Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Now the Carthaginians, seeing that the Greeks were the bravest and most invincible of men, hired Greek soldiers to fight for them, and a new expedition was sent out with seventy ships, and sailed to Messina, where a dim war was fought of which not much is known; but three tyrants, Icetes of Leontini, Mamercus of Catania, and Hippo of Messina, were allied with the Carthaginians against Timoleon, and he beat them one by one; yet when peace was made he was obliged to leave Carthage the lordship of the western cities. Of the three despots, Hippo fell into the hands of his own people, and they scourged him and put him to death in the theatre of Messina, gathering thither all the children of the city to see the tyrant’s end, that they might always remember it. Icetes was executed by the Corinthians as a traitor to the Greeks, and because he had drowned the wife and the sister of the son of Dion, the Syracusans also slew his wife and daughters after a mock trial. As for Mamercus, when Timoleon had beaten him in battle, he surrendered; but Timoleon gave him up to the Syracusans to judge him, which they did in the theatre. When they would not hear his defence, he, being unarmed, broke from his keepers, and running at great speed across the open orchestra, he threw himself forward upon his head, against the wall, hoping to die; but he lived to perish on the cross, like a common robber. And with his death the most strenuous part of Timoleon’s task was accomplished. He had freed all Sicily from the tyrants, and he had reduced the power of Carthage. He repopulated the deserted cities of Sicily and taught them how to enrich and strengthen themselves, and unlike Dionysus the elder he did not aim at the aggrandizement of Syracuse to the detriment of all the rest: it was under his guidance that Akragas, which had never recovered from the Carthaginian conquest, became once more a strong and independent city.

  He spent his old age, afflicted with total blindness, in encouraging the work he had begun; on important occasions, when his counsels could not be spared, he was carried to the theatre where the people went to deliberate, and every appearance was a triumph, followed by his immediate return to the privacy of his house given him by the city, in which he dwelt with his wife and his children, and in which at last he died, one of the most splendid types of human honour, courage, and wisdom that ever freed a nation from slavery.

  Chosen youths bore his body over the ground where the tyrant’s castle had stood, and the whole population of Syracuse followed it to the market-place, where the funeral pile was erected. His ashes were buried on the spot, and about his tomb a great gymnasium was built. Games were then and there instituted in his memory, and the proclamation which decreed them called him ‘the destroyer of tyrants, the subduer of barbarians, the man who had peopled again great cities that lay desolate, and who had restored to all Sicilians their laws and ancient rights.’

  The immediate result of Timoleon’s labours was not lasting, but it was long before the spirit he had instilled into the life of Syracuse altogether disappeared, and even under the worst tyranny of Agathocles some of the forms of freedom were preserved. During some twenty years after Timoleon’s death, the city remained free, and as is often the case in prosperous times the records of that period are few and confused. Agriculture prospered, commerce throve, architects built, sculptors modelled, and poets made verses; but history is silent and only resumes her labour to tell of new disasters. The story of the extraordinary man to whom the tyranny of Syracuse next fell is so fantastic that it deserves telling for its own sake, as well as for some resemblance that it bears to the fable of Oedipus.

  In Rhegium, in the days of Timoleon, there lived a Greek called Carcinus, of noble birth and great possessions, and he was exiled by his fellow-citizens, and went and dwelt in Sicily, in the city of Thermae, which is now Termini, on the north side of the island. He married a woman of that city, and when a son was about to be born to him, he was visited by evil dreams. At that time certain Carthaginians were going to the oracle of Delphi, and he besought them to ask for him the interpretations of his visions. They brought him word that his son should be the cause of great misfortunes to the Carthaginians and to all Sicily; therefore, when the child was born, he caused it to be exposed in a desert place, and set a watch lest any one should come and save it or by any means keep it alive. Yet the child did not die, and the mother watched her opportunity until the guard grew careless, and she took up her child and fled with it to the house of her brother and named it Agathocles, after her own father. The child grew up and was very beautiful, and stronger than other children, and when he was seven years old, his father, not knowing him, praised his beauty and strength, his mother answered, feigning sadness, “So would our boy have been, if you had let him live.” Then Carcinus repented suddenly of what he had done and turned away weeping bitterly; but his wife comforted him and told him the truth, and he acknowledged his son and brought him home. By and by Carcinus left Thermae with all his family and went and lived in Syracuse, where he died soon after, and Agathocles grew up with his mother. She, believing in great things for him, caused a little statue of him to be made and set it up as an offering before one of the temples, and at once a swarm of bees settled upon it and built their hive; the soothsayers interpreted the sign to mean that the boy should win high fame.

