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Deep beneath Mount Etna a shattered monster lies imprisoned by the gods. The streams of lava that belch from the mouth of the volcano are his rage, the shaking of the earth his twisting and turnings in his futile attempts to get free.
Greeks being Greeks they know there is a monster but they disagree which monster. Some say it is the hideous spawn of Gaia and Tartarus the hundred headed Typhon struck down by Zeus when he sought to overthrow the cosmos. Others believe him to be ill-fated Enceladus, the giant who so unwisely battled Athena and the grey-eyed goddess hurl the whole of Sicily upon his head conclusively ending the battle.
That is the riddle of Sicily. Born in violence, dominated by a volcano that ever threatens to erupt yet the soil from that same volcano is some of the richest anywhere and draws men from across the known world. As Typhon battled Zeus and Enceladus fought Athena so their struggles are mirrored in the wars of mortals. Certain Greeks, generally those living far from Sicily's shores have philosophical or theological thoughts about that. Their more pragmatic brothers are too busy fighting to reply.
The Greeks were not the first people to leave their mark on the large rich island beyond the Ionian Sea. 'Trinacria' as the Greeks once called Sicily from its 'three points' was home to the warlike Sicanians who dwelt there since time immemorial, later joined by another Italian people known as the Elymians with the groups collectively called by the Greeks the 'Siculians'. These native Sicilians would in time be joined by foreigners, colonists from the distant cities of Phoenecia who peppered the coast of the island with their settlements long before the rise to dominance of Carthage and her sway over the Punic peoples.
Finally in the middle of the 8th Century BC came the Greeks. The same wave of colonists that lapped against Italy, the Black Sea and Asia Minor left its stamp on Sicily as Dorians and Ionians founded cities. The poleis quickly grew in size and wealth and traded and fought with each other and their cousins in the Greek colonies of mainland Italy. Fabulously wealthy for grain, wine and olives Sicily became a centre of the Greek world and some of the cities grew very strong indeed. By the late 5th Century Syracuse, a city founded by Corinthians was rivaling Athens herself in scale and prosperity. It was the thought of such a prize that prompted the disastorous Athenian expedition that did so much to break the back of Athens power during her long war against the Spartans.
The early rulers of Syracuse had ambitions of their own. It was not enough to possess to grandest Hellenic city outside Greece. The Syracusans wished to dominate Sicily. During the 4th Century the Syracusans ruled alternately by democratic assemblies and unelected tyrants would wage many wars for control of the island. Most of the other Greek cities were willing to submit to Syracusan dominance but the native Sicilians and the Phoenician colonies of the west had other ideas. They were prepared to resist and at times to assert their own authority over the aggressive sons of Syracuse.
While Syracuse had gained ascendancy over the Greeks of Sicily a still stronger power was rising to her west. The mighty city of Carthage in North Africa had gained independence as the old Phoenician state of Tyre had faded. The Carthaginians had carved out a substantial base of power in Africa, restored and repopulated old Tyrian colonies across the Mediterranean Sea and created a vast commercial empire. No seaport in the West and few in the East went unvisited by the trading galleys of Carthage and beyond those canny merchants lay the greatest navy in the known world. If any one power could lay claim to Poseidon's realm it was Carthage the magnificent.
The Greco-Carthaginian clash was not one of opposing cultures determined to obliterate each other. Both Greek and Phoenician traded with each other, hired each other as sellswords and signed treaties. They were ambitious and territorial commercial rivals. Of course there was a certain amount of cultural posturing. To the Greeks the Carthaginians, like all non-Greeks, were barbarians with their foreign gods, outlandish clothing, peculiar manners and strange language. However only the willfully blind would overlook Carthaginian brilliance at sea, or their cleverness as traders or even (though this was admitted grudgingly) their talented generals. Carthage, though an impressive polis did not wage war with her own soldiers. Instead with their near bottomless purse they could call upon the resources of thousands of mercenaries from Libya and the Baleric Islands and far off Spain. It was a potent combination as the Greeks had found their cost.
From the late 6th Century on the Greeks and Phoenicians had repeatedly clashed in Sicily and over time the other Phoenician colonies had become Carthaginian satellites. The Greeks did themselves no favours by their own feuds between polis and polis and Ionian and Dorian. For two centuries Sicily was a battleground, a fabulous prize worth any amount of bloodshed.
While all this was going on the native Sicilians (Siculians) remained mostly passive observers, controlling their own territory in the centre of the island. Some of their number had instead settled in the Greek and Phoencian cities, adding a strain of their own culture to the heady brew that gripped most of the quarreling towns scattered across Sicily.
In 317 BC a man named Agathocles seized power in Syracuse. Agathocles was a Sicilian Greek from the minor city of Himera on the North coast, scene of great Greek victory over the Carthaginians more than a century before Agathocles had been born. As a youth his family had moved to Syracuse and here the young Agathocles, tough and shrewd had proved himself a thorn in the side of the oligarchs who ruled the city. Twice the would be ruler was banished for his involvement in attempts to overthrow the government. When he returned it was with an army of mercenaries and a sworn oath that he would obey the new democratic constitution of Syracuse. Scarcely had he made it than he broke it making himself Tyrant of Syracuse and banishing his rivals. From there he made himself master of the Sicilian Greeks. Even then he was not a young man, for he had been born five years before Alexander the Great. As both his friends and foes knew he had the energy and appetites of a man half his age.
Unfortunately for Agathocles and his followers the war against Carthage did not go well. On land his forces were defeated and Syracuse itself was besieged though the Carthaginians proved incapable of taking the heavily defended city. Agathocles with a band of desperate and loyal (and desperately loyal) followers took ship for the African coast, evading the sleek Carthaginian war galleys. In Cyrenacia he ingratiated himself with the Macedonian governor of Cyrenacia, a soldier named Ophellas. Ophellas was an adventurer in his own right who had led a fleet for Alexander in the distant Indus and married a descendant of Miltiades. Now a loyal governor to Ptolemy and his control of Egypt Ophellas still retained the old flame of ambition and at the urging of Agathocles joined forces with the wily Sicilian to fight Carthage.
In 308 BC Ophellas joined his army of Athenian mercenaries with Agathocles's band of Syracusians at the borders of Carthage's African territory. The Macedonian was welcomed grandly - and briefly. Agathocles attacked and killed his erstwhile ally, took over his roops and commenced his own war on Carthage.
The Tyrant of Syracuse proved a shrewd general and for a time he inflicted a string of defeats on Carthage. However in the end numbers told and he was defeated, being forced to flee back to Sicily. His great plans had ended in failure. Fortunately however he had given the Carthaginians the fright of their lives and in 306 BC Syracuse and Carthage had signed a peace treaty leaving Agathocles roughly a third of Sicily...
Syracuse was truly two cities. That of the civilians on the Sicilian mainland, a great and thriving polis in the Greek fashion and the fortified acropolis on the island of Ortygia, home to mercenaries and sailors and all the business of warfare. Between simmering Syracuse with its bustling agora and relentlessly noisy streets lay a narrow isthmus. On that spot the great Tyrant Dionysus had built his palace, though castle is perhaps a better word for this most warlike of rulers. Dionysus was the best and worst of Syracuse, making the city the strongest in Sicily, then the greatest in the Greek world. His rivals trembled at the approach of his armies and he brought wealth and culture to Syracuse. He built the great walls that had time and again protected the city from invasion. Dionysus had invited poets and philosophers to his court and dabbled in the arts himself. He was also a despot so despised by the citizens that when he died after drinking himself to death, in an unintended blasphemy to his divine namesake the Syracusans demolished his palace.
Fifty three years after the death of Dionysus another Tyrant had built his own home on the isthmus between Syracuse and Ortygia. Agathocles was no Dionysus when it came to artistic pretensions but he was still a strong ruler - cruel, prominent and shrewd. Any brashness that had formed part of his youth had vanished in the fortunes and misfortunes that had led him to this point. At the age of fifty eight the former mercenary leader had grown no less ambitious but perhaps a little cagier.
On 1 October 304 BC Agathocles issued a proclamation to be read out in every public space in Syracuse and her domains. The Tyrant of Syracuse dew an example from the squabbling Macedonian warlords of the East and declared himself 'Basileus' ('King'). Shrewdly the self proclaimed monarch made references to his peace treaty with the Carthaginians that had seen them recognise Syracusan authority on the Halycus River. It certainly wasn't the Carthaginian intention to legitamise their great foe as the rightful ruler of the Sicilian Greeks but if such a claim ran against the spirit of the peace it did not run against the words.
'I claim no more than that which your own proclaimed mine,' Agathocles informed the Carthagian envoys who visited his palace and were lavishly entertained in his gardens with wine, and the company of beautiful maidens and handsome youths. He held aloft a white ribbon - the diadem - and said: 'This not the spear and sword shall bring peace and order to our island.' [1]
Agathocles proclaims himself King of Sicily, October 306 BC.
The new King sealed his proclamation with a sacrifice to the gods. Surprisingly the deity most honoured was not Zeus or Athena, though both were addressed in the proclamation. Instead Agathocles sacrificed a dozen black bulls at the altar of Hades in Syracuse.
To some it might seem strange to so honour the shadowy lord of the dead, but Hades was not simply a god for the shades of the departed. Known by another name - Plouton - The very wealth of the earth, of gold and silver and every other treasure pulled from the bones of the Earth was his domain. With the blessings of Hades the inhabitants of Syracuse could look forward to a time of plenty. The King had been both a harried exile and a mercenary captain and he knew more than most that a full treasury was a stronger protection for an embattled state than the stoutest walls or the fiercest hoplites.
There was another reason Agathocles chose dark bearded Hades as his divine patron. According to some later accounts the night before he proclaimed himself king Agathocles dreamed of a shadowy three headed dog running through the deserted streets of Carthage and laying down its fearsome heads to sleep in the house of the Council of Elders. At dawn instead of cockcrow all the dogs in Syracuse were said to have let out a howl as one, awakening the citizens. As ever the gods hid their meaning behind symbol but Agathocles knew that he had seen an omen straight from Hades.
The blessings of Hades.
For most in Syracuse the proclamation of the King was met with celebration. Few citizens longed for war but having suffered so much in recent years there was a pride that the city could still claim mastery of Sicily without mockery. Agathocles might not have been born in Syracuse but this adopted son shared with his people a headstrong confidence than would have made even an Athenian gasp. If they had failed to conquer Sicily before it was only against a great constellation of enemies and even in failure Syracuse remained unbowed.
That last point is vital to understanding the Syracusans. The Athenians had controlled a great empire and won a prestige grander than any in the Greek world but they had suffered crushing defeat in their wars of the 5th Century. At the end of the Peloponnesian War the Corinthians and the Thebans had called for the destruction of Athens and the enslavement of her people. Sparta in the hour of her victory had shown mercy to the city that had saved Greece in the time of her gravest peril. Even so Athens saw her walls tumbled down, her empire swept away and oligarchs in power over citizens. Though she had recovered a little since she had never regained her old glory and even now her 'independence' depended on the armies of King Antgonus One-Eye and his quarrel with his fellow Macedonians.
Sparta too was a broken reed, the sad remanant of once great power. Her much vaunted armies had faded away, her helots revolted and though she clung to a bitter and barren independence it was more that of an isolationist backwater than their old supremacy over the Greek world. Her magnificence was behind her.
Syracuse had lost wars before. She had been besieged before. Her government had swung wildly from oligarchy to democracy and back again and more than one Syracusan leader had more to fear from his own country men than foreign enemies. Yet she had never been broken. More than any other Greek polis Syracuse retained control of her own destinies and the will to keep it that way.
Naturally enforcing such a will required soldiers and here the wars had left their mark even as populous and rich a city as Syracuse. Agathocles could call upon seven thousand men to take to war, but none of them were heavy soldiers. The standing army of Syracuse consisted of psiloi, a catch all term for skirmishers and missile troops armed with javelins, bows and slings. The backbone of the battlefield - the phalanx of hoplites or sarissa armed pikemen or cavalry of any sort were absent and there were few resources to arm and train them. Sicily produced little iron and horse, certainly little enough to make equipping thousands of men a challenge.
Agathocles was determined to rebuild his army and if he had to do it without phalangites well his rivals would likely be forced to do the same. Rather than raise more companies of psiloi the King ordered the arming and training of four thousand hypasists. Technically these were still light troops and against Macedonia heavy infantry or the Spartans in their prime they would have suffered but the hypasists were more than ill-trained militia. Armed with spear, shield, helmet and cuirass they resembled a lighter form of the classic hoplites. They could fight as bravely as anyone and were in their way more flexible than their distant cousins across the Ionian Sea so beloved by the Diadochi.
Throughout October and November of 304 BC these young men trained and readied themselves to serve in battle.
A Macedonian tomb fresco of the 4th Century BC. The soldiers depicted are equipped much like hypasists.
Agathocles had expected his pretensions towards monarchy to cut little ice with the Carthaginians or the Siculians, even if for forms sake he plied their representatives with the fruits of both Dionysus and Aphrodite. He was not disappointed. Neither the Punic superpower nor the native Sicilians made any aggressive moves towards Syracuse but they hurled insults like Zeus's thunderbolts upon his head. These the Sicilian fox could largely ignore
The Syracusans fellow Greeks were a very different matter and had to be handled more delicately.
Across the Strait of Messina on the 'toe' of mainland Italy lay the Greek cities of Rhegion and Locri. Both prosperous poleis their proxity and shared culture with the Sicilian Greeks had kept them keenly interested in events of the neighbouring island. Sometimes interest had meant ambition and Rhegion especially, one of the richest cities in Italy had once harboured a sharp rivalry with Syracuse. Those imperial ambitions had long past and now both were plutocratic republics of friendly disposition towards Syracuse. Their envoys arrived at Agathocles's court with gifts and congratulations.
The word from the envoys of Akragas was sharp:
'We shall never bow to you and should the waters of Ocean close over heads we shall call curses upon you with our last breaths Agathocles the Betrayer'
Akragas was a rich city along the south western coast of Sicily between the domain of Carthage and of Syracuse. A century before the Akragans had remained aloof while the Athenian fleet besieged Syracuse and the armies of Attica tried to conquer Sicily. Some grudges were engraved on granite and the two cities had never forgotten and never forgiven.
