previous next

In Sicily, Dionysius, the tyrant of the Siceli,1 after concluding peace with the Carthaginians, planned to busy himself more with the strengthening of his tyranny; for he assumed that the Syracusans, now that they were relieved of the war, would have plenty of time to seek after the recovery of their liberty. [2] And, perceiving that the Island2 was the strongest section of the city and could be easily defended, he divided it from the rest of the city by an expensive wall, and in this he set high towers at close intervals, while before it he built places of business and stoas capable of accommodating a multitude of the populace. [3] He also constructed on the Island at great expense a fortified acropolis as a place of refuge in case of immediate need, and within its wall he enclosed the dockyards which are connected with the small harbour that is known as Laccium. The dockyards could accommodate sixty triremes and had an entrance that was closed off, through which only one ship could enter at a time. [4] As for the territory of Syracuse, he picked out the best of it and distributed it in gifts to his friends as well as to higher officers, and divided the rest of it in equal portions both to aliens and to citizens, including under the name of citizens the manumitted slaves whom he designated as New Citizens. [5] He also distributed the dwellings among the common people, except those on the island, which he gave to his friends and the mercenaries.

When Dionysius thought that he had now organized his tyranny properly, he led forth his army against the Siceli, being eager to bring all the independent peoples under his control, and the Siceli in particular, because of their previous alliance with the Carthaginians. [6] Accordingly he advanced against the city of the Herbessini and made preparations for its siege. But the Syracusans who were in the army, now that they had arms in their hands, began to gather in groups and upbraid each other that they had not joined with the cavalry in overthrowing the tyrant.3 The man appointed by Dionysius to command the men at first warned one of those who were freespoken, and when the man retorted, stepped boldly up to him to give him a blow. [7] The soldiers, in anger at this, slew the commander, whose name was Doricus, and, crying to the citizens to strike for their freedom, sent for the cavalry from Aetne; for the cavalry, who had been banished at the beginning of the tyranny, occupied this outpost.

1 "Siceli" must be an error for "Sicilian Greeks" or "Syracusans."

2 Ortygia.

3 Cp. Book 13.112.

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.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (5 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: