of its walls. The Peloponnesians, however, did not immediately begin the siege, but proceeded to take the town of Molycrium, a Corinthian colony, but subject to Athens, which gave its name to the northern Rhion. But on receiving intelligence of the approaching invasion, Demosthenes had gone into Acarnania, and, though with difficulty, had prevailed on the Acarnanians to lay aside their resentment, and to send a thousand heavy-armed troops with him to the relief of Naupactus. This reenforcement he introduced into the town by sea; and Eurylochus, when he heard of its arrival, deemed a siege hopeless, and dismissed his Etolian forces. The rest, instead of marching home, he cantoned in the adjacent part of Ætolia; for he had been induced by the Ambracians to promise his support in a fresh expedition which they meditated against the Amphilochian Argos and Acarnania. onian tribes of Mount Eta, the Bomienses, and Callienses, whose seats approached the Malian Gulf. They came upon the invaders at Ægitium, and descending from the higher ground on several sides at once, assailed them with a shower of missiles. The Athenians could only repel their attacks by charges very fatiguing to heavy-armed infantry on such ground, but which the Etolians, practised in this mode of fighting, could easily elude. Yet as long as the small body of bowmen which Demosthenes had brought with him was able to ply the assailants with their arrows, they were kept in check. But when the commander of this little corps was slain, and the men, having spent their arrows, were dispersed, the heavy-armed troops were left exposed to attacks which, at length, they had not strength to resist, and they sought safety in flight. The country through which they had to retreat was rugged and intricate, unknown to them, but familiar to their pursuers, who were It was winter before the Ambracians were equipped and trained for traversing it with ready to fulfil their part of the compact; they speed: their guide, a Messenian, had already then invaded Amphilochia with 3000 heavy infallen. Many were overtaken and killed in fantry, and took up a strong position at a place their flight; still more lost their way, and per- called Olpæ, standing on a hill near the sea, ished in the pathless ravines into which they which in ancient times had belonged to the fell. A number took shelter in a wood, where Acarnanians, and had been fortified by them as they could find no outlet, and were suffocated the seat of their national court of justice. It by the flames which the enemy kindled around was here that they were to receive the sucthem. A great number of the allies and 120 cours promised by Eurylochus; and he no soonof the Athenians, among them their general, er heard that they had posted themselves at Procles, were slain. The rest effected a nar-Olpæ, than he collected his troops and marched row escape to Eneon, and, after having recovered the bodies of their comrades, sailed to Naupactus, and shortly after to Athens. Demosthenes, dreading the displeasure of the people, remained behind at Naupactus. to join them. In the mean while, the Acarnanians had sent their forces to defend Argos, and the Amphilochians had encamped at a place called Crenæ (Wells), on the skirt of the hills which border the Ambracian Gulf, and The Etolians, proud of this achievement, south of Argos, with a view to intercept the and desiring to revenge themselves on the Mes- Peloponnesian army. At the same time as an senians of Naupactus, who had brought the in- Athenian squadron of twenty galleys had just vader into their country, sent three ambassa- arrived in the Western Sea under Aristoteles dors-one for each of their principal tribes-to and Hierophon, the allies sent to solicit aid Corinth and Sparta, to solicit assistance; and from them, and also despatched a messenger to in the beginning of autumn a Peloponnesian Naupactus, to invite Demosthenes to take the army, under three Spartans-Eurylochus, as command of their army. On the other hand, commander-in-chief, and Macarius and Mendæus the Ambracians at Olpæ, apprized of these prepin a subordinate capacity-marched to Delphi. arations, and fearing that Eurylochus might be Their whole force, when they had been joined prevented from joining them, and that they by five hundred heavy-armed from the newly-might themselves be surrounded by the enemy, founded Heraclea, amounted to three thousand. From Delphi Eurylochus made proposals of neutrality or alliance to the Ozolian Locrians, through whose rugged territory his road lay to Naupactus. Those of Amphissa, who, from their neighbourhood and hostility to the Phocians, feared that, in case of refusal, they should be exposed to the first attack and the hardest treatment, both complied with his demands themselves, sending hostages to Delphi, and prevailed upon most of their kindred tribes to give the like security, and to join their forces to the Peloponnesian army. Eurylochus, having lodged the hostages at the Dorian town of Cytinium, set forward, and on his march reduced some of the Locrian towns which had refused to renounce their alliance with Athens. In the