Akragas was Syracuse as she might have been had the gods withheld their favour. Once ruled by tyrants of her own like the famed Phalaris and Theron the Akragans had grown rich off trade and be a great power in Sicily. Then they had been defeated in war with Carthage and their great city sacked. In the years since Akragas had regained a spectre of her old wealth but had been unable to match the power of her neighbour to the East.
'They have made their last mistake,' Agathocles told his son Archagathus. The two men had sat at the grim dinner party where the Akragan envoy had all but beat his chest in outrage before leaving. 'They could have been our partner and prospered. Watch our true friends my boy.' The King gestured to the other reclining couch were the envoys of Rhegion and Locri spoke in hushed tones over full cups of wine. 'They know who shall grow fat on Akragan trade when their walls fall.'
Rhegion and Locri would stand by their loyalties to Syracuse come what may and the lingering rivalry between Syracuse and Akragas ended any possibility of anti-Agathocles sentiment in Syracuse herself. The Akragans grimly prepared themselves for a siege.
As Winter settled across Sicily and frosts invaded the hills Agathocles appeared to be keeping behind his fine walls, enjoying the pleasures of a new title and a new wife. The Greeks of Akragas relaxed. Perhaps the Fox of Sicily had grown too old after all. Whispers danced from lip to lip in the agora of Akragas that the King of Sicily had grown senile and others truly ruled in Syracuse. A shepherd from near Messana swore blind that Agathocles had taken to believing himself the goddess Athena and insisted upon being addressed as a divinity. A grain merchant of Gela scorned this nonsense and brightly told his listeners that Agathocles had taken to training for the Olympic Games and rode through the streets of Syracuse in a chariot.
As December drew to a close and there was still no declaration of war from Syracuse the Assembly of Akragas began to relax. Even those who had been skeptical of the strange rumours swirling about felt that Agathocles would have struck as fast as possible. They knew him of old and it was not in his nature to tolerate a slight with patience. So confident were they that war would now not come that the city authorised the construction of a splendid new marketplace, funded with the silver put away to hire mercenaries or perhaps bribe the Carthaginians.
And on the first day of the new year, in the crisp and clear morning envoys arrived from the King of Sicily bearing a message of war - and promising that Agathocles and his army were not far behind...
The start of Syracusan-Akragan War, 1 January 303 BC.
Footnotes:
[1] A note on sources:
For this period of Syracusan history we have been left with three main sources. The earliest was Philip of Rhegion who was born around 310 BC and died sometime after 263 BC. Philip was from a wealthy family high and is known to have spent time at the Syracusan court representing his family and his city. While it is considered unlikely that he knew Agathocles personally he was in a position to speak with many who did and his Life of Agathocles probably reflects contemporary views of the complex Sicilian leader. Unfortunately Philip's original text has not survived antiquity but he was quoted and summarised in many later works so we have a good picture of what he was trying to say.
Batrachos lived three generations after Philip in the early 2nd Century BC. Traditionally he was believed to come from Athens but an alternative theory locates him as a son of Halicarnassus. Batrachos, a philosopher and professional busybody (he seems to have personally irritated half the rulers of the Hellenic world) wrote a gargantuan History of Sicily that has survived largely intact. Batrachos had his biases, among them a deep dislike of the Agathoclid dynasty so his views must be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless he is the most complete source for Sicily as a whole for this time.
Finally Nikostratos whose birth date is unknown but who died in 32 BC was a native of Syracuse. Traditionally he has been held in low regard by later historians given his love of court gossip and readiness to blame or praise everything on the intervention of the Olympians but he also provides a unique look into popular lore about the Syracusan ruling clan and he appears to have access to other writers now so obscure even their names are forgotten.
This history represents a composite picture of the views of three intensely different men.
A sling armed skirmisher - one of the most common kinds of soldiers used in Sicily.
Chapter Two: Wars West & North (303 BC to 302 BC)
On 23 January 303 BC the Syracusan army met the Akragans in combat on the far bank of the River Hymera. Overwhelming the odds in numbers favoured the Syracusans. It is possible given the fact that the Akragans were armed only with bows, slings and javelins that they had hoped to catch Agathocles in ambush in the hills. If so they were outmaneuvered by the shrewd old Syracusan monarch who forced a field battle on Alkimachos the enemy strategos.
A surviving account of the clash details the desperate close of the struggle:
...Seeing the Syracusans hold their shields steady against the arrows and stones Alkimachos ordered the salphinx [a long bronze trumpet] to be blown and gathering those men least wounded hurled the fill weight of his survivors at the greenest troops in the Syracusan line, hoping to break through these freshly bearded youths so new to war and escape to fair Akragas. The young hypasists of Katanae at first trembled at this attack till their officer, an ancient named Nikephoros who had lost an eye to a Libyan spear in Africa thundered at them that at least one man of Katanae would not dishonour his forefathers or the gods... seeing Nikephoros fight on alone the line held firm and known of the sons of Akragas escaped...
The Battle of Akragas saw thousands of Akragans fall either as corpses or as captives. Alkimachos himself was taken prisoner and brought in chains before the King who chastised him for his foolishness in defying the might of Syracuse. Nevertheless when Agathocles sent envoys to the city the Akragans shut their gates and fortified the acropolis. The war was far from over.
The one advantage Akragas retained were her superb fortifications. The city lay on a plateau by two rivers and with a steep ridge to her north. To take her by storm would have cost thousands of soldiers and Agathocles had no intention of doing that. The King was ever mindful of the next war and he knew that despite her wealth the resources and manpower of Syracuse were not infinite. To gain even so rich a city as Akragas at the cost of his strong right arm was no victory. The soldiers of Syracuse settled down for a long siege, to be joined in time by soldiers from Locri and Rhegion honouring their alliance with Agathocles. The Locrians would prove useful in retaking Akrai, which had briefly fallen under the sway of a small band of Akragans cut off from their city by the war.
Months passed and the food and water in Akragas dwindled while the soldiers of Agathocles and his allies stayed hale and hearty, easily ignoring the taunts from the city walls. Eventually scanning the empty horizon for aid and listening to the rumble of hollow stomachs was too much. On 20 November 303 BC Akragas surrendered.
The inhabitants might have expected a sack and mass executions but Agathocles was as gentle as he had once been cruel. The homes of the leaders were taken and the prominent citizens put in chains but the common people and the wealth of the temples were left untouched.
The Sack of Akragas, 20 November 303 BC.
Many in Akragas marveled at the King's conduct, even as they collectively exhaled in relief. Within days a story appeared - no one knows from where - that the night before the fall of the city Athena herself had appeared to Agathocles in dream. The bright eyed goddess had warned the Syracusan that should flames touch her temple on the Akragan acropolis or screams reach the ears of her priests that Agathocles's reign would prove short and bitter. A less pious explanation, favoured by the historian Batrachos, is that Akragas was a rich city and worth more to the King of Sicily as a living town under his control than as a fire gutted ruin.
Still, after the city surrendered Agathocles did go directly to temple of Athena and dedicate a milk white bull to the goddess asking for her aid in protecting what was now his city.
