Hamilcar received the news of the Carthaginian defeat before Syracuse and, at the same time, the bronze beaks of the ships burned by Agathocles were brought to him. Hoping to prevent the beleaguered were trophies, and proclaimed to them the defeat and destruction of Agathocles, calling upon them to surrender at once; but they held firm, and before long they were informed of the truth in an unexpected manner. For Agathocles had sent a vessel with the news of his victory; it appeared off Syracuse in the morning, and after an exciting race, in which it escaped the enemy’s blockade, it entered the harbour with flying streamers, the whole ship’s company drawn up on deck, and intoning a victorious chaunt. Hamilcar tried to take advantage of the excitement that reigned in the city in order to storm a weak point, but he was repulsed, and soon afterwards despatched five thousand men to the help of Carthage. Agathocles performed marvels of quick marching, as he darted from one point to another, subduing the cities in succession, but unable to hold them for any length of time, for lack of men. He created a sort of floating domination of fear that centred round him in a movable kingdom wherever he appeared, but which could not under any circumstances become a permanent conquest; he plotted and conspired with native princes and Carthaginian traitors to obtain some influence more lasting than that of the sword, and more than once it seemed as if he might succeed. For instance, there was a certain Ophellas, who had been a general with Alexander the Great and had made himself prince of Cyrene on the African coast; Agathocles induced him by great promises to join in the conquest of Carthage, and the old soldier, after overcoming the difficulties of a three months’ march through a desert country, reached Tunes with over ten thousand fighting men and as many camp-followers, besides women and children. Agathocles did not hesitate to do one of the most atrociously treacherous deeds in history; he wanted the troops without their leader, whose influence might rival his own; he spent a few days in friendly intercourse with him in his camp, and then returning to his own soldiers, accused Ophellas to them of attempting his life. Wrought up to fury by his words, they rushed upon the camp of his new ally, a great number of whose men were absent to collect provisions, and after a short and desperate struggle, Ophellas was slain. Agathocles then took the army into his own pay and shipped the camp-followers with all the women and children to Syracuse. A storm dispersed the miserable convoy, most of the ships sank, one or two were driven as far north as Ischia in the bay of Naples, and but a very few reached Syracuse alive.
Meanwhile, the conspiracy of the Carthaginian traitors broke out in open revolution in the capital, under the leadership of Bomilcar; but they had miscalculated their strength, the movement was crushed, and he himself was executed. This was in reality the end of Agathocles’ hopes in Africa; had the revolution succeeded, he would without doubt have destroyed Bomilcar as cynically as he had murdered Ophellas, and Carthage might have been his; but, as it turned out, the Carthaginians learned their own strength by the failure of the attempt, and from that time forward the power of the Greeks diminished. Not realizing the situation, Agathocles left his son in command and crossed over to Sicily with a small force; for while the Carthaginians had all this time maintained the blockade of Syracuse, Akragas, once more an independent and powerful city, was making an attempt to dominate Sicily, and to that end had taken into its friendship all those whom Agathocles had exiled. In a short time, however, Agathocles put a stop to these schemes, and, having effectually checked the Akragantines, had only to contend with the exiled Syracusan aristocracy under Dinocrates. Meanwhile, in his absence, his son suffered a succession of defeats in Africa, and found himself driven down to Tunes, and so hemmed in that he sent an urgent appeal to his father to return and help him. It was some time before Agathocles was able to leave Sicily, and when he reached Africa, he found himself with a small force opposed to one of those enormous armies which the Carthaginians again and again collected in the course of their wars. They, on their side, did not desire battle unless Agathocles attacked them, and when he did so, they had no difficulty in driving him back to his position with fearful loss, and the end of the war was hastened by a hideous fire which broke out in the Carthaginian camp on the following night. As usual after a victory, the handsomest of the captives were burnt alive as a sacrifice to the gods; a sudden squall drove the flames from the altar upon the sacred tent, which caught fire and set the neighbouring tents of the generals in a blaze. In an instant the whole Carthaginian camp, consisting chiefly of huts of reeds and of straw, became a sea of fire, and the entire army fled in the direction of Carthage, in the wildest confusion. A large body of Libyans deserted from the Greek army, believing that the flames proceeded from bonfires lighted to celebrate the Carthaginian victory. When they attempted to join the Carthaginians, however, they were taken for a hostile force, in the confusion, and thousands of them were slain. The rest returned to the Greeks, and, being again taken for enemies, were most of them slaughtered. Had Agathocles known the condition of the Carthaginians on that night, he might have struck a decisive blow; but the truth was only known in the morning, when the remainder of the Libyans deserted in a body.