territory of Naupactus he met the Eto-mally elected commander-in-chief of the allied han army, and with their united forces they ravaged the land, and made themselves masters of an unfortified suburb. The town itself was in great danger, as its population, reduced by Its recent disaster, was unequal to the defence sent home to desire that the whole force of the city might march to their assistance. Eurylochus, however, who met with no resistance in his passage through Acarnania, which had been drained of its whole military strength for the expedition to Argos, eluded the observation of the enemy at Crenæ, and effected a junction with his allies at Olpæ; and the whole army encamped on another point of the same hill, called Metropolis; a name, perhaps, connected with the ancient importance of Olpæ. They had not been long in this position before the Athenian squadron entered the Ambracian Gulf, and came to moorings near the foot of the hill occupied by the enemy; and Demosthenes, likewise, arrived at Argos with 200 Messenians and 60 Athenian bowmen. He was now for army, which consisted mainly of Acarnanians, as the greater part of the Amphilochians were kept at home by the invasion of their territory. The whole force with which he marched against Olpæ did not equal that of the Pelopon nesians and their allies. The two armies re- who told them of the agreement concluded with the Peloponnesians, but threatened them as traitors. At length, however, they were induced, as far they could, to single out the Ambracians, of whom they slew about two hundred; the rest made their escape into the adjacent territory of the Agræans, and were hospitably received by the king Salynthius. In the mean while, their countrymen, who were on their march to join them, bad encamp mained in presence of each other five days parted by a ravine; on the sixth day they prepared for battle. Whether the combatants were still parted by the same ravine, or had changed their ground, does not appear. But Demosthenes had on his right a hollow way covered with a thicket; and foreseeing that the enemy's superiority in numbers would enable them to outflank him, he here posted 400 men, between heavy and light troops, in ambuscade. The is-ed for the night on a hill which lay in their road sue proved the sagacity of these dispositions. In the heat of the battle, the left wing of the Peloponnesians, s, commanded by Eurylochus himself, having turned the enemy's right, which was occupied by Demosthenes with the Messenians and the Athenian bowmen, was taken in reverse by the troops, which started from their ambush, and was soon completely routed. Eurylochus himself and Macarius were slain; and terror and confusion spread through the rest of the line, except the right wing, where the Ambracians were victorious, and pursued the flying enemy to Argos. But in their return from the pursuit they fell in with the Acarnanians, who had defeated the main body, and with difficulty made good their retreat to Olpæ. named Idomene, occupying only one of its two summits. The other, without their knowledge, was seized by the troops which Demosthenes had sent on before the main body. He himself having set out in the evening from Olpæ, reached Idomene before sunrise with one half of his army, while the other made a circuit over the Amphilochian mountains. At daybreak he fell upon the Ambracians, who had not yet risen, and were so little prepared for an attack, that they at first mistook the enemy for their allies: an error on which Demosthenes had calculated, and had therefore placed the Messenians in the first ranks, that their Dorian speech might de ceive the sentinels. The greater part of the Ambracians were slain on the spot; and of The victory cost the conquerors about three those who escaped this slaughter, most met hundred men: on the other side the loss was with death in some other form. Some, entangreat; and Menedæus, on whom the command gled in a mountainous region, where they could devolved after the death of his colleagues, found not find their way, but where every step was fahimself reduced to the embarrassing alternative miliar to their pursuers, who had also the adof sustaining a blockade both by land and sea, vantage of being lightly armed, were cut off by or of attempting a retreat before a victorious the parties which had been posted in ambusenemy. In this strait, when he applied, accord-cade; others reached the shore of the gulf at ing to custom, for leave to bury his slain, he the time when the Athenian squadron was sailalso sounded Demosthenes and his Acarnanian ing by, and they preferred to commit themselves colleagues on the subject of his retreat. They to the waves and to the mercy of the Athewere not unwilling to grant him the permission nians, rather than fall into the hands of their which he desired, but only for the Peloponne-barbarous enemies, the Amphilochians. A very sian troops, so that the Ambracians and the small number made their way to Ambracia. mercenaries should be excluded from the treaty and kept ignorant of it. The Acarnanians, perhaps, only considered the advantage which they should have