Many of the noblest sons of Akragas were allowed to keep their lives, if not their homes or belongings. For others however... the mercy of Agathocles had certain limits. The envoy who had so boldy insulted Agathocles before the war had his arms and legs broken before being thrown from the cliffs near Syracuse into Poseidon's realm. History does not record whether he fulfilled his own prophecy.
The fate of the enemy elite.
Agathocles had won an important city and taken the last independent Greek realm in Sicily at trivial cost, at least to his side. This did not mean he was satisfied. Even before the Akragans opened their gates the King was planning his next campaign.
The native Siculians held sway over most of central Sicily. Though they were barbarians they were not the blood drinking, wild bearded, painted savages such a label suggests. A tribal people they had been much influenced by Greek and Carthaginian feeling and in some cities across the island the Siculians and other nationalities mixed. In their own homeland the Italic traditions held stronger and the locals held their ancient freedoms in strong hill towns. Sooner or later anyone who sought control of all Sicily would have to deal with them either as foe or friend.
Agathocles, though recognizing that a clash with the Siculian tribes was inevitable was not out to conquer a collection of rude hill villages. At least not yet.
'The prize isfair Kephaloidion to the north,' Agathocles told his trusted courtier Hephastion. 'A Greek city long under foreign rule, and with her in our hands the Carthaginians and the tribes would be cut off from one another.'
However much to the King's surprise it would be Hephastion himself who would delay this war for Syracuse.
The Strait of Messana, dividing Sicily from Italy proper was a very narrow band of sea. In ancient times it was said that these very waters had been home to dread Scylla and Charybdis. In modern times the threat was far more mortal, but no less dangerous A fleet of pirates under one Abreas had taken to raiding any ships unfortunate enough to pass through the strait. Abreas, a member of the far flung Zoctid family was an ex-mercenary and unsavory individual even by the standards of his former and current profession. Weak willed, selfish and miserly his one virtue was a certain originality of thought that made him a clever strategist on the waves.
The presence of pirates in Sicilian waters was an irritation but Agathocles was prepared to put up with it until the land war was won. Most of the great nobles of Syracuse agreed with the King. Hephaistion did not and he made his feelings clear both in private and in front of the Court:
'My King we must not spend another drachma on spears and shields while our fleet lies idle and Abreas that whelp of a Croton prostitute is master of the straits. Give me the money and the ships and I shall chase him from our waters... not only for our own safety but for loyal Rhegion and Locri who look to our city for protection.'
Hephaistion expresses his concerns to the King, April 302 BC.
Agathocles detested being publicly criticised and many in the palace assumed Hephaistion's time as a favourite would be measured in heartbeats. It was therefore to great surprise that the King swallowed his anger and agreed with Hephaistion. It was true that Hephaistion was of a very noble family (the Therid clan) and it was true that his claims were hard to refute; Rhegion and Locri did depend on Syracuse. Yet perhaps there was something more to the agreement, an acknowledge of friendship. To be Tyrant of Syracuse and King of Sicily were lonely heights and even a man like Agathocles had time for friendship.
Building and crewing more ships meant fewer men for the army and less money to fight a campaign but Agathocles was still determined to go to war before the year was out. A war continuing during the second half of 302 BC risked lean times when it came to food but the King reasoned that this would hurt the tribal Siculians far more than it would the slave owning Syracusans. If he could strike hard enough and fast enough the tribes would crack. Besides the longer he delayed the fight the greater the risk was that the Carthaginians would return their gaze to Sicily.
The war against the Siculians, October 302 BC. Note the remnants of Abreas's pirate fleet, driven from Sicilian waters by Hephaistion.
On 4 May Agathocles sent a declaration of war to Pallus Ulpius, the chieftain of Murgantia and leader of the Siculian clans. Then with Locrian and Rhegion auxiliaries he marched on Murgantia itself.
The Siculians had a large army but the Syracusans when combined with their allies still had a strong advantage in numbers. Pallus Ulpius and his forces, unwilling to meet the Greeks in the field and trusting the strong stone walls of his capital slipped away to the north-east. From there he gathered his reserves and marched on the Greek city of Messana to lay siege to the port. He was perhaps hoping that he could force the Greeks to abandon their own siege and relieve Messana.
Agathocles's initial reaction was cool. Messana was strategically significant and a wealthy city but ultimately it could be sacrificed if it came to a choice between taking the Siculian capital or rescuing the Messanans. Besides Messana was fortified and there was every chance she could outlast Murgantia. Though he used silver words when speaking with the nobles of Messana in the officer ranks he was more frank with his own son on how war demanded a certain level of cool bloodedness.
The defeat of the pirates by Hephaistion in June followed by a second naval victory a week later changed matters. Though the Siculians remained in position around Messana's long walls the harbour of the city saw an immediate influx of shipping. Not just merchants from the nearby Greek cities but from much beyond including Egypt and even Phoenicians from distant Tyre and Byblos. The money and food they brought did not end the danger Messana was under - one needed more than cargos of dates and purple dye to sustain a hungry population - but they improved morale and did much to end the nervous mutterings that the King would not lift a finger to save the second most important city in his realm.
Ever shrewd Agathocles gave public thanks to both the sailors of Syracuse and to god who watched over Messana, ordering festivals to be celebrated in his honour. After the end of the war of course.
Honouring swift footed Hermes, guardian of Messana.
That end came sooner than might have been expected. Murgantia remained bloodied but unbowed but to her west the un-fortified town of Henna had surrendered very early in the war, isolating Kephaloidion. Some of Agathocles's advisors had even suggested the King leave the siege of Murgantia to the Locri and Rhegion armies and with his own troops march on Kephaloidion. It was not a course Agathocles decided on but as the story spread it seemed to improve the King's standing further and deplete that of the enemy.
Ultimately it would come down to whether Agathocles had judged his enemies right or wrong and in November his gamble proved a shrewd one. With Messana unlikely to fall before the depths of Winter and his people facing starvation Pallus Ulpius cracked. The Siculian chieftain begged for a peace with Syracuse, offering Henna and Kephaloidion. Agathocles accepted these offers with such an imperious air he made it seem as if he had spared the Siculians from outright conquest.
On 27 November the war ended and the end of the old year and the beginning of the new would see Agathocles visit Kephaloidion in triumph and reside in his newest city for two months. He could feel justly pleased. At a narrow cost in lives he had won two wars and made himself the greatest man in the Western Greek world. Across Sicily even those who were not loyal subjects spoke his name with fear and awe. Agathocles let them do so. Only he knew quite how much his success had depended on luck. In his private chambers when he was simply a man and not a monarch Agathocles directed his most passionate prayers not to heavenly Zeus or wise Athena or golden Apollo, or even Pluton whose wealth so enriched his state but increasingly to the goddess that touched some more than others: Tyche.
Sicily at the start of 301 BC.
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Chapter Three: Intrigue, Despair & Opportunity (304 BC to 299 BC)
A banquet scene from a Macedonian tomb fresco of the late 4th Century BC.
