Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Then Dionysius married his sister Arete, who was Dion’s wife, to a courtier, against her will, and Dion’s gentle nature was roused at last. He raised a small force of mercenary soldiers, in Zacynthus, that is now called Zante, and led them up to make a solemn sacrifice in the temple of Apollo; and though the moon was eclipsed on that very night, to the consternation of his men, his soothsayer Miltas persuaded them that the portent foretold the overshadowing of Dionysius’ power, and they were satisfied. A storm drove the five small ships far to southward, and they made Sicily at last at Minoa, a Phoenician town west of Akragas. Dion landed by force but without bloodshed, and marching eastward gathered an army of twenty thousand men. The tyrant was known to be absent from Syracuse, and the letter that warned him of his enemies’ approach was lost by the messenger, who had a piece of meat in the same wallet with it, and fell asleep under a tree: a wolf carried off the bag with all its contents. Dion passed on, and came within sight of Syracuse at dawn; in the level rays of the morning sun he sacrificed to Apollo for the freedom of the city and of Sicily, and his devoted followers crowned themselves with garlands. At the first news that Dion was at hand, the whole city rose, the tyrant’s governor, Timocrates, fled in headlong haste, and the citizens came forth by thousands, in festal garments, to bring Dion through the gates in triumph. Entering the city, he caused it to be proclaimed that he was come to free Syracuse and all Sicily from the despot’s hands, and to restore the democracy of earlier days. The wildest enthusiasm took possession of the people. Only a small body of loyal troops held Epipolae and the castle of Ortygia. The first place Dion seized at once, and he set free all the prisoners who were kept there. The castle withstood him for a time, and the result was an irregular war, in the course of which Dion lost his hold upon the people, was removed from his generalship by them to make way for his secret enemy Heraclides, and was obliged to retire to Leontini. In his absence the people were badly beaten by the tyrant’s soldiers, who made a vigorous sally, slew many hundreds, and plundered the houses as if they had been in an enemy’s city. Humiliated by this defeat and even more terrified than humiliated, the Syracusans sent messengers entreating Dion to return and save them. They found him in his house at sunset and appealed to him with all the eloquence of terror. His gentle nature, incapable of Achillean wrath, yielded to their entreaties, and calling his soldiers together he set forth at once to the rescue. At the news of his approach the besieged force withdrew into the castle, and once more the people hesitated as to whether they should admit Dion or not. But before morning the garrison of the castle sallied out again, and by way of hastening a solution of the situation set fire to the city. Dion reached the gates in time to witness the spectacle, but too late to save more than half the city. Heraclides surrendered to his old leader unconditionally, and many entreated Dion to give him up to the soldiery to be dealt with as they chose. But the kind-hearted man gently quoted the maxim of Plato and asked whether, because Heraclides had been envious and faithless, Dion should therefore be wrathful and cruel.

  A formal siege of the castle was now undertaken, while the friends of Dionysius were gathering forces elsewhere to rescue it. But Dion’s military operations were systematic and complete, the promised assistance did not reach the besieged, and they finally capitulated, on condition that the members of the tyrant’s family should be allowed to depart with such treasure as they could take with them.