over the Ambracians when aban-ken refuge among the Agræans, to apply for the doned by their allies. Demosthenes calculated the discredit which such an instance of perfidy and meanness would throw on the Peloponnesian cause in the west. Neither of these reflections moved Menedæus or the Peloponne-extent of the recent disaster. His feelings sian officers to whom these terms were proposed, though they must have known that their situation was not hopeless, since they might expect speedy succours from Ambracia. In fact, the whole force of Ambracia was already on its way towards Olpæ, though it had not heard the news of the battle, and Demosthenes, having been informed of its approach, had sent one division of his army forward to secure the strong-were reported to have fallen, because they seemest positions and lay ambushes in its line of ed incredible in comparison with the extent and march, and was preparing to follow with the power of Ambracia. But he had no doubt that, others, when the Peloponnesians, issuing from if the victors had wished to prosecute their adthe camp in small parties, under the pretext of vantage, the town must have yielded to the first gathering herbs and firewood, as they proceed- assault. Demosthenes was eager for this coned, quickened their pace, and were soon dis- summation of his success. But the Acarnanicovered to be in full retreat. The comrades ans had begun to reflect, that what had hitherwhom they had left behind, when they perceiv- to been their principal danger was now comed this, set out with the utmost speed to over-pletely removed, and that there was room to take them, and the Acarnanians, whose gen-apprehend one of a different kind. They foreerals alone were in the secret, in pursuit of saw that if Ambracia was taken, it would be both. At first they fell upon both indiscrim- occupied by the Athenians, who had, indeed, inately, and would not listen to their generals, been useful allies, but might prove more trouble The Acarnanians marched back with the spoils of the slain to Argos. The next day a herald came from the Ambracians who had ta burial of those who had fallen in the retreat from Olpæ. He was struck with surprise by the pile of arms which he saw; and this led to an explanation which unfolded to him the whole broke out in an exclamation of grief and aston-ishment; but he was too much oppressed by the magnitude of the evil to execute his commission, and only carried back the mournful tidings. It was the heaviest loss, Thucydides observes, that any Greek city suffered within the same space of time during the war; and he did not venture to record the numbers which The chorus had usually landed at Delos in the midst of a crowd of spectators, and was forced to begin the hymn in honour of the god amid the preparations for its solemn march. Nicias landed with his chorus on Rhenea; and the next morning the channel between it and Delos was seen crossed by a bridge magnificently decorated, over which the procession moved in orderly state towards the temple. After the games, he dedicated a brazen palmtree, and purchased a piece of ground, the profits of which he devoted to sacrificial banquets for the Delians, on the light condition of praying for the prosperity of the founder. some neighbours than the weakened and hum-nary manner. In the following spring (425) Athens discovered none of the langour of recent convalescence; but, as if her enemies at home could not afford sufficient employment for her returning vigour, addressed herself with fresh energy to a distant and wider field of action, where she had hitherto made only some faint efforts, which we have not yet noticed, because they were not immediately attended with any important consequences. It was towards Sicily that she now began to direct her views more steadily and earnestly. We have seen that even in the time of Pericles this object had kindled ambitious hopes in some of her more ardent and enterprising spirits, which that cool and cautious statesman is said to have repressed. Yet it kept so firm a hold on many minds, that it may be said to have The next campaign (425) opened with bright- contributed its share to the various occasions er prospects for Athens. The pestilence had of the Peloponnesian war; for the part which now disappeared; and, either in gratitude for Athens took in the quarrel between Corinth and relief, or to hasten its approach, the Athenians, Corcyra was mainly determined by the convein the course of the preceding winter, probably nient position of the island with regard to a Sito fulfil the command of the same oracle which cilian expedition; and the importance of her had been partially obeyed by Pisistratus,† puri- struggles for Acarnania and the adjacent islfied the island of Delos, the seat of the god, ands, to which the victories of Demosthenes who, it was commonly believed, both sent and gave the turn which has been just described, stayed such diseases. Perhaps it was thought ultimately depended on the same object. And prudent to counteract an opinion which the Del- as henceforward the affairs of Sicily become phic oracle may have rendered prevalent