The situation was now desperate, and Agathocles attempted to escape to Sicily, intending to leave the rest of his army to its fate. His son, who was to have been left also, discovered his father’s treachery, and disclosed it to the soldiers, who seized Agathocles and loaded him with chains. It was not until a false alarm of the enemy’s approach was raised in the camp that the tyrant was released from his bonds, in order that he might lead the Greeks in a final attempt to save themselves. But Agathocles had more regard for his own safety. He was brave to recklessness, but not devoted; when a cause was lost, he abandoned it. With a few faithful followers, he got on board a small ship and slipped away in the night. The next day the soldiers murdered both his sons, and treated with the Carthaginians for peace, which was granted. Those of the Greeks who refused the terms were either crucified or forced to work in chains upon the lands they had laid waste but a few months earlier. It is said that the sons of Agathocles were slain on the anniversary of that day on which their father had murdered Ophellas.
But the career of the great adventurer was not yet over, nor was his influence in Sicily by any means gone. Landing in Selinus, he gathered a small force, which he led at once, with the unerring instinct of the born tyrant, against Segesta, the ancient rival and enemy of the Selinuntines. After laying a heavy tribute upon the city, he suddenly accused the citizens of attempting to murder him, and turned his soldiers upon them with orders to spare no living thing. He caused the rich men to be tortured before him, till they revealed the hiding-place of their treasures, and they had them put to death. Only the most beautiful boys and girls were spared to be sold as slaves in Italy. The city was levelled to the ground, and the very name of the place was changed when he gave the site to be inhabited by those of his adherents who would take it. That was the end of Segesta, and of the great city that in its day had brought so much evil upon Sicily; nothing survived the destroying wrath of Agathocles but the little lonely theatre high on the overhanging hill, and the great temple that still stands in its dark beauty up the deserted mountain side.
But this was not all. The army of Africa which he had abandoned in its last need had murdered his two sons, and they also must be avenged. He sent word to his brother Antandros to take vengeance upon all the relatives of the soldiers he had left behind him in Africa, and Antandros executed the order to the letter. Thousands of old men, women, and children were driven down to the seashore and slaughtered on the beach like sheep. The sea was red with their blood and none dared to bury their bodies.
Gathering strength, as it were, from each new deed of terror, and imposing himself upon the Sicilians by fear rather than by strength, he turned against the party of the exiles, whose army counted nearly thirty thousand men, and with a force of scarcely six thousand defeated them totally in a single battle. It is needless to say that he massacred in cold blood several thousands of the prison
ers he took, but it is a strange fact that he spared Dinocrates himself, treated him with the greatest kindness, and employed him as a general of his troops during the rest of his life.
From that time forward the power of the hoary tyrant was unchecked, and he extended his dominions far up the mainland and through the islands, laying Lipari under tribute and seizing Corcyra, which is Corfu, after completely vanquishing a Macedonian fleet; and when the people of that island complained that he laid waste their land, he laughed and said it was the vengeance of the Sicilians because Ulysses, an island man, had blinded the Sicilian shepherd Polyphemus long ago; and again, on his return from that expedition, he massacred two thousand of his soldiers who dared to demand their pay that was overdue. He plundered Crotona, too, by a piece of outrageous treachery, and the gradual decay of the great southern city began from that day, and continued through the wars that followed; and he who stands by the solitary column which is all that remains of Hera’s temple, may remember that Agathocles must have sacrificed there in gratitude to the gods for the abomination they had permitted him to work in the beautiful city.
