Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79)

by Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  [5.1] The senate, upon learning from those who had escaped destruction the calamity that had befallen the Rhegians, did not delay even for a moment, but sent out the general in the city at the head of another army which had just been enrolled. [2] Forestalling the arrival of the Romans, however, Divine Providence took vengeance upon Decius, the commander of the garrison, for his impious schemes by punishing in the most vital parts of his body, inflicting upon his eyes a malady that caused excruciating pains. In his anxiety to cure this malady he sent he says a physician from Messana, Dexicrates by name, learning by inquiry that he was the best of the physicians of the day, but unaware that he was a Rhegian by birth. This man, having come to Rhegium, anointed his eyes with a caustic remedy and bade him endure the pains until he himself should return; then, going down to the sea, he boarded the ferry-boat that had been got ready for him and, before anyone was aware of his action, sailed back to Messana. [3] For a time Decius, although suffering dreadful pains while his sight was being burned out, nevertheless endured it, while waiting for the physician; but when much time had passed and he was unable longer to endure the excruciating pains, he wiped off the ointment and, opening his eyes, realized that the orbs had been burned out, and from that time he continued to be blind. After holding out for a few days he fell into the hands of the Romans, having been arrested by his own men; [4] for some, believing this was the way to clear themselves, opened their city to the general and delivered up Decius in chains to Fabricius. The latter restored the city to the Rhegians who survived, and ordering the guards to leave everything where it was, he led them away carrying nothing but their arms; [5] then, choosing out the most prominent of their number, those whom the others declared to be accomplices in the nefarious plot, he bright them in chains to Rome. There, after being scourged with whips in the Forum, as was the established usage in the case of malefactors, the prisoners were put to death by having their heads cut off with an axe — all except Decius and the secretary, who, having outwitted their guards or having bribed them with money to permit them to escape an ignominious death, made away with themselves. So much on this subject.

  [6.1] (19.2) Pyrrhus himself, having uttered the Homeric lines which Hector is represented by the poet as speaking to Ajax, as if they had been addressed by the Romans to himself,

  I would not smite thee, then, who art so brave,

  By stealth, but openly, if so I may.

  and afterwards declaring that he had probably been wrong in planning his war against people who were more pious than the Greeks and more just, said he saw only one honourable and advantageous way of ending the war, and that was to make friends of them instead of enemies, beginning with some great act of kindness.

  [2] (3) After ordering the Roman prisoners to be brought forward and giving to all of them raiment befitting free persons and expense money for the journey, he bade them remember how he had treated them and to tell all the others, and what they should come to their own cities, to strive with all zeal to make those cities friendly to him.

  [3] A certain irresistible sight, indeed, has the gold of a king, and no defence has been found by mortals against this weapon.

  [7.1] (19.4) Cleinias of Croton, when he was tyrant, took away from the cities their freedom after he had gathered together fugitives from every quarter and freed the slaves; and having strengthened his tyranny with their aid, he either slew or expelled from the city the most prominent of the Crotoniats. Anaxilas seized the acropolis of the Rhegians and, after holding it as long as he lived, handed down the rule to Leophron, his son. Others too, following their example, founded dynasties in the various cities and thus brought everything to ruin. [2] (5) But the final and worst mischief of all that came to any of the cities was the tyranny of Dionysius, who had mastered Sicily. For he crossed into Italy against the Rhegians at the summons of the Locrians, with whom the Rhegians were at odds; and when the Italiots united against him with large forces, he joined battle, slew many and took by storm two of their cities. [3] Then making another crossing later on, he removed the people of Hipponium from their native land, taking them to Sicily; and capturing Croton and Rhegium, he continued to lord it over those cities for twelve years. Then some, who stood in dread of the tyrant, entrusted themselves to the barbarians, while others, who were being warred upon by the barbarians, handed over their cities to the tyrant; and no matter at whose hands they were suffering, they were always wretched and discontented, so that, like a euripus, they veered this way and that according to the fortunes that befell them.

  [8.1] (19.6) Pyrrhus crossed for the second time into Italy, since matters were not going to his liking in Sicily, inasmuch as it had become evident to the chief cities that his leadership was not that of a king but of a despot. For after he had been brought into Syracuse by Sosistratus, the ruler of the city at that time, and by Thoenon, the commander of the garrison, and had received from them the money in the treasury and some two hundred bronze-beaked ships, and after he had brought under his power all Sicily with the exception of the city of Lilybaeum, the one city which the Carthaginians still held, he assumed the arrogance of a tyrant.

  (7) For Pyrrhus took away the estates of Agathocles’ relatives and friends from those who had received them at that ruler’s hands and presented them to his own friends, and he assigned the chief magistracies in the cities to his own shield-bearers and captains, not in accordance with the local laws of each city nor for the customary period, but as was pleasing to him. [2] Lawsuits and controversies and all the other matters of civil administration he would in some cases decide himself and in other cases would refer them either for reversal or for determination to those who hung about the court, men who had an eye for nothing except making gains and squandering wealth in the pursuit of luxury. Because of all this he was burdensome to the cities which had received him and was hated by them. [3] (8) Perceiving that many people were already secretly hostile to him, he introduced garrisons into the cities, taking as an excuse the war threatening from the Carthaginians; and arresting the most prominent men in each city, he put them to death, falsely alleging that he had discovered plots and treasonable acts. Among these was Thoenon, the commander of the garrison, who was admitted by all to have shown the greatest ardour and zeal in aiding him to cross over and take possession of the island; for he had gone to meet him at the head of a naval squadron and had turned over to him the Island of Syracuse, of which he himself had the command. [4] When, however, Pyrrhus attempted to arrest Sosistratus also, he was disappointed; for the man had become aware of his intention and had fled from the city. Furthermore, when matters had begun to be unsettled, the city of Carthage also, believing it had found an opportunity suitable for the recovery of places it had lost, sent an army against the island.

  [9.1] (19.9) Observing that Pyrrhus was embarrassed and was seeking funds from every possible source, the worst and most depraved of his friends, Euegorus, the son of Theodorus, Balacrus, the son of Nicander, and Deinarchus, the son of Nicias, followers of godless and accursed doctrines, suggested an impious source for the raising of funds, namely, to open up the sacred treasures of Persephonê. [2] For there was a holy temple in this city that contained much wealth, guarded and untouched from the earliest times; included in this there was an unfathomed quantity of gold, buried in the earth out of sight of the multitude. Pyrrhus, misled by these flatterers and because of his necessity that was stronger than any scruples, employed as his agents in the sacrilege the men who had made the proposal; and placing the gold plundered from the temple in ships, he sent it along with his other funds to Tarentum, having now become filled with great cheer.

  (10) But a just Providence showed its power. For, though the ships, upon putting out from the harbour, found a land breeze and made progress, an adverse wind sprang up, and holding through the entire night, sank some of them, drove others into the Sicilian strait, and, in the case of those in which the offerings and the gold yielded by the offerings was being transported, drove them ashore on the
beaches of Locri. The men on board the ships were submerged and perished in the backwash of the waves, and the sacred moneys, when the ships broke up, were cast ashore on the sand-banks nearest to Locri. [2] The king, terror-stricken, restored all the ornaments and treasures to the goddess, hoping thereby to appease her wrath;

  The fool, nor wist that she would ne’er give ear:

  For not so quickly do the deathless gods

  Their purpose change.

  as Homer has said. [3] Nay, since he had dared to lay hands on the sacred moneys and to pledge them as a war fund, the divinity brought his intention to naught, in order that he might serve as an example and lesson to all men who should come after him.

  [10.1] (19.11) It was for this reason that Pyrrhus was defeated by the Romans also in a battle to the finish. For it was no mean or untrained army that he had, but the mightiest of those then in existence among the Greeks and one that had fought a great many wars; nor was it a small body of men that was then arrayed under him, but even three times as large as his adversary’s, nor was its general any chance leader, but rather the man whom all admit to have been the greatest of all the generals who flourish at that same period; [2] nor was it any inequality in the position he occupied, nor the sudden arrival of reinforcements for the other side, nor any other mischance or unexpected excuse for failure that ruined the cause of Pyrrhus, but rather the wrath of the goddess whose sanctity had been violated, a wrath of which not even Pyrrhus himself was unaware, as Proxenus the historian relates and as Pyrrhus himself records in his own memoirs.

  [11.1] (19.12) It was bound the happen, as might have been expected, that hoplites burdened with helmets, breastplates and shields and advancing against hilly positions by long trails that were not even used by people but were mere goat-paths through woods and crags, would keep no order and, even before the enemy came in sight, would be weakened in body by thirst and fatigue.

  [2] Those who fight in close combat with cavalry spears grasped by the middle with both hands and who usually save the day in battles are called principes by the Romans.

  [12.1] (19.13) During the night in which Pyrrhus was intending to lead his army against the hill to attack the Roman camp secretly it seemed to him in his dreams that most of his teeth fell out and a quantity of blood poured from his mouth. [2] Disturbed by this vision and divining that some great misfortune would ensue, since he had already on an earlier occasion beheld a similar vision in a dream and some dire disaster had followed, he wished to hold back that day, but was not strong enough to defeat fate; for his friends opposed the delay and demanded that he should not let the favourable opportunity slip from his grasp.

  [3] (14) When Pyrrhus and those with him had ascended along with the elephants, and the Romans became aware of it, they wounded an elephant cub, which caused great confusion and flight among the Greeks. The Romans killed two elephants, and hemming eight others in a place that had no outlet, took them alive when the Indian mahouts surrendered them; and they wrought great slaughter among the soldiers.

  [13.1] (20.1) The consul Fabricius, having become censor, expelled from the senatorial body a man who had been honoured with two consulships and one dictatorship, Publius Cornelius Rufinus, because he was believed to have been the first to be extravagant in supplying himself with silver goblets, having acquired ten pounds’ weight of them; this is a little more than eight Attic minae.

  [2] (2) The Athenians gained repute because they punished as harmful to the state the indolent and idle who followed no useful pursuits, and the Lacedaemonians because they permitted their oldest men to beat with their canes such of the citizens as were disorderly in any public place whatever; but for what took place in the homes they took no thought or precaution, holding that each man’s house-door marked the boundary within which he was free to live as he pleased. [3] (3) But the Romans, throwing open every house and extending the authority of the censors even to the bed-chamber, made that office the overseer and guardian of everything that took place in the homes; for they believed that neither a master should be cruel in the punishments meted out to his slaves, nor a father unduly harsh or lenient in the training of his children, nor a husband unjust in his partnership with his lawfully-wedded wife, nor children disobedient toward their aged parents, nor should own brothers strive for more than their equal share, and they thought there should be no banquets and revels lasting all night long, no wantonness and corrupting of youthful comrades, no neglect of the ancestral honours of sacrifices and funerals, no any other of the things that are done contrary to propriety and the advantage of the state.

  They plundered the possessions of the citizens on the ground that they were affecting the ways of a king.

  [14.1] (20.4) Numerius Fabius Pictor, Quintus Fabius Maximus and Quintus Ogulnius, who had gone as ambassadors to Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second to rule Egypt after the Macedonian Alexander, and had been honoured by him with individual gifts, [2] upon returning to Rome not only reported all that they had accomplished during their absence, but also turned over to the public treasury the gifts which they had received from the king. But the senate, admiring the men for all their achievements, did not permit them to turn the royal gifts over to the state, but allowed them to take them back to their homes as rewards of merit and decorations for their descendants.

  [15.1] (20.5) The Bruttians, after submitting willingly to the Romans, delivered up to them one-half of their mountainous district, called Sila, which is full of timber suitable for the building of houses and ships and every other kind of construction. For much fir grows there, towering to the sky, much black poplar, much pitch pine, beech, stone pine, wide-spreading oak, ash trees enriched by the streams flowing through their midst, and every other kind of tree with densely-intertwined branches that keep the mountain in shadow throughout the whole day.

  [2] (6) Of this timber, that which grows nearest the sea and rivers is felled at the root and taken down in full lengths to the nearest harbours, sufficient in quantity to serve all Italy for shipbuilding and the construction of houses. That which grows inland from the sea and remote from rivers is cut up in sections for the making of oars, poles and all kinds of domestic implements and equipment, and is carried out on men’s shoulders. But the largest and most resinous part of the timber is made into pitch, furnishing the most fragrant and sweetest pitch known to us, the kind called Bruttian, from the farming out of which the Roman people receive large revenues every year.

  [16.1] (20.7) There was a second uprising in Rhegium, on the part of the garrison of the Romans and allies which had been left there, and it resulted in the slaying and exile of many persons. To punish these rebels one of the consuls, Gaius Genucius, led out the army. After becoming master of the city, he restored their possessions to the keeping of the Rhegian exiles, and arresting those who had made the attack upon the city, he took them back in chains to Rome. The senate and the people were so enraged and indignant at them that no moderate sentiment was expressed concerning them, but by the vote of all the tribes sentence was passed against all the accused that they should die in the manner prescribed by the laws for malefactors. [2] (8) When the decree concerning their punishment had been ratified, stakes were fixed in the Forum and the men, being brought forward three hundred at one time, were bound naked to the stakes, with their elbows bent behind them. Then, after they had been scourged with whips in the sight of all, the back tendons of their necks were cut with an axe. After them another three hundred were destroyed, and then other groups of like size, a total of forty-five hundred in all. And they did not even receive burial, but were dragged out of the Forum into an open space before the city, where they were torn asunder by birds and dogs.

  [17.1] (20.9) The multitude of the needy, who had no thought for what was honourable and just, flocked together, misled by a certain Samnite. And at first they led a life of hardship in the open upon the mountains; but when at length they seemed to have become more numerous and to be adequate for battle, they seized a strong city
and with that as their base plundered all the country round about. [2] Against these men the consuls led forth an army, and having without much difficulty taken their city, they scourged with rods and put to death the authors of the revolt and sold the rest as booty. It chanced that the land had been sold the previous year along with the other conquests of the spear, and the money realized from its price had been divided among the citizens.

  ON LITERARY COMPOSITION

  Translated by W. Rhys Roberts

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER I. OCCASION AND PURPOSE OF THE TREATISE

  CHAPTER II. COMPOSITION DEFINED

  CHAPTER III. THE MAGICAL EFFECT OF COMPOSITION, OR WORD-ORDER

  CHAPTER IV. TO CHANGE ORDER IS TO DESTROY BEAUTY

  CHAPTER V. NO GRAMMATICAL ORDER PRESCRIBED BY NATURE

  CHAPTER VI. THREE PROCESSES IN THE ART OF COMPOSITION

  CHAPTER VII. GROUPING OF CLAUSES

  CHAPTER VIII. SHAPING OF CLAUSES

  CHAPTER IX. LENGTHENING AND SHORTENING OF CLAUSES AND PERIODS

  CHAPTER X. AIMS AND METHODS OF GOOD COMPOSITION

  CHAPTER XI. GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE SOURCES OF CHARM AND BEAUTY IN COMPOSITION

  CHAPTER XII. HOW TO RENDER COMPOSITION CHARMING

  CHAPTER XIII. HOW TO RENDER COMPOSITION BEAUTIFUL

  CHAPTER XIV. THE LETTERS: THEIR CLASSIFICATION, QUALITIES, AND MODE OF PRODUCTION

  CHAPTER XV. SYLLABLES AND THEIR QUALITIES

  CHAPTER XVI. POETIC SKILL IN THE CHOICE AND IN THE COMBINATION OF WORDS

  CHAPTER XVII. ON RHYTHMS, OR FEET

  CHAPTER XVIII. EFFECT OF VARIOUS RHYTHMS

  CHAPTER XIX. ON VARIETY

  CHAPTER XX. ON APPROPRIATENESS

  CHAPTER XXI. THREE MODES, OR STYLES, OF COMPOSITION