But this was not the end of Hiero’s reign, for the events which followed occupied a considerable time and it was not until he had governed more than fifty years, and was nearly ninety years of age, that he at last left his kingdom to his grandson, who, after a series of mistakes chiefly attributable to his advisers, lost his life by the hands of conspirators and left his kingdom a prey to the Romans.
It must not be forgotten that during Hiero’s long reign, Sicily became the battlefield of Rome and Carthage, as Pyrrhus had seen that it must, and that the first part of the struggle for empire occupied no less than three and twenty years, during which the war was waged without ceasing from one end of Sicily to the other, through more than half of Italy and over many hundred miles of sea. It must be remembered, however, that the first Punic war was called the Sicilian war in Rome, and that the first move of importance made by the Romans was the capture of Messina, or perhaps, as we should say, the occupation of that city, since Caius Claudius got possession of it without striking a blow. As the Carthaginians had frequently done on former occasions, they now landed their forces at Lilybaeum and marched along the southern coast towards Akragas, which now becomes Agrigentum in history. But the situation was not the same as in former times, since the adversary of Carthage was no longer Syracuse but Rome; and it was the object of Hanno, the Carthaginian general, to make alliance with the Sicilian cities against a common enemy instead of destroying everything he found in his way, as his predecessors had done. Hiero and the Syracusans joined him, as Agrigentum had already agreed to do, and the Sicilian armies moved up to the neighbourhood of Messina, where it was expected that the fighting should begin. Before attempting to bring over his troops the Roman general, who was the consul Appius Claudius, attempted to persuade both the Carthaginians and Hiero to retire. As soon as he had received their refusal, he brought a large force over by night, in all manner of little craft, of the roughest and poorest description, whereupon he got the nickname ‘Caudex,’ which may be interpreted to mean the trunk of a tree hollowed to form a boat, in fact what we familiarly call a ‘dug-out.’ When one considers the difficulty of navigating the straits of Messina at the present day, when steam vessels under way sometimes become unmanageable in the currents and are driven into collision, it must be admitted that what Appius Claudius accomplished was no light undertaking, even with the help of fishermen and boatmen who knew the waters; yet the immediate result of the daring move was of less importance than might have been expected. Hiero and his troops were nearer to Messina than the Carthaginians, and sustained the first attack, the result of which was so much to their disadvantage that Hiero withdrew towards Syracuse on the following night with all his force, and evidently with the intention of withdrawing from his alliance with Carthage as soon as possible. Left to deal with the Carthaginians only, the Romans found them strongly intrenched between the little lagoons, which are still to be seen near the Faro, and the sea, and after a fruitless attempt to carry the works Appius Claudius left a garrison in Messina and made a move against Syracuse. He accomplished nothing, however, though he exposed himself to great personal risk, and he soon afterwards retired to Italy.
In a book of the present dimensions it is impossible to narrate in detail the stirring events of the first Punic war, even so far as they concern Sicily. The reader to whom German or Italian is familiar should read the masterly work of Holm, whom I have followed very closely in the main, and of whom Professor Freeman says that he appears to have collected everything of value in Sicilian history, and from the most varied sources. The principal matter with which we are concerned is the general condition of affairs in the south, when the first war with Carthage began, and the general result upon the country when the war ended, after a duration of twenty-two years.