Chapter Three: Intrigue, Despair & Opportunity (304 BC to 299 BC)
At the time he declared himself Basileus Agathocles had two surviving adult children, a son Archaganthus and a daughter Lanassa. Archaganthus was thirty five and a strange character, at once unattractive and intriguing. Like his father he was capable of great cruelty, a quality to which he added a personal streak of harshness - it was an unfortunate slave indeed in the service of Prince Archaganthus. Few lasted long intact in body or mind. Stories, whispered of course, spread about various acts of corruption he was suspected or known to have committed. Even his appearance which was short and stocky and already run to baldness left much to be desired. In short he was not an heir to the throne that inspired immediate love.
Still, there was something more to Archaganthus than a mindless thug. If he lacked great military skill even his critics would admit his craftiness. The Prince was not a man inclined to think in straight lines if he could help it and much of his advice to his father was based on the overheard gossip of merchants, nobles and ambassadors. For all his faults he had zeal. In 304 BC he had become the court Philosophsos - the leading religious authority in Syracuse. If there was a flicker of nepotism involved here it didn't disguise Archaganthus's genuine piety. Though he honoured all the gods and Zeus as king as was appropriate Archaganthus was most devout in his oaths to Hermes. The absolutely respectable divine patron of merchants, travelers and messengers... and assorted scoundrels.
In contrast the twenty five year old Lanassa was less of a strong personality. If she lacked what was so difficult in her brother (and father) she was also without their and but for her high station she would perhaps have been as anonymous as any poor potter's daughter or fisherman's bride. Two qualities she shared with her sibling; a strong religious zeal and a desire to be married. Only in time would a streak of kindliness quite foreign to her family emerge.
Syracuse and her subject poleis like Messana or Gelas were full of noble families. Though Agathocles had established a strong personal leadership that forbade any attempt to unseat him and had even won a measure of popularity among the teeming poor of Syracuse he still had to show favour to the great. An advantageous marriage was an obvious way to tie a prestigious family to his own and by fate Agathocles was in a position to arrange three such marriages - for Archaganthus, for Lanassa and for himself.
The details were struck at a symposium not long after Agathocles had taken the diadem. Members of the Proctid, Aratid and Therid families were in attendance [1].
Agathocles entertained his guests lavishly with wine and music. For entertainment he had gathered several of the finest hetaerae in Syracuse to attend to the noblemen, wooing them with their wit, beauty and skill at the lyre and in dance. The King paid them well for their efforts and paid them better still for any careless talk from a Syracusan noble who had honoured Dionysus with excess devotion [2].
The result of all this would be marriages for all the members of the ruling dynasty. Agathocles himself wed Krateia Therid, a proud and stubborn yet trusting young woman four decades his junior. Archaganthus married Eurydike Aratid, a twenty one year whose energy and occasional selfishness hid a weak will. Finally Lanassa became the bride of Eisigones Proctid the tropheus [3]. Eisigones was a reasonably good match in many ways; at twenty six he was still young and vigorous and though not a great soldier he was aggressive on the battlefield and devout and wise off it. Unfortunately there were whispers that his adoration of Athena went so far as self-imposed chastity but the King was prepared to make do with such minor drawbacks for the sake of sound politics.
The Syracusan court during the next few years was an exciting, unnerving place to be. In practical terms Agathocles himself was often absent, away at war and during the war with the Siculians in 302 BC he would begin to grow more absent in other respects.
The King, here pictured being attended by his wife Krateia, suffered from depression as the years moved on.
Agatholces had lived a long an adventurous life that had known great hardship and great success. His lifelong ambitions seemed closer than ever, but as his beard grew grayer by the day and as every month seemed to bring a fresh ache to the body that had once rebounded from the stab of spears and the slash of boar tusks he began to feel the touch of mortality. Perhaps he could make real the dream of being King of Sicily in fact as well as claim, but if so how long would he live to enjoy it?
At first the malaise that gripped the monarch was hidden from the Court. Despite her youth Krateia was a woman of vivid personality and at her urgings Agathocles could at least put on the act of being the grizzled old lion - or at least the grizzled old fox. However the truth could not be hidden long from Archaganthus and the prince began a shadowy campaign of palace intrigue to ensure his succession.
In June 301 BC the Olympic Games were due to be held in Olympia and Syracuse as a great and mighty polis would have to send at least one representative. The choice came down to Karsis, a nobleman of the Therid family and Amyntas of the Proctid dynasty.
Karsis is chosen to represent Syracuse at the Olympics.
Karsis, a tough soldier was no friend of Archaganthus. The two blue bloods were close in age but differed in many respects, with Karsis the veteran of many battles. The nobleman was infamously miserly a host and was considered no towering intellect but he did have a certain low cunning and it was said he hoped to make himself Basileus when Agatholces died. This was not an idle threat; the Therids were a powerful family and Karsis younger sister was Krateia. With the monarch in despair and Archaganthus never the most popular a different choice of successor was far from impossible. The Prince had to act, but in such a way as to not alienate the Therids himself...
The Olympic Games proved the key. Archaganthus, working through servants and sycophants eager to win favour from their future monarch, advanced the reputation of Karsis as a paragon of vitality. His greatest ally was, unwittingly, the Queen who naturally supported the case of her brother and in her naivete never thought to question the sudden rise of his popularity at court. Eventually she prevailed upon her husband to send Karsis to Olympia.
Archaganthus gambit contained the risk that Karsis would actually win glory at the games and return festooned in honour. The Prince knew his man though and suspected that the noble would falter in the competition and either be too ashamed to return or return home with his reputation much diminished. His supposition would prove a shrewd one and it would be a long time before Karsis dared show his face in Syracuse.
Agathocles was no fool. Even in the depths of his despair he knew his son and suspected the truth of Karsis's support. Still it was far better than having his brother-in-law suffer a knife between the ribs in the agora or a cup of poison laced wine.
The migration of the Siculian tribes, July 301 BC.
Not every domestic decision revolved around palace plots. Not long after Karsis took ship for Hellas representatives of some of the Siculian tribesmen appeared in Syracuse and begged an audience with the King. Many Siculians had become thoroughly Hellenised and lived in towns but in the hills the old ways often clung on. Some of the roughest of the clans saw no future in Syracusan lands and wished to depart.
Princess Lanassa, habitually kind interceded with her father on their behalf. Agathocles was in a rare good mood and agreed, though his motives were slightly different. The King was not moved by the heartfelt pleas of the Siculians but the fifty talents of gold they promised was much more enticing. It would prove most helpful during the coming years as the gaze of Syracuse shifted to the hereditary foe: Carthage.
The Carthaginian war for Sardinia, 301 BC.
Carthage. The great Phoenician city was always on the horizon, her threat cutting through Agathocles's despair and Archaganthus's intrigues. Everyone in Syracuse knew that sooner or later a clash would come and that it would be better for the Greeks to start the war at the moment when the Carthaginians were most distracted. That moment arrived in September 301 BC as the Carthaginians became ever more embroiled in a problem of their own making in Sardinia.
The island of Sardinia had never been as contested as Sicily. Far poorer and less populace her native population had no great cities, only rough hill forts and fishing villages. Nevertheless the Phoenicians had founded colonies in the distant past when the fleets of Tyre seemed to find a new home on every Mediterranean shore. In time this hegemony had passed from Tyre to Carthage and the island had become an important strategic and commercial outpost on the trade routes north to Latium, Etruria and even distant Massalia. The barbarous interior of the island had remained stubbornly independent but for decades that had been a policy the Carthaginians had been prepared to accept.
