Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/494

47'<i HISTORY OF GREECE. effective hands, to work on the wall, Others were ordered to cui the stones in the quarry, while six thousand teams of oxen were put in harness to draw them to the spot. The work was set out by furlongs and by smaller spaces of one hundred feet each, tc regiments of suitable number, each under the direction of an overseer. 1 As yet, we have heard little about Dionysius except acts of fraud, violence, and spoliation, for the purpose of establishing his own dominion over Syracuse, and aggrandizing himself by new conquests on the borders. But this new fortification was a work of different import. Instead of being, like his forts and walls in Ortygia, a guardhouse both of defence and aggression merely for himself against the people of Syracuse, it was a valuable pro- tection to the people, and to himself along with them, against for- eign besiegers. It tended much to guarantee Syracuse from those disasters which had so recently befallen Agrigentum and the other cities. Accordingly, it was exceeding popular among the Syra- cusans, and produced between them and Dionysius a sentiment of friendship and harmony such as had not before been seen. Every man labored at the work not merely with good will, but with enthusiasm ; while the despot himself displayed unwearied zeal, passing whole days on the spot, and taking part in all the hardship and difficulty. He showed himself everywhere amidst the mass, as an unguarded citizen, without suspicion or reserve, in marked contrast with the harshness of his previous demeanor, 2 proclaiming rewards for the best and most rapid workmen ; he also provided attendance or relief for those whose strength gave way. Such was the emulation thus inspired, that the numbers assembled, often toiling by night as well as by day, completed the whole wall in the space of twenty days. The fort at Euryalus, which formed the termination of this newly-constructed line of wall, is probably not to be understood as comprised within so short a period of execution ; at least in its complete consummation. For the defences provided at this fort (either now or at a later 1 Diodor. xiv, 18. Diodor. xiv, 18. Ka&6%ov dl uitodeptvof TO rr^ upx^t /*"pof, tdiu aiirtiv u7TE6elKvve, etc. Compare cap. 45 and cap. 47 fuoovvTEf rd fiapoc rf/f TUV QOLVIKOV KaTEia etc.