He made himself also a friend of Ptolemy Soter and married that king’s daughter by Berenice; and he gave his own daughter to Pyrrhus the Epirote conqueror; he also allied himself with Demetrius, king of Macedonia, who was called Besieger of Cities, and he perhaps dreamt of conquests in the east. But most of all he desired to humble the Carthaginians and to be revenged upon them for the defeats he had suffered at their hands, and he was seventy-two years of age when he began to fit out a great expedition against them.
But his destiny overtook him before his ships were ready to sail out from Syracuse. He had a favourite slave, named Mainon, whom he had brought from Segesta and trusted, whose eyes had looked upon the slaughter of his people and had seen his home levelled to the earth; and though this slave smiled, and did his service, and was promoted to high office, he would not forgive, and he waited for his opportunity more than sixteen years. Then he took a tooth-pick which the tyrant used, and he rubbed upon it a very subtle poison, which bred a dreadful corruption, with unspeakable pain, first in the mouth and by and by through the whole body. So when Agathocles had lost even his power of speech, Mainon and those who hated him took him and laid him still alive upon his pyre; and so he perished, in the year 289 B.C., as strange a compound of genius, cruelty, reckless courage, and shameful faithlessness as ever ruled by alternate terror and popularity.
It is said that during the awful and protracted sufferings caused by the poison, he formally presented the Syracusans with their freedom, hoping, perhaps, by a piece of theatrical magnanimity to obtain the privilege of dying in his bed. We do not know the truth, but he was no sooner dead in the flames of his own funeral pile than the people seized upon his possessions, destroyed his statues, and banished all his mercenaries, attendants, and creatures. Even Mainon, who had delivered them of the tyrant, fled from the city. He afterwards raised a force among Agathocles’ veterans and attempted to seize Syracuse, but was successfully opposed by the people, who chose a certain Icetes for their general. As Holm says, with his usual keenness, it is clear that Syracuse remained a free city for a time, as the citizens immediately made war upon each other.
The days of Sicilian unity, such as it had been under Dionysius and Agathocles, were over, and were never to return. Icetes seized the tyranny of Syracuse, and tyrants sprang up in other cities, while Carthage still held her possessions in the west, and the Italian mercenaries of Agathocles founded a state of some power in the north, calling themselves Mamertines from Mamers, the Oscan god Mars, familiar in Roman mythology. It was to be foreseen that during the internal struggles which decimated the population of Syracuse, and surely destroyed its power, the Carthaginians would make another attempt at conquest. They appeared with a hundred ships and fifty thousand men and laid siege to the city as of old. Then Syracuse appealed to Pyrrhus, once the friend of Agathocles, who was called the Eagle and the Alexander of his day, and whose alliance had already been sought by Tarentum against the Romans. He dreamed of conquering all Sicily, all Italy, all the world, and he equipped himself for a great struggle, and carried war into the heart of the Roman country. He beat the Romans in battle, but he knew, and said frankly, that a few more such victories would ruin him. He was in winter quarters in Tarentum when the Syracusan ambassadors came to him and implored his help. Hoping for easier conquests, he set out for Tauromenium with his army and his famous elephants. The Carthaginians did not await his coming, but withdrew with their fleet and their forces, and he entered Syracuse in triumph; the rival factions united to deliver up their city, their fleet, their army, and their treasure to his care. But he was determined to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily altogether, and he now advanced westward with more than thirty thousand men, accompanied by two hundred ships that sailed round the coast.
