts snatched from their hands. They feared treason on the part of Hiketas, their Greek ally; and their general Mago sailed back to Africa. There he escaped by a voluntary death the punishment which the Carthaginian senate inflicted only too often on unfortunate generals. His body was nailed to the cross.

Timoleon crowned his glorious work of the deliverance of Syracuse and the expulsion of all the tyrants of Sicily by a brilliant victory over a superior Carthaginian army on the river Krimesus. This defeat was disastrous to Carthage because they lost in it a select body consisting of citizens from the first families. Yet the result of this much lauded victory was by no means the expulsion of the Punians from Sicily. It seems not even to have produced a change in the respective strength of the two belligerents or an alteration of boundary between the Greek and Carthaginian territory.

Between the overthrow of the second Dionysius and the dominion of Agathocles, the most noxious and most hateful of her tyrants, Syracuse enjoyed, for twenty-two years, democratic government and comparative rest, as well as peaceful intercourse with the Carthaginians and with the other Sicilian Greeks. But the worthless Agathocles had hardly seized the monarchical power which seemed to have been put down for ever in Syracuse by the noble Timoleon, than the national war between Greeks and Punians again broke out, and was carried on with a violence and animosity hitherto unknown. After one decisive victory over Agathocles, the Carthaginians for the third time besieged Syracuse with an army and fleet, and for the third time they seemed on the point of gaining the last stronghold of Greek independence in Sicily. Agathocles then, with true Greek ingenuity and with the recklessness of despair, ventured upon an enterprise which thwarted all the calculations of the Carthaginians. He burst forth with his ships out of the blockaded harbour of Syracuse, and landed an army on the coast of Africa. Attacked in their own country, the Carthaginians were compelled to relinquish all thoughts of conquering Syracuse. For four years Agathocles conducted the war in Africa with extraordinary success. He not only conquered many of the country towns of the Carthaginians, and lived in luxury from the rich spoils of that fruitful and flourishing land, but he took possession also of the most important Phoenician towns under the dominion of Carthage, such as Thapsus, Hadrumetum, and even Utica and Tunis, in the immediate neighbourhood of Carthage. Internal foes joined themselves to the foreign enemy, who attacked the state in its most vulnerable part. The treachery of the general Bomilcar, and the revolt of subjects and allies, reduced the proud Punian town almost to ruin. There was now no longer any trust in the power of money or their foreign mercenaries. The citizens of the town themselves, and the men of the noblest blood, were called out and courageously sacrificed. The perseverance of Carthage prevailed. Agathocles escaped with difficulty to Sicily, and two of his sons, with his whole army, fell as victims to a recklessness which had not sufficient power to back it. Thus failed an undertaking on which Regulus ventured in the first Tunic war with a similar result, and which succeeded only in the second war with Rome after the strength of Carthage was so completely exhausted that even a Hannibal could not restore it.

The expedition of Agathocles had no influence on the relative position of the Carthaginians and Greeks in Sicily. After many fruitless struggles the treaty of peace left the Carthaginians in possession of the western portion with the dominion over Selinus and Himera. Agathocles, like his predecessors Hiero and Dionysius, now formed other schemes than that of the conquest of all Sicily. He made several expeditions into Italy and into the Adriatic Sea, conquered even the island of Corcyra, causing destruction and ruin wherever he appeared, without gaining a single permanent conquest. When at length, at a great age, he was murdered by his grandson, new dissensions broke out, as was usually the case after the fall of a tyrant. Sicily, now thoroughly exhausted, and retaining less and less of her Greek nationality, sought a protector from Pyrrhus, king of the semi-barbarous Epirots. How this last attempt to unite the Sicilian Greeks and to free the island from Carthaginians failed has been already related.

The freedom of the Greeks in the mother country had already perished. To Sicily, too, its days were numbered. But the prize for which the Carthaginians had contended so long was not to be gained by them. A new competitor appeared. The conquerors of Pyrrhus followed in his footsteps with more energy and success, and, after a long and changeful struggle, gave to the afflicted Sicilians peace and order, in exchange for their lost independence.