  He grew up of great stature and marvellous strength, and a rich man of Syracuse, named Damas, took him under his protection and caused him to be appointed one of the leaders of a thousand in the army. Damas died childless, and Agathocles immediately married the rich man’s widow, and became thenceforward one of the most important persons in Syracuse. He kept his military position in spite of his wealth and showed extraordinary military talent; but when he did not receive the advancement he expected, after a brilliant engagement in Italy, and when no attention was paid to his claims, he left the city and seems to have lived for some time as a sort of free lance, while cherishing the most adventurous designs. He even besieged Crotona on his own account, and failing to take it, sought employment as a general of Tarentine mercenaries. Meanwhile, the party that had opposed him in Syracuse fell from power, and he returned to his home, to find himself before long in his old command of a thousand men, opposed to the Carthaginians, with whom the fallen party had allied itself. In spite of his courage and brilliant actions the Syracusans would not confer upon him the generalship, since it was clear to them from the first that he aimed at making himself despot. Turning upon him as suddenly as they had turned upon the opposite party, they bade him quit the city at once, and sent out men to kill him as he should ride by; but he, being warned, dressed a slave in his own armour and clad himself in rags. He escaped, and the slave was murdered in his stead.

  Being now banished, he immediately came to an understanding with his country’s enemies, the Carthaginians, and by their influence upon the oligarchy of six hundred which now ruled Syracuse he obtained his recall, and took solemn oath before the people to do nothing contrary to their freedom or their rights. He had now reached the stage at which aspirants to despotism appear as the friends of the oppressed populace, and he did not hesitate to use his power for the destruction of the oligarchy. On pretence of reducing a small revolution in the interior, he was allowed to get together a chosen force, and on the day appointed for his departure he gathered his soldiers in the buildings about the tomb of Timoleon in the market-place. In an address of stirring eloquence he accused the six hundred of setting him aside from public offices on account of his attachment to the people; and as his impeachment turned to a fiery arraignment and at last to a tremendous invective, the soldiers cried out for the blood of the accused. Then, as if only yielding to pressure, he ordered that the trumpets should give the signal to fall upon the six hundred and upon all who should help or harbour them. The gates were shut against any who should escape death, and the infuriated soldiers stormed every house which might give shelter to their prey. The streets ran blood. Four thousand of the richest citizens were put to the sword, and many perished in attempting to leap from the walls in flight. Some were brought bound before Agathocles to be executed or banished at hi
s will. About six thousand escaped to Akragas.

  On the following day Agathocles called a general meeting of the people, and, acting out the favourite comedy of the despot, he declared that he had freed the city from the tyranny of the oligarchy, that he was worn out by the struggle for a righteous cause, and that he refused to keep even the semblance of a power to which he had never aspired. Thereupon, he laid down his military cloak and turned away, well knowing what was to follow. The thousands who were before him were the men who yesterday had plundered the houses of the nobles at his word; they would not lose a leader who might bid them plunder again; they unanimously declared him their general and dictator, and he made a pretence of refusing the dignity only that he might be the more certain of holding it for his life.

  From the first he showed that he had profited by the example of Dion the unsuccessful, and of the half-deified Timoleon. Strong, brave, and no longer young, he scorned to surround himself with a body-guard, and took that surer means of safety which lay in binding the populace to him by the joint bonds of gratification and greed; for he gave them what was not his, and promised to give them whatsoever was not theirs already. What the nature of his patriotism was, is clear from the fact that he did not hesitate to ally himself with the Carthaginians, the hereditary enemies of his country.

  Tyranny is as often remembered by the people for the immediate advantages it brings them, as for the evils it sooner or later inflicts. The order which Agathocles introduced by force was more advantageous to Sicily than the chaos that had followed when the quarrelsome nature of the Greek people had rendered futile the noble institutions of Timoleon; and though it is true that under Agathocles Sicily produced no famous artist or poet, there can be no doubt but that her wealth and power increased suddenly and prodigiously. It would be impossible to explain otherwise how the tyrant could have so far got the advantage of Carthage, after the old quarrel was renewed, as to carry war into Africa, winning many battles and failing only at the last when he had been on the point of decisive victory.

  Friendly relations were broken by the discontent of the Carthaginians when their general interfered to make peace between Agathocles and the Greek cities, and so arranged matters as to give Syracuse the lordship of the island, with the exception of the old Phoenician towns; for the tyrant’s treaty had really been rather a personal agreement with Hamilcar than a national affair, and Carthage did not hesitate to set it aside. Then began the usual gathering of mercenaries, and the preparations for a great invasion, while Agathocles, on his side, collected a great force of mercenaries, though not without difficulty; for whereas Dionysius the elder had always succeeded in making Sicily feel that he was her true representative and natural leader against foreign influence, Agathocles was distrusted by many and opposed by not a few, and his frightful cruelties may fairly be ascribed to the exceptional danger of his situation. He was not even a native of the city he ruled. He held his position, not by employing spies and paying life-guards whom he could implicitly trust to destroy the few who dared to plot against his life, but by the wholesale massacre of every party that was organized to oppose him; and when he had thus cleared the situation by bloodshed, he went about with careless courage and without ever showing the slightest suspicion of individuals.

