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In Sicily, as soon as the tyranny of Syracuse had been overthrown and all the cities of the island had been liberated, the whole of Sicily was making great strides toward prosperity. For the Sicilian Greeks were at peace, and the land they cultivated was fertile, so that the abundance of their harvests enabled them soon to increase their estates and to fill the land with slaves and domestic animals and every other accompaniment of prosperity, taking in great revenues on the one hand and spending nothing upon the wars to which they had been accustomed. [2] But later on they were again plunged into wars and civil strife for the following reasons. After the Syracusans had overthrown the tyranny of Thrasybulus, they held a meeting of the Assembly, and after deliberating on forming a democracy of their own they all voted unanimously to make a colossal statue of Zeus the Liberator and each year to celebrate with sacrifices the Festival of Liberation and hold games of distinction on the day on which they had overthrown the tyrant and liberated their native city; and they also voted to sacrifice to the gods, in connection with the games, four hundred and fifty bulls and to use them for the citizens' feast. [3] As for all the magistracies, they proposed to assign them to the original citizens, but the aliens who had been admitted to citizenship under Gelon they did not see fit to allow to share in this dignity, either because they judged them to be unworthy or because they were suspicious lest men who had been brought up in the way of tyranny and had served in war under a monarch might attempt a revolution. And that is what actually happened. For Gelon had enrolled as citizens more than ten thousand foreign mercenaries, and of these there were left at the time in question more than seven thousand.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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