Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/491

GREAT POWER OF DIONYSIUS. 469 much terror into the Leontines, that when Dionysius renewed his attack upon them, they no longer felt competent to resist. He re- quired them to surrender their city, to remove to Syracuse, and there to reside for the future as citizens ; which term meant, at the actual time, as subjects of his despotism. The Leontines obeyed the requisition, and their city thus again became an appendage oi Syracuse. 1 These conquests of Dionysius, achieved mainly by corrupting the generals of Naxos and Katana, were of serious moment, and spread so much alarm among the Sikels of the interior, that Arch- onides, the Sikel prince of Erbita, thought it prudent to renounce his town and soil ; withdrawing to a new site beyond the Nebrode mountains, on the northern coast of the island, more out of the reach of Syracusan attack. Here, with his mercenary soldiers and with a large portion of his people who voluntarily accompa- nied him, he founded the town of Aloesa. 2 Strengthened at home by these successes abroad, the sanguine despot of Syracuse was stimulated to still greater enterprises. He resolved to commence aggressive war with the Carthaginians. But against such formidable enemies, large preparations were indispensable, defensive as well as offensive, before his design could be proclaimed. First, he took measures to ensure the de- fensibility of Syracuse against all contingencies. Five Grecian cities on the south of the island, one of them the second in Sicily, had already undergone the deplorable fate of being sacked by a Carthaginian host ; a calamity, which might possibly be in reserve for Syracuse also, especially if she herself provoked a war, unless the most elaborate precautions were taken to render a successful blockade impossible. Now the Athenian blockade under Nikias had impressed valu- able lessons on the mind of every Syracusan. The city had then been well-nigh blocked up by a wall of circumvallation carried from sea to sea ; which was actually more than half completed, and would have been entirely completed, had the original com- 1 Di'odor. xiv, 1 5. 8 Diodor. xiv, 16. This Archonidcs may probably have been son of the Sikcl prince Archonides, who, having taken active part as an ally of Nikias and the Athenian invaders against Syracuse, died just before Gylippus reached Sicily (Thucyd. vii, 1).