Before Eryx, the lofty stronghold above Drepanon, a position which even now looks almost impregnable, he went forward alone and fully armed, and made his vow of games and sacrifices to Hercules; the trumpets sounded, the scaling-ladders were set against the walls, and he himself was the first to reach the rampart. Hand to hand he grappled with the foe, stabbing, thrusting, wrestling with superhuman strength, unhurt in the thick of the perilous fray, till men shrank away from him in awe, as if he had been a god, and the fortress was taken with great slaughter. A half-ruined mediaeval castle, partly a town gaol, is built round all that remains of Aphrodite’s temple — a bit of marble, a tank hollowed in the rock, and the marvel of Sicily lying far below in a haze of colour. As he stood there, the Molossian king must have felt that he could take the island in the hollow of his hand; and so he did. But he used his conquest ill, and he tried to press the people to serve under him against Carthage, until they rebelled; and he murdered some of the great in Syracuse, as the tyrants had always done; but before his expedition was ready he found himself so hemmed in by treachery, smouldering revolution, and sedition, that he took an excuse to go back to Italy and left the island to itself. It is told that as he sailed away he looked back, and said to those about him that they were leaving behind a great field, in which the Romans and the Carthaginians might exercise their arms. And so it came to pass, for he was beaten by the Romans at the river by Beneventum, on the same ground where Charles of Anjou destroyed Manfred and his army fifteen hundred years later, and where many other famous fights were fought in after times.
With the reign of Hiero the second the story of the Greeks in the south hastens to its close, while the vast shadow of Rome spreads wide over the mainland and the islands. With the departure of Pyrrhus and the consequent freedom from all restraint, the old troubles broke out in Syracuse, the usual consequences followed, and while the citizens took one side, the soldiers took the other. The troops chose two generals, Hiero and another; they entered the city by treachery, got possession of the power, and from that time Hiero appears alone in command. He was a man of no great birth, but as soon as he had made himself ruler, the usual fables and legends were told of his childhood and early years; how he had been exposed to die of hunger as an infant, and afterwards recognized by his father; how, when he was a boy in school, a wolf rushed in and tore his tablets from his hand, and how, when he ran out to follow the wild beast and get them back, the schoolhouse fell in, and he alone was saved of all the children; owls perched upon his lance, and eagles on his shield, in short, of him was told the whole cycle of fairy tales, which, for the people, distinguished the great man from the common crowd. Yet in one respect he was unlike the rest of those strong men who had grasped the power with rude hands and held it with an iron grip before him; he was young, kind, and gentle, and after the first bold stroke he seems to have held his own, or what he had taken for his own, more by the love of his subjects than any rougher means. To strengthen his position he married the lovely Philistis, through whom he allied himself, by the female line, with the great house of Dionysius. Of all the beautiful heads which we find upon the g
old and silver coins of Sicily, and there are many, none can compare with that of Hiero’s queen. One may fancy that Helen of Troy had such a face, or Semiramis, or divine Athene herself, but it is hard to believe that so fair a woman ever lived; and if such little history of her as has come down to us be true, she was as good and wise as she was beautiful.
Hiero could no longer hope to face Carthage in war as Agathocles had done, still less to stem the tide of Rome’s advancing might; he could not even hope to rule all Sicily, and he contented himself with opposing the nearer and more dangerous enemies of Syracuse. Foremost of these were the Mamertines, who had already given Pyrrhus trouble and whose compact strength was penetrating into the interior of Sicily like a wedge. Hiero did not ally himself with the Romans, but succeeded in keeping on good terms with them by occasionally doing them a service, and while they were engaged in conquering the people of Rhegium, he endeavoured to make himself master of Messina on the other side of the straits. After taking a number of small towns belonging to the Mamertines, he fought a pitched battle with them near Messina itself and so completely defeated them that they were about to abandon the city, when a Carthaginian fleet appeared, not with the open intention of helping the Mamertines, but with such a considerable force as left no doubt of their ultimate intentions, in Hiero’s mind. Contenting himself with the victory he had won, he withdrew to Syracuse, where the people crowned him king with great festivities and rejoicing. From this time forward, Messina was coveted by three powers, — by Hiero himself, by the Carthaginians, and by Rome; and as the population divided itself into two parties, the one for Carthage, the other for the Romans, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the latter should gain the upper hand. And so it happened. The Mamertines sent an embassy to Rome from Messina, asking for help, in the year 265 B.C., and the favourable answer returned by the Romans became the cause of the first Punic war.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1418