Sources of the pro sperity of Kyrênê. ing from a distance of ten miles a vast sweep of the sea, Kyrênê had in the loftier hills which rose behind it a source of wealth more precious than the richness of the most fertile soil. With water even poor soils will yield marvellously under an African sun; and that boon was abundantly secured to Kyrênê by the constant vapours and rains condensed and precipitated by these beneficent mountains. With this moisture the plains near the sea yielded lavish harvests of grain, while the lower hills and valleys furnished never-failing pasture. Nay, with the differences of climate between the higher and the lower lands, the fruits were ripening and harvest was going on all the year round; and lastly in the Silphium, whose leaves nourished cattle while the stalk furnished food for men and the root yielded a juice highly valued in all parts of Hellas, Kyrênê had a special source of wealth which, in spite of civil dissensions and tumults, carried the colony to a height of prosperity reached by no other African city except Carthage. Thus in that fertile region which, lying between the island of Platea in the east to the settlement of Hesperides (Bengazi) in the west, stretched from the coast to the southern moun Conflicts Carthaginians and the Greeks. tain ranges,1 Greek colonists had a field for enterprise between the which, if persistent, could not fail to be richly rewarded; and commercially, it must be admitted that these colonies were successful. Career of Sicily. The lands which lay to the west of Hesperides were manifestly regarded by Carthage as ground over which she could suffer no dominion to be established but her own. She had now been compelled to put down Hellenic incroachments in Africa. The same task awaited her in Sicily, calling for greater efforts on her part and involving a risk of more serious failure. Her first conflict in that battle-ground of opposing races was with the Spartan Dorieus who had attempted to found a settlement on the banks of the Kinyps. The history of Dorieus belongs to a class of traditions which would seem strange if ascribed to any Greek city but Sparta. But for the officious meddling of the ephors and the senate Dorieus would have been king instead of the mad Kleomenes. Thus deprived of his inheritance, he resolved to quit Sparta. With all the high spirit of his younger brother the illustrious Leonidas, he sailed to Libya without asking, it is said, the advice of the Delphian god; and this carelessness was probably regarded as fully explaining his expulsion by the Libyan tribes in alliance with Carthage. Thus driven out, he returned to Sparta, and had he chosen to remain there, he would have been the general 2 1 The land to the south of these mountains is desert. F and in command at Thermopylai. But at Sparta he could not rest; he departed, this time after consulting the god at Delphoi, to seek a new home in Sicily. He landed in that island to find himself opposed not only by the people of Egesta but by the full force of the Carthaginians; and in the battle which ensued Dorieus was slain with all the other leaders of the colony except Euryleon who with the remnant of the army seized the Selinountian settlement of Minoa, about twenty miles to the west of Akragas, and having rid the city of its tyrant Peithagoras made himself despot in his stead. His subjects were not altogether satisfied with this measure of freedom, for after a while they put him to death at the very altar of Zeus Agoraios. of the Gelonian dynasty of Syracuse. But the rivalry of Carthage had little effect in repressing those innate vices of the Greek character which seemed to gain strength Foundation in new soil. The Greek colonies in Sicily exhibit generally the same transitions from oligarchical government to tyranny which mark the history of the parent country during the generations preceding the Persian wars. The great power and prosperity attained by many of these Greek cities in Sicily, in spite of everlasting feuds and frequent revolutions, furnish sufficient evidence of the extraordinary advantages which they enjoyed in the soil, the climate, and the physical resources of the country. Among the despots who rose to power in these cities the most prominent was Gelon, despot of Syracuse, and virtually master of all Sicily east of a line drawn from the borders of Messênê to those of Akragas. Incroachments of Gelon on Carthaginian ground. 481 B.C. When the aid of this tyrant was sought against Xerxes by the envoys from Athens and Sparta, Gelon in his reply expressed, it is said, his readiness to furnish them with a force such as no other Greek state was able to raise, and with a wealth of supplies wholly beyond the resources of all the Greek cities put together. But while in return for this aid he insisted on being recognised as supreme commander of the Greek confederation, he took care, we are told, to rebuke them for the selfishness which now made them his suppliants, when in his time of need they had refused to help him in his efforts to avenge the death of Dorieus and drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily. If these words point to historical facts, these facts fully explain the real reason for that refusal of aid to the continental Greeks which the tradition of the latter ascribed to their own rejection of his claim to the Hegemony. The efforts of Gelon had succeeded in pushing the Carthaginians back to the west of a line drawn between the Greek cities of Himera on the northern 1 Herod. vii. 158. Diod. xi. 20." and Selinous on the southwestern coast of the island; but he had not succeeded in detaching these cities from their friendship for or their alliance with Carthage, a friendship shared further by the towns of Messênê and Rhegion. Within this line the Carthaginians retained only the settlements of Motyê, Panormos, and Soloeis (Soluntum); and although their policy thus far had been to avoid all wars (for their contest with Dorieus was the result of open aggression on his part), the rapid aggrandisement of Gelon made them fear that without a vigorous effort they would lose their hold even on this western corner of the island. The way was opened for such an effort by those internal feuds among Greeks which raised an insuperable barrier to the growth of a Greek nation. Combination on the part of the Greek settlers would have made them absolute masters of all Sicily. Sustained and systematic action would have secured the same result for the Carthaginians. Both alike failed in the conditions indispensable for permanent ascendency, and the end was the absorption of both in the dominion of imperial Rome.2 The battle of Himera. 