Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/27

HISTORY OF ORE ECE. CHAPTER LXXXIII. SICILIAN AFFAIRS (continued). YEOM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CARTHAGINIAN ARMY BY PESTILENCE BEFORE SYRACUSE, DOWN TO THE DEATH OF DIONYSIUS THE ELDER. B.C. 394-367. IN my preceding volume, I have described the first eleven years of the reign of Dionysius called the Elder, as despot at Sy- racuse, down (o his first great war against the Carthaginians ; which war ended by a sudden turn of fortune in his favor, at a time when he was hard pressed and actually besieged. The vic- torious Carthaginian army before Syracuse was utterly ruined by a terrible pestilence, followed by ignominious treason on the pan of its commander Imilkon. Within the space of less than thirty years, we read of four dis- vinct epidemic distempers, 1 each of frightful severity, as having afflicted Carthage and her armies in Sicily, without touching either Syracuse or the Sicilian Greeks. Such epidemics were the most irresistible of all enemies to the Carthaginians, and the most effec- tive allies to Dionysius. The second and third, conspicuous among the many fortunate events of his life, occurred at the exact juncture necessary for rescuing him from a tide of superiori- 1 Diodor. xiii. 86-114 ; xiv. 70; xv. 24. Another pestilence is alluded to by Diodorus in 368 B. c. (Diodor. xv. 7S). Movers notices the intense and frequent sufferings of the ancient Phoeni cians, in their own country, from pestilence ; and the fearful expiations to which these sufferings gave rise (Die Plionizicr, vol. ii. part ii. p. 9). VOL. XI. 1