When Pyrrhus had been decisively beaten, Rome ruled the south of Italy to the Straits, having gradually got possession of all those rich Greek cities, and their dependencies, which had still refused to acknowledge her supremacy after she had finally defeated the Samnites and Gauls at Sentinum in 295 B.C. Her occupation of Messina gave her a hold upon Sicily, which was before long greatly strengthened by the more or less voluntary submission of a great number of other cities that foresaw the result of the struggle and wished to be on the winning side, even though the Romans were exacting allies. As for Hiero, he waited and temporized, with a skill at which we can only guess, but which proves him to have possessed that true historical sense that alone can give a keen intuition of future history, and which has been possessed by every really great statesman in all times; and after manoeuvring to avoid anything like a battle with the Romans, so long as he was still nominally on the Carthaginian side, he became convinced that the Romans were to be the winners, and he openly allied himself with them. A Carthaginian fleet which arrived near Syracuse soon afterwards, ostensibly to help him, but of course in the hope of getting control of the city as a base of operations, sailed away again. The conditions of the alliance acknowledged Hiero as king of a small territory in the southeast corner of the island, but required of him the payment of a proportionate tribute to Rome, and it is no wonder if Hiero, remembering the deeds of his predecessors, who had never really consolidated their power, should have supposed that Rome could conquer Carthage with comparative ease. From the outbreak of the first Punic war to the destruction of Carthage, the fight lasted a hundred and eighteen years; but though Hiero was deceived as to the magnitude of the memorable struggle, his judgment of the result was correct, and his instinct was not at fault in regard to the immediate advantages of the alliance he made. If he had remained the friend of Carthage, there can be no doubt but that Syracuse would have become their chief stronghold, instead of Agrigentum, and would have suffered the final disaster which overtook their city. Instead, and without at any time performing any brilliant action, or winning any great battle, he shielded Syracuse from danger throughout his reign, and at last made himself so indispensable to Rome that she was forced to accept from him a present of money, which the Senate would have given much to refuse, for the sake of Rome’s dignity; yet, as soon as the first long war was over, he helped the Carthaginians to put down the great mutiny that broke out in their own army.
His character was upright and honourable in the extreme, and while protecting his small kingdom from the consequences of the war which was being waged between the two great nations, he devoted himself to its welfare in every other way, improved its agriculture and made it one of the most important trading states in the world, at a time when the commerce of Carthage was necessarily greatly reduced. The position occupied by Syracuse under Hiero may aptly be compared with that of Belgium from the date of its independence to the present day, though under a totally different form of government, and in widely different conditions; but a solid modern representative government possesses over the very best form of the ancient absolute monarchy the inestimable advantage that its stability at no time depends upon the genius of an individual, and therefore, to use a comparison from commerce, it bears the same relation to absolutism that a long-established corporation bears to an individual banker who has no partners.
While the Romans were besieging Agrigentum, losing a fleet at Lipari, winning battles in the west of the island, slowly driving their enemies back and establishing their power with that astonishing comprehension of military supply which they early displayed in warfare, Hiero was enriching Syracuse, extending his trade and multiplying those resources of wealth and provisions which made him indispensable to the Romans themselves. His success in this respect proves what Sicily could do in peace after a century and a half of bloodshed, or much more, if one choose to go farther back, beyond the first Carthaginian invasion — a century and a half of foreign wars, internal dissensions, race struggles, and cruel tyrannies. The same boundless recuperative power is in the island to‑day, and the time is not far distant when the commerce and manufactures of Sicily will equal that of all Italy, from the straits to Florence, and will compare favourably with th
at of the whole Italian peninsula.
Hiero’s government has been described as a wise combination of magnificence and economy, of strength and gentleness; he dealt with foreign powers in the name of the Syracusan people, not in his own; he refused the outward insignia of royalty, and seems to have lived simply in the vast city he had restored and beautified, surrounding himself with such men of talent as he could attract to Syracuse. He made presents of great value not only to Rome but to Egypt, and even to Rhodes, most often in the form of corn and probably in times of scarcity; but we hear no tales of his own extravagance, still less of any excessive exactions, whether to satisfy his own caprices or for any purpose of aggrandizement or conquest. His was a model government for times of peace; it lacked every element, except wealth, which could have made it successful in war, and would have been obliged, like Carthage, to employ mercenaries altogether, for lack of a standing army. Two great nations, the one warlike, the other commercial, tried the two methods on a vast scale, and Carthage, the commercial nation, lost in the end, and the poor Roman annihilated the rich Phoenician.
The greatest man at Hiero’s court was without doubt Archimedes, and the most extraordinary of Hiero’s works, though by far the least useful, was the ship of four thousand and two hundred tons which he sent to Alexandria as a present to Ptolemy.