488 B.C. We shall find that but little trust can be placed in the minute details of the battles fought during the Persian war at Thermopylai, Salamis, Plataiai, or Mykalê. We are even less justified in giving credit to the narrative of the battle which, fought, it is said, on the very day of the fight at Salamis, left Gelon by the utter defeat of Hamilkar master, for the time, of all Sicily. Diodoros, who like Herodotos raised the Carthaginian army to 300,000, kills off half that number on the field of Himera where, seventy years later, the grandson of Hamilkar sacrificed three thousand Hellenic prisoners, while he ascribes the result of the conflict to a stratagem suggested to Gelon by some intercepted letters from the Selinountians to the Carthaginian leader. The incident is in no way unlikely; but the ground seems to be less firm when we reach the tale which relates the death of Hamilkar. This ill-fated chief, it is said, was never seen again after the fight. The whole field was searched with minute care by the order of Gelon, but his body could not be found; and Herodotos was inclined to put faith in an alleged Carthaginian tradition that during the battle Hamilkar stood by a huge altar on which he was sacrificing whole beasts as victims, and that on seeing the day going against him he leaped into the consuming fires. The historian adds that his countrymen raised monuments to his memory in all their colonies as well as in Carthage itself and worshipped him as a god. If this be true, it is of itself con 1 Herod. vii. 165. Diod. xi. 23. 2 Ihne, History of Rome, ii. 23. 5 Herod. vii. 165. Diod. xi. 20. 4 Herod. vii. 167. clusive evidence that his defeat was not so overwhelming as his enemies would have it and that on the day of battle the general did something more than roast flesh to appease the hunger of Moloch. It was not the habit of Carthaginians to venerate men who brought their country to the verge of ruin. The tradition is throughout disfigured by the vanity of the Sicilian Greeks. As in one version of the eastern story Xerxes was suffered to reach the Asiatic shore with only one solitary boat, so with Diodoros a single vessel reaches Carthage with the miserable remnant of the army which Hamilkar had conveyed to Sicily in more than two thousand ships. There is, in fact, no limit to their humiliation. Carthaginian envoys fall in tears at the feet of Gelon, praying him in the name of humanity to have mercy upon them. His wife Damaretê plays the part of queen Philippa in the scene between Edward III. and the burgesses of Calais; and the Carthaginians are pardoned on condition of paying 2,000 talents as the cost of the war and building two temples in which the treaty of peace might be preserved. Like men reprieved from a sentence of death, they accept these terms with a gratitude which finds expression in the gift to Damaretê of a golden crown 200 talents in weight. To complete the fiction, we are told that Gelon was thus indulgent to the enemies whom he had crushed, because he was anxious to take part in the continental war against Xerxes; that, before he could set sail, the tidings came of the victory of Salamis and the retreat of the tyrant; that on receiving the news, he summoned the citizens to appear armed in the assembly, and going to that assembly not only without arms but even without an upper garment, entered into an elaborate review of his acts and of the policy by which they had been dictated. No Greek despot had ever thus thrown himself on the good faith of his people. The Syracusans knew how to appreciate such confidence, and hailed the tyrant by acclamation as their benefactor, their saviour, and their king.1 In striking contrast with this extravagant romance the lyric poet, writing at a time not many years after the event, prays that Zeus may put off as long as possible the conflict then impending with the Carthaginians, which he feels must be a struggle for life or death.2 If the defeated Hamilkar was worshipped by his countrymen, the victorious Gelon deserved at least equal honours. He too was venerated as a hero, when a few months after his great triumph he died of dropsy. He had desired that his power should be shared between his two brothers, The fall of the Gelonian dynasty. 1 Diod. xi. 21-26. It is clear that this story must have been invented after the time of Herodotos, according to whom, vii. 164, the Sicilian tradition is very modest, and therefore probably near to the truth. 2 Pind. Nem. ix. 67. Ihne, History of Rome, ii. 23. 467 B.C. Hieron whom he had placed at Gela succeeding to the tyranny, while Polyzelos was to have the military command. The arrangement was not to Hieron's mind. Polyzelos took refuge, it is said, with Theron of Akragas, who by refusing to surrender him drew down on himself the wrath of Hieron. In short, after the death of Gelon the history of the Greek cities in Sicily falls back into the old round of faction, revolution, and war. Between Gelon and Theron of Akragas there had been a firm friendship: between Hieron and Thrasydaios the son of Theron there was a war in which the former paid a high price for his victory. The death of Hieron a few years later was followed by further troubles. His brother Thrasyboulos had a rival, it is said, in his nephew the son of Gelon. He met and averted the danger by corrupting the boy, and then gave full play to his vindictive and merciless nature. The result was a revolt of his subjects who besieged him in Ortygia, and, if we are to believe the account of Diodoros, compelled him to yield up his power. Eighteen years only had passed since the foundation of the Gelonian dynasty at Syracuse when Thrasy boulos departed and took up his abode among the Epizephyrian Lokrians, who dealt with him more mercifully than the Megarians had dealt with Thrasydaios. We have now to see how and with what results, on soil not much more promising at the first, the seeds of law, order, and freedom were sown at Athens. 2 CHAPTER IX. EARLY CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ATHENS. Contrast between Sparta and Athens as drawn by WE have already seen that the constitutions of Athens and Sparta furnish abundant evidence of their common origin from the primitive Aryan household with its absolute subjection to the father of the family, or, in other words, to the priest who alone could offer the necessary sacrifices to his deified ancestors. But although the theory of this ancient family life remained intact in both, the differences in the growth of these two states were wide indeed. If we may accept as substantially true and fair the picture which Perikles in his great Funeral Oration 3 draws of the political and 2 Ib. v. 12, 6. 1 Arist. Polit. v. 10, 31. Perikles. - Thục. ii. 25–46. |