among more and more intimately connected with the the Greeks, that Apollo sided with the Pelopon-history of Greece, this may be the most suitanesians. His sacred island was now complete- ble place for taking a review of the leading ly freed from pollution by the removal of all re-events which affected the condition of the islmains of the dead who had been interred in it; and in that period of the Peloponnesian war on and it was decreed that in future it should nev- which we are entering. er be profaned by the death or the birth of any Gelo survived the battle of Himera only about human being; the sick and the pregnant were a couple of years, during which he reigned in to be removed in time to the adjacent islet of great prosperity at Syracuse. He granted peace Rhenea, which was divided from Delos by so on moderate terms to the Carthaginians ;* and narrow a channel that Polycrates, in the height to express their gratitude for his forbearance, of his power, had consecrated it to Apollo by they sent a crown of a hundred talents of gold to uniting the two islands with a chain. As it his wife Damarata, who was believed to have might be hoped that this expedient would ap- seconded their suit with her intercession. Whilepease the wrath of the god, other ceremonies his victory was recent, and his power and repuwere instituted for the purpose of propitiating tation at their height, he thought it expedient to his favour. An ancient festival, described in strengthen his dominion by giving it the apone of the Homeric hymns as celebrated by a pearance of legal authority. He called an asgreat concourse of the long-robed Ionians, who sembly of the citizens to meet in arms, appearresorted to Delos, with their wives and chil-ed in the midst of it unarmed, and made a dren, to delight the eye and ear of Phoebus by trials of strength, dancing, and music, was now revived and made quinquennial; and a horserace was added to the games. It was on one of these occasions that Nicias, having been appointed to conduct the sacred chorus and the Victims which were sent from Athens, displayed his wealth and munificence in an extraordi harangue in vindication of his past conduct. It was a piece of mockery, not more hazardous, though somewhat less impudent, than Sylla's affectation of submission to the laws.+ The Syracusan tyrant had secured himself, as we have seen, by the discordant interests and pas If we may believe Plutarch, Apophth. Reg. et Imp., one of the conditions which he exacted was, that they should cease to sacrifice their children to their Moloch or Cronus. + Plut., Svll., 34. body of Dorian colonists was sent to supply the place of the citizens who were sacrificed to Theron's revenge. Theron mediated between Polyzelus and his brother, and united his house with the royal family of Syracuse by new ties of affinity: he bestowed his niece on Hiero, while he himself married a daughter of Polyzelus.* sions of the people over which he reigned, and | ly punished for her meditated rebellion; and a still more effectually by a large body of mercenary troops, on whom he had conferred the freedom of the city. It may easily be believed that in such an assembly the victorious general who condescended to assume the character of a citizen, and, as if before his equals, to render an account of his proceedings, was received with acclamations of applause, and greeted as a benefactor, deliverer, and king, by the admi- Hiero's reign was no less prosperous, and, ring multitude. He displays the same policy in perhaps, even more brilliant, than his predecesthe last acts of his life. He directed that the sor's. The Tuscans had infested the coasts of law which restrained the expense of funerals Lower Italy with their piracies, and Cuma imshould be observed in his own case; and, ac- plored Hiero's protection against them. He cordingly, his remains were interred without sent a fleet, which, by a signal victory, crushed pomp, but in a sepulchre of royal magnificence. the maritime power of the piratical states.+ A The multitude attended his obsequies to a dis- part of the Tuscan spoil, dedicated to Zeus at tance of five-and-twenty miles from the city, Olympia, spread the renown of the conqueror and heroic honours were decreed to his tomb. over Greece, and still preserves a record of his He had made provision for securing the succes- triumph. After the death of Theron, his sucsion in his line, notwithstanding the dangers to cessor, Thrasydæus, who, in his father's lifewhich it was exposed by his premature death. time, had instigated Polyzelus against his elder He left an infant son, and three brothers, Hiero, brother, made war upon Hiero, and collected Polyzelus, and Thrasybulus. Hiero, the eld- all the forces of Agrigentum and Himera against est, he appointed to govern Syracuse during the Syracuse. Hiero, however, gained a decisive minority of his heir,† but he intrusted Polyzelus victory; and Thrasydæus, whose authority restwith the guardianship of the young prince, and, ed only upon force, was compelled to quit his to balance the power of Hiero, invested him dominions, and retired to Greece. He sought with the command of the army, and directed shelter at Megara; but, through some causes, that he should marry his widow Damarata.