Around the same time as Agathocles went to war against Akragas a mood of conquest swept through the oligarchs of Carthage as the great families pushed for the total conquest of Sardinia. The raids had grown from irritating to dangerous in recent years and there was a strong feeling in the city that only by asserting control over the whole island could the Carthaginian position be secure. Another aspect, unique to Carthage was a desire to win over the hostile locals as useful future mercenaries in other wars.
No one in Syracuse cared for Sardinia itself. However the fact that the Carthaginians were mired in tribal warfare did mean that the western third of Sicily was scarcely defended. Even the great Phoenician state would struggle to fight two wars at once. Indeed by 301 BC it was clear that even one war was proving surprisingly hard for the Carthaginians as the Sardinian tribes managed to inflict serious losses on the mercenaries. For once a rare mood of unanimity surfaced in the court of Syracuse as all the noble families pressed Agathocles for war while the great foe was distracted.
Agathocles had planned for years of sweeping the Carthaginians into the sea but now, at the very moment of opportunity he lapsed into apathy. It was only with the pressure from all quarters that the King was persuaded to go to war and lead his armies in September 301 BC. In the field Agathocles would find something of himself again; even if it could not drive the demons of doubt away entirely the relentless work and goals of waging a war allowed the monarch to dwell on something tangible and immediate.
The war began well. Hippana, the capital of Sicania (Western Sicily) surrendered without a fight. A rich and cosmopolitan inland city Hippana was a polyglot place were Phoenician, Greek and Siculian mixed and by population she was second only to Syracuse herself in Sicily. Unfortunately for the Carthaginians Hippana had little fortification of her own and her proximity to the great fortress of Akragas left her all but indefensible. With Hippana in Greek hands the Syracusans turned south to meet the Carthaginians at the city of Herakleia Minoa.
The Battle of Herakleia Minoa, 23 October 301 BC.
Just as the Greeks had foreseen the Carthaginians had scant forces in Sicily. The soldiers scraped together at Herakleia Minoa were a green assortment of Phoenician militia with javelins and other light weapons and spear equipped Siculan tribesmen offered their pick of the governors treasury. The governor himself was Abdmelqart Mashhid, a sarcastic scion of a great Carthaginian family who by ill-chance was on Sicily rather than Sardinia as he recovered from an infection - the legacy of a lingering arm wound.
Under the circumstances Abdmelqart generalled tolerably well but it was beyond his power to retrieve the situation and after his defeat at Herakleia Minoa the unfortunate Carthaginian would spend the next five months trying to keep his shrinking forces ahead of the enemy before they melted away for good at a second clash near the first. His was the only attempt to actively resist the Greeks in the field, with the rest of the Carthaginian resistance relying on defensing cities from siege.
Herakleia Minoa had surrendered the moment Abdmelqart retreated but the other Carthaginian settlements had to be taken by force. None of them had substantial walls - certainly nothing compared with Akragas - but there was always the hope that the Carthaginian navy could bring aid. This hope would prove cruelly misguided but at the time it must have seemed reasonable.
Finally there was another reason. Though Carthage was the hegemon of the Phoenician cities in the same manner that Syracuse was the cultural and political centre of Greek Sicily many of those Phoenician settlements had proud histories of their own. In a sense a place like Lilýbaion was not simply a Carthaginian outpost but a polis in the Greek sense. Indeed Lilýbaion, which would be the last Phoenician stronghold to fall had a folk memory of Syracuse. She had been founded a century before by the refugees of the city of Moyta when that town had been destroyed by Dionysous of Syracuse.
The capture of the Phoenician cities were not indiscriminate sackings but they were not gentle either. Slaves were taken, especially when the town was taken by the soldiers of Locri and Rhegion. This was not because the men of those cities were crueller, rather it was that unlike the Syracusans they would not be ruling over Sicilian territory so there was scant incentive not to plunder.
By September 300 BC after a year of war Phoenician Siciliy was conquered and Agathocles and his court awaited the Carthaginian reply. Word from passing merchants was that the struggle for Sardinia was far from over and that with thirty one thousand seasoned Greek soldiers in Sicily [4] Carthage would be hard pressed indeed to invade. It was merely a matter of the Carthaginian oligarchs admitting the truth.
In December the Carthaginian envoys arrived in Syracuse to discuss terms. After more than three centuries Carthage had been forced out of Sicily.
Sicily at the start of 299 BC.
Footnotes:
[1] A fourth major noble family, the Siculian descended but thoroughly Hellenized Marii would not join Syracusan society until after the conquest of Henna and Kephaloidion.
[2] A hetaera was a high class entertainer and courtesan in some respects similar to the professional mistresses of the 19th Century demi-monde. In contrast to the theoretical 'ideal' wife (whose presence would have been scandalous at a symposium) a hetaera was often well educated and expected to be a good conversationalist.
[3] Essentially the court tutor.
[4] Eleven thousand Syracusans and a roughly even mix of Rhegions and Locrians. Most are psiloi orhypasists.
Chapter Four: Collaborators and Rebels (300 BC to 295 BC)
Chapter Four: Collaborators and Rebels (300 BC to 295 BC)
The conquest of western Sicily or 'Sicania' changed the balance of power in Syracuse. Suddenly the threat of Carthage which had draped across the Greeks of the island like a funeral shroud across a fallen warrior was no more. True some of the cynical or the far sighted suspected that the Carthaginians would in time return after they had completed their bloody struggle for Corsica. The great Punic port had endless resources, ambitious oligarchs and a great history behind her, all of which near demanded that there would be another reckoning with the Greeks for possession of the greatest prize in the Mediterranean Sea.
Still that was for the future and for the moment both the great and the humble in Syracuse and the other Greek cities had other things to occupy their minds. For the ruling dynasty this period of peace and prosperity would open with the darkest of chapters.
Prince Archaganthus had played no part in the war, acting as regent in Syracuse while his father was on campaign. The heir was no a gifted soldier by nature but he had reason enough to stay away from the fighting because of the condition of his wife. Eurydike was with child and the princess was not enjoying an easy pregnancy. In October 300 BC she had lapsed into a severe illness and though she had seemingly recovered it had rattled Archaganthus. The prince was not a warm man and many were surprised by how shaken he was by his wife's distress. They would be more shocked by his reaction when she went into labour in the early hours of 4 November 300 and her heart gave out from the strain. The child, a boy, outlived Eurydike by two hours.
The Prince [Archaganthus] was like a shade that had slipped past Cerebrus and lost itself in the lands of the living. Eyes than once glimmered with cunning now were red with tears and a lip once curled in a smirk or a sneer now held only a grimace... Archaganthus mourned his bride and his lost child and for days after wandered the city in a daze, his wits undone...
Prince Archaganthus in 300 BC. A man broken by grief.
The revelation that Prince Archaganthus of all men had deeper human feeling would have been a boon for Syracuse if only it had been revealed in other ways. As it was Syracuse entered the 3rd Century with both her leader and his heir in emotional crisis.