  It will be remembered that Dion’s expedition to liberate Syracuse from the tyrant had not been undertaken until his wife had been forcibly married to another. During the whole time and up to the capitulation of Ortygia, both she and Dion’s son, and her mother Aristomache, had been within the castle, helpless to render him any assistance or to communicate with him. As he entered the stronghold, they came forward to meet him. First came Aristomache leading his son, while his wife Arete followed at a little distance with streaming eyes, for she knew not how Dion would look upon her after she had so long been the wife of another. But when he had embraced his son and Aristomache, the latter led forward his wife and spoke these words: “Your banishment has made us all miserable alike, and your victorious return has filled us all with joy, excepting her whom it was my ill fortune to see married by force to another. How shall she salute you now? Are you only her mother’s brother, or will you be still her husband?” Then Dion clasped Arete in his arms very tenderly, and they took their son and went to his own house, where he intended live thenceforward. He was too conscientious to make himself despot in Dionysius’ place, yet too aristocratic by nature to found a true democracy. He had freed Syracuse and liberated all Sicily, but he was unable to follow up his advantage. He dreamed of something between a monarchy and a commonwealth, and between those two forms of government there could only be an aristocracy. He attempted to control the people, refused to allow them to demolish the castle, and prevented them from tearing the ashes of the elder Dionysius from the tomb; he kept himself aloof from the masses and chose Corinthians for his counsellors; his intention, as Plutarch says, was to restrain the government of the people, which, according to Plato, is a warehouse of governments, and to set up a Lacedaemonian constitution. Meanwhile, Heraclides, whose life he had spared, opposed him at every turn and accused him of every crime against liberty, until the gentle Platonist fell into the state of exasperation which is peculiar to weak characters, and, out of sheer weariness and annoyance, consented to the suggestion of his friends that Heraclides should be murdered. It was his own death warrant. The deed being done, in a sudden revulsion of feeling he decreed that the murdered man should have a magnificent funeral at the public expense, and he addressed the people in a speech which was at once a political harangue, an impeachment, a panegyric of the dead man, and an apology for having slain him. After this his character and his intelligence rapidly degenerated; his only son, scarcely more than a boy, committed suicide in a fit of disappointment over a trifle; the furies of Heraclides pursued him even in his own house, and the gigantic spectre of a woman swept the hall of his home at nightfall with a phantom broom; a settled melancholy that was fraught with terror possessed him, and he saw a conspirator and a murderer in every man who approached him. Like the elder Dionysius, he employed spies throughout the city, but unlike him, he lacked the cynical courage to execute unhesitatingly every one whom he suspected. On pretence of creating an imaginary conspiracy for the sake of detecting it, and increasing Dion’s popularity by a general pardon of those concerned, — a trick which could hardly deceive a schoolboy, — his former friends conspired in good earnest to take his life. They came to him at last in his own house, all unarmed, lest they should be searched by his guards and their weapons taken from them, and they trusted to slay him with their hands; but when they could not, because he was very strong, none dared to out to fetch a sword wherewith to kill him, and so they held him fast for the greater part of an hour; but at last one of their number who had remained outside, came to the window and passed in a knife to them. And so they slew him. That was the miserable end of the attempt to restore liberty in Sicily.

  The leader of the murderers was one Callippus, an Athenian, who had long been Dion’s friend. He instantly seized the power, and reigned thirteen months, a military despot hated by all alike, till he was driven out on his first attempt to extend his dominions. Two or three years later he was slain near Rhegium, and with the very knife by Dion had died, by two of his fellow-murderers.

  Syracuse became the sport of any adventurer who could gain the momentary support of the soldiery, and at last it was the turn of the younger Dionysius, who had succeeded in holding Rhegium and Locri throughout the confusion of those years. Returning to Syracuse, he showed himself at his worst, and ruled by a system of terror which has rarely been equalled and never surpassed. Not Syracuse only but all Sicily had fallen into a miserable condition; the mercenaries employed by the tyrants at the height of their power overran the country far and wide, supporting themselves by plunder and revelling in every species of lic
entious excess. Anarchy reigned supreme; Carthage had concluded a treaty with Rome and again stretched out her grasping hand in an attempt to get possession of the coveted island; in utmost fear the Syracusans turned to Corinth for help, imploring the assistance of a general if not of an armed force. Their request was granted, and Corinth sent them a man whose name stands almost alone in history, the patriot soldier Timoleon, he who saved his brother’s life in battle by a miracle of reckless courage, but gave him over to a just death when he seized the power and attempted to make himself the tyrant of Corinth.

