of apparent restoration-until her complete prostration and subjugation by Lysander. Now Thucydidês, just before he gets upon the plane of this descending progress, makes a halt, to illustrate the sentiment of Athenian power in its most exaggerated, insolent, and cruel manifestation, by his dramatic fragment of the envoys at Melos. It will be recollected that Herodotus, when about to describe the forward march of Xerxês into Greece, destined to terminate in such fatal humiliationimpresses his readers with an elaborate idea of the monarch's insolence and superhuman pride by various conversations between him and the courtiers about him, as well as by other anecdotes, combined with the overwhelming specifications of the muster at Doriskus. Such moral contrasts and juxtapositions, especially that of ruinous reverse following upon overweening good fortune, were highly interesting to the Greek mind. And Thucydidês-having before him an act of great injustice and cruelty on the part of Athens, committed exactly at this point of time-has availed himself of the form of dialogue, for once in his history, to bring out the sentiments of a disdainful and confident conqueror in dramatic antithesis. They are however his own sentiments, conceived as suitable to the situation; not those of the Athenian envoy-still less, those of the Athenian public-least of all, those of that much-calumniated class of men, the Athenian so

phists.

VOL. VII.

M

CHAPTER LVII.

SICILIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXTINCTION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY.

In the preceding chapters, I have brought down. the general history of the Peloponnesian war to the time immediately preceding the memorable Athenian expedition against Syracuse, which changed the whole face of the war. At this period, and for some time to come, the history of the Peloponnesian Greeks becomes intimately blended with that of the Sicilian Greeks. But hitherto the connection between the two has been merely occasional, and of little reciprocal effect; so that I have thought it for the convenience of the reader to keep the two streams entirely separate, omitting the proceedings of Athens in Sicily during the first ten years of the war. I now proceed to fill up this blank; to recount as much as can be made out of Sicilian events during the interval between 461-416 B.c.; and to assign the successive steps whereby the Athenians entangled themselves in ambitious projects against Syracuse, until they at length came to stake the larger portion of their force upon that fatal hazard.

The extinction of the Gelonian dynasty at Syracuse', followed by the expulsion or retirement of all the other despots throughout the island, left the various Grecian cities to reorganise themselves in

1 See above, vol. v. ch. xliii. p. 276-324, for the history of these I now take up the thread from that chapter.

events.

Unfortu- Expulsion

of the

revolution Gelonian

from Syracuse,

and

from the

Sicilian

free and self-constituted governments. nately our memorials respecting this are miserably scanty; but there is enough to in- dynasty dicate that it was something much more than a of other change from single-headed to popular government. despots It included, farther, transfers on the largest scale other both of inhabitants and of property. The pre- towns. ceding despots had sent many old citizens into exile, transplanted others from one part of Sicily to another, and provided settlements for numerous immigrants and mercenaries devoted to their interest. Of these proceedings much was reversed, when the dynasties were overthrown, so that the personal and proprietary revolution was more complicated and perplexing than the political. After a period of severe commotion, an accommodation was concluded, whereby the adherents of the expelled dynasty were planted partly in the territory of Messênê, partly in the re-established city of Kamarina, in the eastern portion of the southern coast, bordering on Syracuse1.

But though peace was thus re-established, these

Mr. Mitford, in the spirit which is usual with him, while enlarging upon the suffering occasioned by this extensive revolution both of inhabitants and of property throughout Sicily, takes no notice of the cause in which it originated-viz. the number of foreign mercenaries whom the Gelonian dynasty had brought in and enrolled as new citizens (Gelon alone having brought in 10,000, Diodor. xi. 72), and the number of exiles whom they had banished and dispossessed.

I will here notice only one of his misrepresentations respecting the events of this period, because it is definite as well as important (vol. iv. p. 9. chap. xviii. sect. 1).

"But thus (he says) in every little state, lands were left to become public property, or to be assigned to new individual owners. Everywhere, then, that favourite measure of democracy, the equal division of the lands of the state, was resolved upon: a measure impossible to be perfectly executed; impossible to be maintained as executed; and of

Large changes of resident inhabitants -effects of this fact.

large mutations of inhabitants, first begun by the despots, and the incoherent mixture of races, religious institutions, dialects, &c., which was brought about unavoidably during the process-left throughout Sicily a feeling of local instability, very different from the long traditional tenures in Peloponnesus and Attica, and numbered by foreign enemies among the elements of its weakness'. The wonder indeed rather is, that such real and powerful causes of disorder were soon so efficaciously controled by the popular governments, that the half-century now approaching was decidedly the most prosperous and undisturbed period in the history of the island.

The southern coast of Sicily was occupied (be

very doubtful advantage, if it could be perfectly executed and perfectly maintained."

Again-sect. iii. p. 23, he speaks of "that incomplete and iniquitous partition of lands," &c.

Now, upon this we may remark

ever.

1. The equal division of the lands of the state, here affirmed by Mr. Mitford, is a pure fancy of his own. He has no authority for it whatDiodorus says (xi. 76) katekλŋpoúxnσav τǹv xwpav, &c.; and again (xi. 86) he speaks of ròv åvadaoμòv tŷs xwpas, the re-division of the territory but respecting equality of division-not one word does he say. Nor can any principle of division, in this case, be less probable than equality. For one of the great motives of the re-division, was to provide for those exiles who had been dispossessed by the Gelonian dynasty and these men would receive lots, greater or less, on the ground of compensation for loss, greater or less as it might have been. Besides, immediately after the re-division, we find rich and poor mentioned just as before (xi. 86).

:

2. Next Mr. Mitford calls "the equal division of all the lands of the state" the favourite measure of democracy. This is an assertion not less incorrect. Not a single democracy in Greece (so far as my knowledge extends) can be produced in which such equal partition is ever known to have been carried into effect. In the Athenian democracy, especially, not only there existed constantly great inequality of landed property, but the oath annually taken by the popular Heliastic judges had a special clause, protesting emphatically against re-division of the land or extinction of debts. 1 Thucyd. vi. 17.

ginning from the westward) by Selinus, Agrigentum, Gela, and Kamarina. Then came Syracuse, possessing the south-eastern cape, and the southern portion of the eastern coast: next, on the eastern coast, Leontini, Katana, and Naxos: Messênê, on the strait adjoining Italy. The centre of the island, and even much of the northern coast, was occupied by the non-Hellenic Sikels and Sikans: on this coast, Himera was the only Grecian city. Between Himera and Cape Lilybæum, the western corner of the island was occupied by the non-Hellenic cities of Egesta and Eryx, and by the Carthaginian seaports, of which Panormus (Palermo) was the principal.

cities.

dissensions

Ostracism

abandoned.

Of these various Grecian cities, all independent, Relative Syracuse was the first in power, Agrigentum the condition of second. The causes above noticed, disturbing the the Sicilian first commencement of popular governments in all Political of them, were most powerfully operative at Syra- at Syracuse. cuse. We do not know the particulars of the tried and democratical constitution which was there established, but its stability was threatened by more than one ambitious pretender, eager to seize the sceptre of Gelo and Hiero. The most prominent among these pretenders was Tyndarion, who employed a considerable fortune in distributing largesses and procuring partisans among the poor. His political designs were at length so openly manifested, that he was brought to trial, condemned, and put to death; yet not without an abortive insurrection of his partisans to rescue him. After several leading citizens had tried and failed in a similar manner, the people thought it expedient to pass a