Under these strained circumstances it was a minor miracle that Syracuse functioned at all. As it was she prospered. The war had seen numerous slaves, mostly Phoenician arrive in the capital, further increasing the glory of Syracuse proper. In the conquered cities the situation was more complex. Hippana, spared a sack during the fighting had quickly secured herself as the second city of Sicily adding a Hellenophile gloss to her citizenry even as her population remained a mosaic of differing cultures. Further to the west the more solidly Phoenician cities had fared less well. In places like Lilýbaion the urban elites were faced with the difficult decision over whether to adopt Greek airs to woo their new overlords or to try to cling to the old ways. Many chose to study Greek and abandon the shenti for the himation [1].
This partial assimilation of leading Phoenicians should not be mistaken for any sort of attempt to erase Phoenician culture from Sicily. Even at the bitterest fighting between Carthage and Syracuse ideas and goods had flowed back and forth. Carthage herself had more than a sprinkling of Greek influence and Syracuse, for all her ferocious pride was more than cosmopolitan than simply an old colony of Corinth.
The native Siculians fit this picture well. One of the great families of Syracuse were the Marii, a strongly Hellenised elite originally from Kephaloidion. Though they spoke the Doric Greek of Syracuse and worshiped the Olympians they retained many Italian traditions as did hundreds of lesser families. With the migration of the less Hellenised Siculians in 301 BC it was this mixed group that made up much of the population in Syracusan territory.
As the country recovered from war trade picked up. Syracuse transported grain to Latium and Lucania, wine to Calabria and far off Syria and stone to Calabria and Apulia. In turn Syracuse imported cloth from Latium giving the Greeks of Sicily a link with the growing Italian power of Rome. Syracusan merchants (who now of course included many Phoenicians) could not yet compete with Carthage in much of the West, but their sphere of influence was growing.
The royal procession of Agathocles, March 299 BC.
With the royal dynasty of Syracuse threatening to retreat into grief and seclusion Krateia and Hephaistion united to persuade Agathocles that he should celebrate his victory over the ancient enemy. In March 299 BC the King was duly persuaded. A royal procession, an idea imported from the East, saw thousands of hypasists in gleaming armour parade through the streets of Syracuse [2]. Hordes of Phoenician slaves carried trophies of war. The Basileus himself rode in an ornate chariot before the cheering crowds mobbing the streets.
The procession was a mixed success. The people were awed by the scale of the victory. They were less awed by the state of their monarch, who looked tired and old and like he wished he was elsewhere. Agathocles won a sliver of popularity but at the cost of an unflattering sobriquet - 'Agathocles the Dull', from the leaden expression that seemed to haunt his face at all times.
Krateia, much younger and naturally in good spirits, had difficulty understanding her aging husband. Though the marriage could hardly be called a love match she proved a very loyal wife, zealously guarding Agathocles from the intrigues of the other great families including the one she had been born into. Sometimes her prayers to Hera seemed to be answered and the clouds would lift enough for the old Agathocles to shine through. After one sweet but short interlude she had fallen pregnant. A joyous occasion under any circumstances, but one fraught with unhappy memories of Eurydike for the court.
With the connivance of her daughter-in-law Lanassa Krateia hid the news as long as possible, dedicating many prayers to the gods. Only once the pregnancy could be hidden no longer did the Queen reveal her condition to official celebration and private fears. When the day of the birth arrived in January 298 BC all the Agathoclid clan (by blood and marriage) gathered in the palace to meet their newest relation: a beautiful baby girl delivered by her exhausted but healthy mother.
The birth of Theoxene was an occasion of happiness in what was otherwise a grim court but as Krateia recovered she was determined not to stop there. Some time later word reached Syracuse of a remarkable individual working in distant Panormos.
The Asclepian Wise-man.
This enigmatic man who some later writers still swore was at least the son of Asclepius if not the deity himself (and others call no more than an itinerant philosopher with a good grasp of medicine) greatly impacted Sicilian history. His methods consisted of a stern control of diet, much physical activity and long hours lecturing about the nature of the gods and of man. Had he been in sound mind and body Agathocles would have been the last person to suffer through this is silence. As it was even the mysticism of a philosopher did not entirely 'cure' Agathocles of the sweeping black moods that descended so often. It did improve his overall health and allow him bursts of energy and perhaps allowed him to deal with the clamour from the nobles for a clash with the Siculians.
War did not come quickly. With the Siculian tribes still controlling a quarter of the island Syracuse was still vulnerable. What if the tribesmen made a treaty with Carthage or even with their Italian brothers across the Strait of Messana? With practically every man able to hold a shield ready to fight the Siculians had many warriors under arms, a far larger force than Syracuse herself.
Between 299 and 296 BC the Syracusan army doubled in size to twenty two thousand men. Most of the new recruits hailed from the old Phoenician country in Western Sicily. The conquest had ruined many families and fighting for Agathocles promised a source of income. Some were Greeks or Siculians who had simply lived under the Carthaginian yoke but many were fully Phoenician or Libyan suddenly cut off from the North Africa coast. For most of these Punic soldiers active enlistment in the forces of Syracuse was the outcome, but there was another potentially even more lucrative route.
Carthage had long employed mercenaries and even after the conquests of Agathocles many of those sellswords remained in Sicily, were they be found wandering the country as foul tempered drunks and n'er do wells much to the frustration of everyone else. One group was more significant. A Phoenician mercenary leader of old Carthaginian employ had been left marooned in Sicily by the shifting fortunes of war. Despite his place of birth and his history as a Carthaginian officer Gerbaal Ummashid had not taken up arms against the Greeks and tried to carve out a kingdom of his own in Sicily. Instead the crafty soldier offered his services to Syracuse for a 'reasonable' price.
Some of Gerbaal's eleven thousand men were light infantry, predominantly Libyan spearmen. A larger group and far more impressive were five thousand of the excellent North African light cavalry. With their javelins and short swords and small but tough horses these men could run havoc against almost any opposing army. Finally Gerbaal even had three squadrons of the mighty war elephants. Impressive but impractical at least for a war against the Siculians. These awesome if expensive beasts could break almost any foe but their use against swift moving hill tribesmen was questionable.
Agathocles was no fool. He knew Gerbaal was better under his control than remaining neutral and thus open to bribes from the Siculians. However the mercenary leader also had to be kept away from taking any of the Siculian towns, lest he plunder them of everything of value or decide that an independent kingdom was a good idea after all. When he hired the mercenaries in 296 BC Agathocles intended to use them as a reserve and a deterrent - faced with such a force Paullus Ulpius would not dare go on the offensive allowing the Greeks to control the flow of the war.
The war in January 295 BC. Agathocles and the main Syracusan army is besieging Murgantia while the Locrians and Rhegionians battle the slave revolt.
In October 296 BC the Syracusans declared war on the Siculian tribes. Once again Agathocles was relying on the fact that the tribesmen would suffer more than the Greeks from the lateness of the year. He marched his main army of mixed psiloi and hypasists against the enemy stronghold and capital of Murgantia. Paullus Ulpius withdrew his main army to the coast, but not before leaving a strong garrison at his capital.