Archimedes was born in 287 B.C., being according to some authorities a relative of Hiero’s family. He must certainly be ranked with the greatest mathematicians and mechanics that ever lived, and his natural gifts developed to the proportions of genius in the congenial atmosphere of Syracuse. It will be remembered that the Syracusans at all times showed considerable inventive talent, especially in the arts of war, and that the elder Dionysius held a sort of congress of engineers and shipbuilders, who designed the first ships that were built with five banks of oars, as well as the long-range catapults which did such execution upon the Carthaginian fleet, when planted at the entrance of the harbour. The magnitude of the works which remain in Syracuse, the astonishing ease with which the builders handled the great masses of stone, the marvellous beauty of the theatre hewn out of the live rock, by sheer quarrying and without any builder’s work, the graceful curves and the harmonious proportions of the amphitheatre, which far surpasses the Roman colosseum, and which almost rivals it in size, all these show to what a height the art of architecture, the science of mathematics, and the skill of the stone-cutter were carried in the only city of that day which rivalled Athens and Alexandria. From his earliest youth Archimedes must have watched the builders at work and studied the plans and sketches and working drawings that were used on the spot, and his intensely practical genius must have begun to grapple with the greatest problems in mathematics and the most difficult theorems of geometry, long before he dreamed that he possessed the power to solve the one or demonstrate the other. The results his studies have left to the world are enormous, and can hardly be completely understood without some mathematical learning. His method of squaring the parabola was the first step towards all accurate measurement of curved figures. His discovery of the relation between a cylinder, of which the height equals the diameter, to the greatest sphere it can contain, has remained for all time one of the greatest mathematical feats accomplished by the human mind. His theory of the centre of gravity justified Lagrange in calling him the father of mechanics. He was the discoverer of specific gravity, which is one of the chief foundations of modern chemistry, and it was when he found, in testing a gold crown for the king, that the difference between the weight of any body when weighed in the air and when weighed under water is equal to the weight of the volume of water which the object displaces, that he uttered his memorable exclamation, ‘Eureka!’ ‘I have found it!’ That he should have invented the lever as a mechanical engine is impossible, but he undoubtedly invented some of its applications, and he must have discovered its laws when he said, ‘Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.’ Holm doubts whether he actually set fire to the Roman fleet with a burning-glass, when, after Hiero’s death, the city was besieged by Marcellus; but the historian cites two interesting parallel instances to prove that such a feat was possible. In 514 A.D. Proculus is said to have fired Vitalian’s fleet before Constantinople by the same means. Further, in 1747 Buffon succeeded in setting fire to wood at a distance of •a hundred and fifty feet, and in melting lead at a hundred and forty feet, by means of a system of one hundred and sixty movable mirrors, by which, in the month of April, and when the sunlight was not strong, he concentrated the sun’s rays upon a point. Archimedes invented countless machines of less importance, such as the hydraulic serpent, which was probably the instrument worked by a single man in pumping out Hiero’s ship. His whole life was spent in the application of mathematics and mechanics to useful needs in peace and war. His end was characteristic of his life, for when Marcellus, on taking Syracuse, gave orders that no one should harm him, it is said that a soldier came upon unawares and stepped upon the figure he was drawing in sand. The man of genius protested sharply against the disturbance. The soldier drew his sword and killed the greatest man in the world with a foolish laugh.
We have in Athenaeus a very elaborate description of the great ship which Hiero built and launched inside the harbour of Syracuse. Judging from the nature of the ground, and with some knowledge of shipbuilding, I think that it would have been impossible to build a vessel of four thousand tons and more in the arsenal near Ortygia. The work must have been done in the low land by the shore, outside the gate, and between it and the swamp.