  Carthage was not ready for war until he had completely established his supremacy in Sicily, and when at last her fleet put to sea, a violent storm destroyed many ships with the troops they carried. Another Hamilcar — the name was frequent — commanded the force, and in spite of all losses succeeded in encamping with an army of forty-five thousand men on Mount Ecnomus, the huge headland that juts out to the eastward of Girgenti; Agathocles encamped over against him, still further east and beyond the salt river. Both armies waited and watched, sending down foraging parties to drive up cattle from the valley. Then Agathocles, having observed how the enemy conducted those small expeditions, laid an ambush for them, fell upon them unawares, drove back the few survivors to the camp, and taking advantage of the momentary confusion, led a general attack. Before the Carthaginians could give battle the Greeks were upon them, filling the ditches that protected their camp and tearing down the stockades. The battle would have been won but for the Balearic slingers, whose slings hurled stones weighing an English pound, and who at last drove the Greeks out; and then defeat followed upon repulse, as an unexpected reënforcement landed from Africa, and defeat became disaster in a general rout, in which no less than seven thousand of the Greeks were slaughtered. Yet strange to say the survivors remained faithful to their leader, who burned his camp and fell back first upon Gela, now Terranova, and at last upon Syracuse, while Hamilcar made a triumphal progress through the island, the cities opening their gates to him as to a liberator. Agathocles seemed lost. He saved himself by a stroke of astonishing boldness. He determined to leave a small garrison in Syracuse and to invade Carthage without delay, while all her forces were abroad. It was the conception of a man of genius, and though he did not accomplish the conquest of Carthage, which was reserved for the vast power of Rome, he succeeded in freeing Sicily and in reëstablishing his despotic position. Hamilcar had pursued him to Syracuse, had besieged the city, and was actually blockading the harbour with his fleet, when Agathocles set forth on his expedition. He waited until the Carthaginian ships put out to capture a convoy of vessels with provisions for the city, and sailed out with sixty men-of‑war. The Carthaginians saw him, supposed he meant to give battle, and drew up to await his attack, and by the time they understood that he was heading to southward he had gained enough distance to greatly reduce the chances of being overtaken. Nevertheless, the Carthaginian fleet gave chase, while the cornº ships quietly entered the harbour, and Syracuse was provisioned for a long siege. The whole affair was one of those brilliant manoeuvres that prove the born general.

  The Greeks believed that they were beyond pursuit, heading for the African coast, when, on the morning of the day, the Carthaginian ships hove in sight, still in full chase, and gaining visibly. A race for life and death began, in the dead calm, and the oars pulled desperately, hour after hour. If the Greeks could reach the land and intrench themselves, they would have the advantage, for their enemies would have to attack them from the water’s edge; but if they were overtaken on the high sea, they could expect nothing but destruction in a battle with a force so far superior to their own; and Syracuse would be lost also. Still the Carthaginians crept up astern, hour after hour, while Agathocles counted the miles that lay between him and the land, and knew that his fate hung by a hair. His men knew it too, and they reached the shore in time, southwest of what is now Cape Bon, in a strong place at the entrance to an ancient stone quarry of vast extent, and they threw up fortifications and beached their vessels. But the leader knew that the ships were a weakness and a temptation to flight, where men were to win or die, and with a heroism that has seldom been equalled, and commanding an obedience that has never been surpassed, he burned the fleet as it lay on the shore, firing his own vessel with his own hand, while every captain followed his example.

  During the fire, the Carthaginians, at some distance from the shore, were filled with joy; but their mood changed when they saw that Agathocles was leading his army to the interior, without waiting to give battle. It was too late to overtake him now; he was entering the richest part of their country with a large army of the bravest men in the world, and men whose only hope lay in victory; the Carthaginians fell to weeping and mourning and draped the bows of their ships with black.

  Agathocles marched on without hindrance, seized the rich city of Megalopolis, plundered it, and took Tunes next, only •ten miles from Carthage. The great city, even in such sudden and utter need, when her main force was either in Sicily or at sea, was able to send out forty-one thousand men and two thousand chariots to meet the invaders. Agathocles had less than fifteen thousand soldiers, all told; he helped himself by strange stratagems that savour of Homeric times, spreading out the shield-covers of his heavy-armed infantry
on staves, to represent a reserve of soldiers that did not exist, and loosing a number of owls among his men, who suddenly took great courage as the birds sacred to Pallas settled blinking upon their helmets and shields. One thinks of the young Louis Napoleon and the trained eagle that was allowed to fly at his first landing — a trick which Ulysses might have invented and Homer described.

  The Greeks fought like madmen, the drivers of the enemy’s chariots were shot down and the cavalry pelted to death, the famous heavy-armed infantry charged, the chief general of the Carthaginians was slain, and their ranks wavered, — the next in command turned traitor, it is said, and commanded a hasty retreat, which presently became a rout and massacre, and Agathocles was master of the field. In the Carthaginian camp he found twenty thousand pairs of manacles, brought out to shackle the Greeks who were to have been taken prisoners.

  With the small force at his disposal he could not hope to take the strong city, fortified as it was at every point and more than amply provisioned. But it was the policy of Carthage to allow no other town to protect itself by fortifications, lest any should turn against her, and Agathocles seized one place after another, with vast booty. Meanwhile the Carthaginians sent to Hamilcar in Sicily for help, and made horrible burnt sacrifices of many little children to their cruel gods.