The Historians' History of the World 04

This treaty gave Dionysius the opportunity to turn his arms against Magna Græcia, the conquest of which he had long meditated. He took Caulonia, Hipponium, Scylacium, and gave their lands to the Locrians who had made an alliance with him. Croton also fell into his power in spite of a vigorous resistance. Rhegium, which he had besieged for eleven months, finally surrendered; he destroyed the town and sold all the inhabitants. The Syracusan exiles sought refuge on the Adriatic Sea and settled at Ancona (387). Dionysius then ravaged the coasts of Latium and Etruria, where he stole a thousand talents from the temple of Agylla, made alliance with the Gauls who had just taken Rome, enlisted a large number of them among his mercenaries and sent them to the assistance of Sparta which had lately renewed its alliance with Syracuse and was now at war with the Thebans. He founded the town of Lissus in Illyria, and re-established an exiled prince in Epirus. In 383 he made a third war against the Carthaginians; after an alternation of victories and defeats, a treaty was made which fixed the limits of their possessions at the river Halycus. In a fourth war he took Selinus, Entella, and Eryx, but, his fleet being destroyed opposite Lilybæum, he did not succeed in driving them from the island, and the war again ended in a treaty.

In the opinion of the ancients, Dionysius was a type of the godless, avaricious, and suspicious tyrant. In the temple of Zeus, in Syracuse, he replaced by a woollen coat the god’s golden coat, which, he said, was too cold in winter and too warm in summer. He stole the gold beard of Æsculapius, saying that the son ought not to have a beard when his father, Apollo, had none. As he was returning with a favourable wind from an expedition in which he had pillaged the temples: “See,” he said, “how the gods protect the ungodly.”

Numerous anecdotes have been told concerning his perpetual fear: he always wore armour under his clothes; his room was surrounded by a moat which could only be crossed by a drawbridge; when he addressed the people it was from the summit of a tower; he did not dare to be shaved, and his daughters singed off his beard for him with red-hot nutshells; the prisons of the quarries were so arranged that he could hear the least sound. One of his courtiers named Damocles was vaunting the happiness of kings: Dionysius said that he would allow him to enjoy it for one hour; he let him lie on a couch of purple and gold before a well-spread table, and suddenly Damocles perceived above his head a sword suspended by a single hair. This anecdote has all the appearance of a philosophic parable. Those which have been related concerning the literary pretensions of Dionysius are scarcely more trustworthy. It is said that he sent Philoxenus, who found fault with his verses, to the quarries; some time later he had him brought back and read him other verses which he thought better; Philoxenus stood up and said, “Let them take me back to the quarries.”

[368-357 B.C.]

Dionysius had often sent tragedies to the Athenian competitions, but had had little success; however, at the time of the Theban war he had sent mercenaries to the help of the Spartans, then the allies of the Athenians; the latter, therefore, gave the prize to one of his tragedies called Hector’s Ransom. He celebrated this success by a magnificent feast at which he drank to excess. He was seized with a fever from which he died. Some say that he was poisoned by his son. He had reigned thirty-eight years (367).