39S HISTORY OF GREECE. married the widow, and thus raised himself to a higl: forUme and position in Syracuse.* Of the oligarchy which now prevailed at Syracuse, we have no particulars, nor do we know how it had come to be substituted for the more popular forms established by Timoleon. We hear only generally that the oligarchical leaders, Sosistratus and He- rakleides, were unprincipled and sanguinary men.^ By this gov- ernment an expedition was despatched from Syracuse to the Ital- ian coast, to assist the inhabitants of Kroton against their aggres- sive neighbors the Bruttians. Antander, brother of Agathokles, was one of the generals commanding this armament, and Agatho- kles himself served in it as a subordinate officer. We neither know the date, the duration, nor the issue, of this expedition. But it afforded a fresh opportunity to Agathokles to display his adventurous bravery and military genius, which procured for him high encomium. He was supposed by some, on bis return to Syracuse, to be entitled to the first prize for valor ; but So- sistratus and the other oligarchical leaders withheld it. from him and preferred another. So deeply was Agathokles i^icensed by this refusal, that he publicly inveighed against them among the people, as men aspiring to despotism. His opposition being un- successful, and drawing upon him the enmity of the government, he retired to the coast of Italy. Here he levied a military band of Grecian exiles and Campa- nian mercenaries, which he maintained by various enterprises for or against the Grecian cities. He attacked Kroton, but was re- pulsed with loss ; he took service with the Tarentines, fought for some time against their enemies, but at length became sus- pected and dismissed ; he then joined himself with the inhabi- tants of Khegium, assisting in the defence of tire town against a Syracusan aggression. He even made two attempts to obtain ' admission by force into Syracuse, and to seiz^i the government.' ' Diodor. xix. 3 ; Justin, xxii. 1. Justin states the earliest military ex- ploits of Agathokles to Imve been against the ^Etuaeans, not against the Agrigentines.
- Diodor. xix. 3, 4. Diodorus had written more about this oligarchy in a
part of his eighteenth book; which part is not preserved, see Wesseling's note, ' Diodor. xix. 4; Justin, xxii. 1. "Bis occupare imperimx; Syracusarum Toluit; bis in exilium actus est."