‡ of which we have no account, was there conHis brothers carried his will into execution; demned to death. After the expulsion of her but the jealousy which he had no doubt fore-tyrant, Agrigentum recovered her democratical seen, and to which he probably trusted for the safety of his son, soon caused an open breach between the regent and the guardian. Hiero endeavoured in vain to get rid of his brother, who was formidable both on account of his station and of his popular character, by employing him in foreign expeditions, while he secured himself by taking a body of mercenaries into his service. Polyzelus, finding his posi-planted a new colony, composed of 5000 Syration at Syracuse unsafe, withdrew to seek protection from his wife's father, Theron, who, while he himself ruled at Agrigentum, had committed the government of Himera to his son Thrasydæus. Hiero at first prepared to make war upon Theron, on account of the shelter which he afforded to his rival; but the quarrel was unexpectedly brought to an amicable issue. The Himeræans were impatient of the government of Thrasydæus, which seems to have been violent and oppressive; and they engaged in a conspiracy against him, which was headed by Capys and Hippocrates, two of Theron's kins-ever succeed to the throne of Syracuse; and men. Hiero was on his march against Theron, when the conspirators opened a negotiation with him, and offered to betray Theron into his hands. But it would seem as if Hiero thought that the immediate advantage which he might derive from their treason would be outweighed by the danger with which the fall of the Agrigentine dynasty might threaten his own, and, instead of accepting their offers, he, by the intervention of the poet Simonides, betrayed them to Theron. This generous sacrifice became the cement of a firm alliance between the two princes. The two chief conspirators fled to Camicus: Himera was severe * Diodor., xi., 72. + Boeckh on Pindar, Ol. ii., p. 118. # Schol. Pindar, Ol. ii., 29. These expeditions are variously described by Diodorus, xi., 48, and the Scholiast on Pindar, Ol. ii., 29. Schol. Pind., Ol., ii., 173. Constitution, and made peace with Hiero. Hiero aspired to a higher glory than that of a conqueror: he is said to have been ambitious of the honours which Grecian piety paid to the founders of cities. He removed the inhabitants of Naxos and Catana to Leontium, where they found a kindred population, which, it seems, was compelled to receive them. At Catana he cusans and as many Dorians, who were invited both from Peloponnesus and from other Sicilian towns. He changed the name of the city to Etna, and greatly enlarged its territory at the expense of the neighbouring Sicels.** As the colonists were all Dorians, he prescribed a form of government for them, founded on the leading features of the Spartan institutions; but they continued not the less subject to him; and his main object was, undoubtedly, not an empty title, but to secure an independent principality for himself or his family, if Gelo's heir should he therefore committed the government of the newly-founded city, first to his son Dinomenes, and afterward to the most trusty of his friends. He seems to have extended his views beyond Sicily; he protected the Italian Locrians when they were threatened by Anaxilaus of Rhegium ;tt and it must have been with ambitious motives that he instigated his sons to question the integrity of their virtuous guardian, Micythus, who, after satisfying the young men and *Timæus in Schol. Pind., at the beginning of Ol. ii. + Diodor., xi., 51. The Scholiast on Pind., Pyth., i., 137, mentions the Carthaginians as allied in this war with the Tuscans. In the inscription of the helmet found at Olympia in 1817. See Boeckh on Pindar, p. 225. ◊ Diodor., xi., 53. Ibid., xi., 49. From Gela and Megara, according to the Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth., i., 120. **Diod., xi., 76. ++ Epicharmus in Schol. Pindar, Pyth., ., 98. the cruelty and rapacity of the new ruler provoked his subjects to revolt. The principal forces which he had to bring against Syracuse consisted, besides foreign mercenaries, of the Ætnæans or Catanians, who were attached by gratitude and interest to his house. With these troops, which together amounted to 15,000, he for some time kept possession of the two quarters of Syracuse called Achradina and the Islland, which were enclosed each by separate fortifications, while the rest was occupied by his adversaries. But the Syracusans applied for assistance to Gelo, Agrigentum, Himera, and Selinus, which probably desired the overthrow of the monarchical government at Syracuse to ensure the stability of their own political institutions, and to the Sicel tribes of the interior, which were hostile, not, indeed, to the tyranny, but to the house of the tyrants, who had encroached on their territories, and threatened their independence. All contributed succours, some of ships, others of land forces, which seem to have enabled the insurgents to outnumber and overpower Thrasybulus, both by land and by sea. He was defeated with great loss in a sea-fight and in a battle fought in the suburbs; and finding his affairs desperate, ne their friends by a clear account of his administration, refused to resume the management of their affairs. He collected his private property and quitted the city, accompanied by the applause and regret of the people, and ended his days in honour at Tegea. The consequence was, perhaps, what Hiero had expected, though he did not live to reap any benefit from it; that the sons of Anaxilaus, having lost the main support of their authority, were, not long after, expelled from Rhegium.