Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/50

24 HISTORY OF GREECE. especially Thurii, not yet recovered from her disastrous Jefeat oj the Lucanians. Profiting by his maritime aommand of the Gulf, Dionysius was enabled to enlarge his ambitious views even to distant ultramarine enterprises. To escape from his long arm, Syracusan exiles were obliged to flee to a greater distance, and one of their divisions either founded, or was admitted into, the city of Ancona, high up the Adriatic Gulf. 1 On the other side of that Gulf, in vicinity and alliance with the Illyrian tribes, Dionysius on his part sent a fleet, and established more than one settlement. To these schemes he was prompted by a dispossessed prince of the Epirotic Molos- sians, named Alketas, who, residing at Syracuse as an exile, had gained his confidence. He founded the town of Lissus (now Alessio) on the Illyrian coast, considerably north of Epidamnus ; and he assisted the Parians in their plantation of two Grecian settlements, in sites still farther northward up the Adriatic Gulf the islands of Issaand Pharos. His admiral at Lissus defeated the neighboring Illyrian coast-boats, which harassed these newly- settled Parians ; but with the Illyrian tribes near to Lissus, he maintained an intimate alliance, and even furnished a large num- ber of them with Grecian panoplies. It is amrmed to have been the purpose of Dionysius and Alketas to employ these warlike barbarians, first in invading Epirus and restoring Alketas to his Molossian principality ; next in pillaging the wealthy temple of Delphi n scheme far-reaching, yet not impracticable, and capa ble of being seconded by a Syracusan fleet, if circumstances fa- vored its execution. The invasion of Epirus was accomplished, tvnd the Motossians were defeated in a bloody battle, wherein fif- teen thousand of them are said to have been slain. But the ulterior projects against Delphi were arrested by the intervention of Sparta, who sent a force to the spot and prevented all further march southward. 2 Alketas however seems to have remained prince of a portion of Epirus, in the territory nearly opposite to ' Strabo, v. p. 241. It would seem that the two maritime towns, said to have been founded on the coast of Apulia on the Adriatic by Dionysius the younger during the first years of his reign according to Diodorus (xvi. 5) must have been really founded by the elder Dionysius, near about th 'jme to whhh we have now reached. 8 Diodoi xv. 13, 14.