  We contemplate Timoleon’s almost unattainable moral greatness with a sort of despair, and with realize that an example may be so perfect as to discourage all attempt at imitation. He risks his life with magnificent recklessness to save his brother from the enemies’ spears, and then, with antique virtue, after using every means of affectionate persuasion in vain, he orders the same brother to be executed before his eyes, that his country may be saved from tyranny; yet being very human at heart, he withdraws from public life, and almost from the society of mankind, to mourn in solitude for nearly twenty years the deed which he would have done again. Emerging at last from his retirement in the hope of setting free an enslaved country, he exhibits, with the most exiguous resources, the most magnificent gifts of generalship, carries all before him in a series of brilliant actions, liberates Sicily, restores democratic freedom, vanquishes the Carthaginians, and establishes just laws. The idol of his adopted people, the arbiter of their destinies, and almost their predestined master, not a thought of holding the rulership assails him, nor is the lustre of his patriotism dimmed by the least breath of ambition; after teaching a nation to govern itself wisely, he retires to the peaceful privacy of an ordinary citizen’s condition, and he lives out the calm remainder of his days in the enjoyment of the liberty he has created, and under the rare protection of the laws he has called into existence. It is indeed hard to see how human nature could approach nearer to perfection from the beginning to the end of a career fraught with danger, difficulties, and perplexing problems.

  Timoleon’s departure from Corinth was accompanied by the most propitious signs and auguries. Demeter and Persephone appeared to their priestesses in dreams, clad in the garb of travellers and promising to accompany and protect the expedition. When Timoleon sacrificed to Apollo in Delphi, a wreath embroidered with crowns and images of victory fell from its place and encircled his head; and when at last his ships put to sea, mysterious fires came down from heaven and floated through the darkness before them, night after night, until the ships made the Italian coast. Nor is the last occurrence perhaps altogether a fable, for in fair weather, and in certain conditions of the air, seafaring men are familiar with the lights of Saint Elmo, the electric glow that sometimes settles on the mastheads and hangs at the yardarms in balls of fire for whole nights together, and which must naturally have seemed to the ancients but nothing less than a heavenly portent.

  The story of Timoleon’s war of liberation must be briefly told. In Rhegium he found a Carthaginian fleet, of which the commanders were disposed to prevent his movement upon Syracuse; but in concert with the people of the city he called the Carthaginian generals to a council within the walls, and while long arguments were made to cause delay, Timoleon’s fleet slipped out of the harbour and got to sea; then, when he received news that they were under way, he himself disappeared in the crowd, reached his own vessel, which had waited for him, and was beyond pursuit before the council broke up and the Carthaginians discovered that they had been tricked. Sailing down the east coast, he was received with open arms in Tauromenium, and he looked about for a second ally. At last the people of Hadranum, now Adernò, being divided into two parties, the one asked help of Timoleon, the other of Icetes or Hicetas, who held all of Syracuse except Ortygia and was in good understanding with the Carthaginians; Timoleon surprised and put to flight his force, and Hadranum opened its gates.

  Dionysius was meanwhile driven to last extremities in his castle on the little island; he was hemmed in on all sides, and he saw that whether Icetes or Timoleon won the day, his own lordship was at an end. He sent messengers to Timoleon secretly, and treated with him for the surrender of the island, on the condition of being allowed to escape with one ship and all the treasure he could carry. This was granted; four hundred of Timoleon’s men entered the fortress in spite of the vigilance of Icetes, and the Dionysian dynasty was at an end. Timoleon held Catania and supplied Ortygia with provisions by means of a number of small vessels which regularly ran the blockade. Icetes went out to attack Catania in order to destroy the base of supplies. He was not in sight of the latter place when news came that in his absence the Corinthians in Ortygia had succeeded in seizing Achradina, and had connected it with the island by hasty works, and he hurriedly returned to Syracuse. And now a long siege followed, with little fighting, and it came to pass that in the idle days Timoleon’s Corinthian soldiers came out to catch fish in the ponds near the marsh, and the Greeks who were with Icetes came likewise, so that they made friendly acquaintance; for they had no reason for quarrelling except that they were mercenaries on opposite sides, and had to fight when they were led out to battle. They told each other that Icetes ought to side with Timoleon, and that both should drive out the Carthaginians, and presently it was rumoured that Icetes would do so. Thereupon, without striking another blow, the Carthaginian general suddenly withdrew his whole army and fleet, and sailed away to Africa. They were hardly out of sight when Timoleon led up his force, and in a triple attack drove Icetes out of Syracuse altogether. He had accomplished the first part of his task, and he set to work to reorganize the liberated people.