† Hiero's government at home was not so mild and popular as Gelo's; he is charged with violence and rapacity; perhaps he also took more delight than Gelo in the display of his grandeur. He was an active and successful competitor for the most expensive honours of the Grecian games, and his liberality drew the greatest poets of the age, Simonides, Bacchylides, Pindar, and Æschylus, to his court, where Epicharmus and the philosopher Xenophanes were also admitted to a familiar intercourse with him.‡ Pindar, while he celebrates his wealth and munificence, his institutions and victories, his taste and his virtues, intersperses this praise with delicate warnings, which indicate that Hiero did not bear his high fortune with perfect moderation. His intimacy with Simonides, whom, as we have seen, he intrust-gotiated with his revolted subjects for leave to ed with important commissions, was celebrated in antiquity. But if the poet ever offered him such advice as we find under his name in one of Xenophon's dialogues, it may have come too late, after Hiero had established a system of terror, and had destroyed all the security of private intercourse by the employment of spies and eavesdroppers,¶ and sacrificed several of his friends to slight suspicions.** He died in the city which he had founded, and there received the same honours as Gelo earned from that in which he reigned.++ Polyzelus was already dead; but Gelo's son was still living, and seems to have been acknowledged as the rightful heir to his father's power, though he was not yet of age to wield it. Thrasybulus therefore succeeded Hiero in the government. But Aristotle's language would lead us to believe that he ruled not in his own name, but as the minister or favourite of his nephew, whom, it is said, he endeavoured to corrupt, that he might afterward supplant him; and the resistance which the friends of the young prince opposed to his ambitious designs is described by Aristotle as the occasion of the revolution by which the dynasty of Gelo was soon after overthrown.‡‡ But it is difficult to reconcile these hints with the more explicit account of Diodorus, unless it be supposed that Thrasybulus, on the death of Polyzelus, became the guardian of his nephew, and, after having made him odious and contemptible by inflaming and indulging his passions, set him aside, and usurped the supreme authority. Diodorus says nothing of Gelo's son, but simply relates that Hiero was succeeded by Thrasybulus, and that abdicate his authority and to retire into exile. The Syracusans only wished to be rid of him, and he withdrew to the Italian Locri, where he ended his life in peaceful obscurity. With him the dynasty sank to rise no more. We hear nothing farther either of the son of Gelo, or of Dinomenes, son of Hiero, though he survived his father. The expulsion of the last tyrant was celebrated with an annual festival of liberty, and a democratical constitution was established; and this example was followed throughout all the Greek cities of the island. The But the revolution did not terminate with these political changes. The power of the tyrants had been maintained partly by foreign mercenaries, and partly by adherents whose attachment was purchased by the extinction or the humiliation of an opposite faction. time had now come when those who had been thus deprived of their country and their property might hope for restitution and revenge, and when the safety of the newly-established governments might seem to require that the work of the tyrants should be completely undone, and that their friends should no longer be suffered to retain the privileges and influence which they owed to their favour. At Syracuse Gelo had incorporated more than 10,000 foreign mercenaries among the citizens; and after the expulsion of Thrasybulus, more than 7000 of the number were still enjoying the franchise. They were now viewed with jealousy, as they had perhaps always been with aversion, and one of the first measures after the restoration of liberty, was to disfranchise the whole body. But, as men who owed their fortunes to their swords, they were too proud of their valour and military skill, and too confident in their numbers and union, tamely to submit to such a degradation. They seized the two quarters of the city which had been held during the previous insurrection by Thrasybulus, in which, perhaps, their dwellings principally lay, and here were able to defend themselves against their adver |