Athenaeus says that Hiero brought enough timber from Mount Etna to build sixty triremes and that he got planks and lumber for various purposes from other parts of Sicily and from Italy. Archias the Corinthian was the chief builder, and three hundred workmen were employed only to trim the timber. As soon as the planking was finished it was covered with sheet lead, as we use sheet copper. The hull was built in six months, and Archimedes launched it by a system of screws worked by a few persons. The vessel was bolted with brass, and brass nails were used, the holes being plugged with lead, driven in upon tarred canvas. The ship was constructed with twenty banks of oars, and here it is as well to say at once that nothing whatever is known as to the arrangement of the banks, even in the ordinary trireme; the late Professor Breusing, who was not only for many years the director of the celebrated naval school in Bremerhaven, but also a very eminent philologian, has completely destroyed the old-fashioned belief of scholars that three banks of oars situated one above the other could under any circumstances have been pulled at the same time. Those who are interested in the subject may consult his invaluable work, ‘Die Nautik der Alten.’ That Hiero’s ship had at least three decks is certain from the otherwise confusing description of Athenaeus. He says that it had three entrances, the lowest leading to the hold, which was reached by two long ladders; the second gave access to the eating-rooms, and the third was for the soldiers. A great number of rooms are described, of which the floors were made of mosaic and depicted very beautifully the whole story of the Iliad. On the upper deck was a gymnasium, and also a garden filled with all sorts of plants, set in casks full of earth, and there were walks shaded with awnings, and a temple to Venus paved with Sicilian agate, the walls and roof being made of cypress wood and the doors of ivory and citron. There was a state cabin, containing five couches, a bookcase, and a clock set into the ceiling, and there was a complete bath having a tank lined with marble from Tauromenium. There were also stalls for ten horses on each side. In the fore part of the vessel there was a large fresh-water tank made of wood and tarred canvas, and holding two thousand measures; there was also a fish tank filled with salt water. Figures of Atlas at well-proportioned intervals, and apparently carved in wood, carried the rail or were placed outside the bulwarks to support the great weight of the wooden turrets. There was a catapult on deck which hurled a stone weighing three talents, or an arrow twelve cubits long, equivalent to eighteen feet. The vessel had three masts, each carryi
ng two yards, which latter were fitted with a curious device for dropping heavy weights upon an attacking vessel. Finally, the bulwark was protected with iron throughout, and there were a number of very long grappling hooks.
This vast construction appears to have been launched and sent to sea as a present to Ptolemy during a time of dearth in Egypt, with an enormous cargo, consisting of sixty thousand measures of corn, ten thousand jars of Sicilian salt fish, five hundred tons’ weight of wool, and five hundred tons of other freight.
The reign of Hiero the Second connects the story of the Greeks with that of the Romans, and his alliance with the latter helped to determine the future position of Sicily; the destinies of the southern mainland were already decided, and Italy was altogether Roman. One of the most important turning points in Roman history was the subjugation of the great island, which became Rome’s first province, because it was too thoroughly Hellenic to be incorporated in the Republic. The influence and domination of the Greeks in the south had lasted, at the beginning of the first Punic war, from about 700 B.C. to 264 B.C., that is to say, more than four hundred years, during which the original elements of the population, as well as the greater part of the Phoenician colonies in Sicily, had become completely hellenized in speech, manners, and culture, and to a great extent also in blood, by constant intermarriages in time of peace. The reason why greater Greece never became a consolidated empire lay in the Greek character, and not in the lack of enterprise, of military ability, or of a common interest. Had the whole south at any time remained united for a century, it would have easily grown to be a match for Carthage. The astonishing success of Gelon, of the elder Dionysius, and of Agathocles, are sufficient proof that this is true. But the Greek had neither the Roman’s conception of political unity, nor the Carthaginian’s commercial talent. He was as incapable of sinking his highly original personality in the ranks of an organization as he was of devoting his whole energies to money making; he was a free lance rather than a trained soldier; an artist, not a middle-class citizen; a man of genius, not a banker. In the heat of enthusiasm there were few feats which he could not accomplish, but his restless blood could not brook the daily round of a humdrum existence. In war he loved the brilliant pageant, the high paean song, the splendid arms, the woven garlands, the air of triumph before the battle, and the trophy and the sacrifice after the fight. When peace followed war, he craved the excitement of the great Greek games, the emotions of the almost impossibly beautiful in art, the heart-beating of the reckless player throwing for high stakes, the physical intoxication of wine, and the intellectual intoxication of the theatre; and when these palled he lost patience with peace and became the most gratuitously quarrelsome of human beings, taking offence at the hue of his neighbour’s cloak, attacking a friend for an imaginary slight upon the least of his innumerable vanities, and making war about nothing, with the fine conviction of a thoroughly ill-tempered child that smashes its new doll to atoms rather than be good for five minutes. There is often something rudimentary and childlike in very gifted men; a lack of patience that makes the long way of thought intolerably irksome and drives the man of genius to the accomplishment of the apparently impossible by the shortest road.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1419