  He now showed his vast intellectual and moral superiority over Dion. The latter’s first move was to establish himself in the castle on Ortygia, as if expecting to be attacked by the people he had freed; Timoleon called upon the inhabitants to raze the tyrant’s fortress to the ground, and to build the people’s tribunal upon the spot, and he began to make them frame laws which should be administered there, while he himself lived simply, openly, and unattended.

  Sicily had been reduced to a desperate condition by civil war, and Syracuse, like many other Sicilian cities, was half depopulated. The grass grew high in the market-places, the deer and wild boar from the forests grazed under the very walls of the towns, and sometimes made their way into the deserted streets. The few rich survivors had retired to strong castles of their own in the mountain fastnesses, as men did in the desolation of the dark ages, and the poor had been enslaved or exterminated. The need of a new population was evident, and Timoleon called upon Corinth for colonists. The mother city sent ten thousand; the rest of Sicily together with Southern Italy sent fifty thousand; the new colonists consented to pay for the land and houses they occupied, and the old inhabitants actually paid for what was already theirs, in order that a public fund might be created. To increase the resources of the state, Timoleon took several cities from the Phoenicians, the most important of which was Entella, and sold them to Greek colonists, a proceeding which is justified when one considers the extent of the injuries done to the Greeks by the Carthaginians, but which doubtless contributed to bring on a new struggle with Carthage. The shameful retreat of the latter’s general from Syracuse, almost without having struck a blow, led to his speedy disgrace, and though he died by his own hand, even suicide could not save him from infamy, and his dead body was nailed to the cross.

  Carthage now prepared for another great expedition, Hasdrubal and Hamilcar were chosen as generals, the usual vast army of mercenaries landed at Lilybaeum, and another reign of terror began in Sicily. Timoleon’s force was insignificant, and his war material was scanty; as he was marching to Akragas, a mutiny broke out in his little army, and a thousand of his mercenary Greeks deserted him and returned to Syracuse. The Carthaginians marched upon Entella, which Timoleon had taken from their people; he had determined to intercept the enemy, when he was checked by meeting with a number of mules
laden with parsley; for parsley was used for funeral crowns, and the omen was therefore evil. But Timoleon took some of the leaves, and made a chaplet, and crowned himself, saying that parsley was used also for the victors in the Isthmian Games, and encouraged his men, saying that crowns were given them even before victory. So they took courage and marched, and a heavy mist hid the enemy from them, while they heard the inarticulate hum of the camp at no great distance; and when the mist began to lift the Carthaginians were already crossing the river, with their chariots and a thousand men who carried white shields. So Timoleon sent down his cavalry, but the chariots drove furiously up and down in front of the enemy’s ranks and the horses would not charge them.

  Then Timoleon cried aloud to his foot-soldiers to follow him, and his voice was clearer and louder than the voice of a man, so that it was as if a god spoke to them; he took his sword and shield in his hands, and the trumpets screamed, and he rushed forward, and a great tempest with thunder and much rain had gathered behind him on the hill and came down with him and beat into the faces of his enemies, and the thunder roared, and the hail rattled on their iron breast-plates and brass helmets with a deafening noise, so that they could not hear the orders their officers gave; and the Greeks put them to sudden rout and wild confusion, and ten thousand of them were slain or drowned in the river, for they were weighed down by their heavy armour. This is the first time that as many as three thousand natives of Carthage were slain in a battle. After that the Greeks took the camp and all it held, with many prisoners; and so that expedition ended.