As it had against Carthage war lifted the spirits of the Syracusan monarch and he threw himself into the siege. Agathocles knew that the powerful Siculian families would force Pallus's hand and eventually he would have to march to the relief of Murgantia. When that happened the Greeks could call in their Carthaginian mercenary reserves and crush the enemy on the field. Agathocles further knew that he could count on the loyal support of the men of Locri and Rhegion.
Unfortunately for the Syracusans the gods had other plans. In the winter of 296/295 BC, as the men of Syracuse were camped outside the walls of Murgantia a slave revolt errupted in Katane.
The Katanaean Slave Revolt of 295 BC left little trace in the historical record for various reasons including the desire of patriotic historians not to dwell on it. What is known for sure is that the polis of Katane was rich and populous - perhaps the third town in Sicily after Syracuse and Hippana. Katane was mostly Greek but as a grain producing region it had vast numbers of slaves of various nationalities. Conditions clearly left something to be desired and with the polis denuned of young freemen and citizens to fight against the Siculians some slaves appeared to have seized their moment. What began as a local rebellion swiftly turned into a full scale war as thousands of slaves took up weapons against their masters.
The first to encounter the slaves in battle were soldiers from Locri and Rhegion who had been marching to join Agathocles. The Greeks were mauled by the slaves and forced to retreat, an event that would see bitter denunciations in both cities later on as the oligarchs blamed each other for the disaster. It was only with the intervention of Gerbaal and his mercenaries that the revolt would be crushed in March but by then the damage had been done. The region around Katane was devastated, thousands of slaves had died in battle or been crucified, the town itself had been sacked and many citizens and freemen killed.
Ironically while all this was going on in (nominally) safe Syracusan territory the war against the Siculians was going well. On 16 June Murgantia fell. As with all his conquests Agathocles forbade the sacking of what he intended to make his town and this leniency combined with the loss of the Siculian capital. On 27 June the leading Siculian families staged a coup detat against Pallus Ulpius and after imprisoning him and his family sent messengers to Agathocles, asking for terms.
The war was over.
Syracusan territory (and neighbouring powers), July 295 BC.
Footnotes:
[1] A shenti is a kilt-like garment originating in Egypt but also worn by Phonecians. A himation is a cloak or mantle work by both Greek men and women.
[2] Though a classical triumph is obviously Roman royal processions were a feature of the Hellenic world.
Chapter Five: The First Italian War (294 BC to 287 BC)
Chapter Five: The First Italian War (294 BC to 287 BC)
The conquest of the Siculian left Syracuse with mastery over all Sicily. From this point on historians generally accept that the title Agathocles had claimed decade earlier had become a fact. Rather than 'Syracusans' we can now speak simply of 'Sicilians'.
The rapid end to the war had come thanks to the Siculian nobility and Agathocles would prove grateful. While the old ruling Ulpii dynasty were crucified the other great dynasties - the Catti, the Blossii and the Viridii - would be given a place in Sicilian political life. In time some of the more talented members would go on to hold high office in the royal hierarchy and intermarry with the Greek nobility, including the Agathoclid family itself. In October Prince Archagathus, finally emerging from his long time in mourning would marry Catia Prima, the eldest daughter of the venerable Secundus Catius.
Any observers from Athens or Corinth would have been startled to see such an embrace of the barbarian but the truth was that many Siculians, especially the elite, had been strongly Hellenised. The Catti, Blossii and Viridii (and the unfortunate Ulpii) spoke a form of Ionic Greek and had taken up many customs and cultural traits from their neighbours and rivals. More to the point Agathocles had strongly practical reasons for bringing the Siculian grandees into the orbit of Syracuse. Fully a third of his subjects were Siculians and the integration of some natives would make the dominance of Syracuse a little less fragile. Most important of all however was the relationship of the 'new' families to the monarch. The Siculian oligarchs were a useful counterweight to their Greek counterparts. They owed their position directly to the grace of the Basileus.
While Syracuse had been uniting Sicily the Italian peninsula had been a cauldron of war. To the north the expansionist Roman republic would wage wars against both the Estruscans and the Samnites but much more concerning to the Sicilians (at least at this point) were the battles for the 'toe' and 'heel' of Italy. This region was heavily settled by Greeks but was also called home by three powerful Italian tribes: the Bruttians, the Lucanians and the Messappians
The most powerful of the southern Italian tribes and after the rapidly growing power of Rome the strongest people of the peninsula were the Lucanians (or Lucanii) who had conquered the Greek colony of Thurii and assumed a leadership role with their neighbours. This alliance had allowed the Bruttians (or Bruttii) to conquer the old Greek city of Hipponion to the north-east of Rhegion. The polis of Hipponion, at war with the tough Italian tribesmen had appealed for an alliance with Syracuse but at the time Agathocles had been unable to act without abandoning his own designs on Sicily. Like the victims of Charybdis the Hipponions would be swallowed whole into the Bruttian state, which then turned her attentions to Hellenic Kroton.
For the Sicilian Greeks the rapid erosion of Hellenic power on the mainland was frightening, but suggested certain opportunities. Syracuse had been the strongest Greek power in the region for a century and will all Sicily united behind her perhaps the cities of Calabria could be retaken from the barbarian - and placed under the rule of Agathocles and his heirs.
The fate of the Great Families of Siculia.
The Sicilians were directly spurred into action by the Bruttian war against Kroton in 294 BC. Agathocles did not have a treaty with the Krotons, but the example of both Thurii and Hipponion suggested the Italian tribes intended to conquer all of Magna Graecia and that the best opportunity for a war was while the Bruttians were busy fighting elsewhere.
Centuries later the historian Nikostratos left a haunting account of portents signs that preceded the Sicilian invasion Italy:
In the temple of Adranus the sacred dogs went mad during an eclipse of the moon, turning on each other and slaying many of their own kind...[1] in Hippana unknown hands defaced the statue of Agathocles in the agora. In Messana a sudden storm worse than any could recall dashed ships against each other, drowning hundred. In Syracuse herself the priests of Athena awoke each night for a month by the sounds of women weeping and wailing in grief.
Historians writing closer to the event record little of this, at least in surviving works. What they do note is that the Sicilians had been left feeling confident after their easy victories over their enemies at home.
The war began in March 294 BC with Agathocles leading a large army across the Strait of Messania. While in Rhegion the Sicilian monarch received the disappointing news that Kroton had fallen and that the Italians were turning their forces to face the invaders. Still, the first clash at the Battle of Lokroi Epizephyroi (the polis of Locri) saw the Sicilians and their allies defeat the Bruttians. The leader in the field was not the elderly Agathocles but the gifted Rhegionian general Philokles, something that would later prove a sore point with the Sicilians. For the next two years these forces under Philokles and Agathocles would contests Calabria, defeating smaller Italian armies.
After Lokroi Epizephyroi in a remarkable move Krateia addressed the Sicilian soldiers in place of her husband, who at the time was in another of his dark spells. While it is probably reasonable to say that the Sicilians with their mix of non-Greek elements did not quite match the view of women in Athens or even Corinth it was still a startling move for her to actually address the men and after the eventual failure of the war malicious influence would claim she had undue influence over the gray and withdrawn Agathocles.
The Queen of Sicily addresses her husbands soldiers, August 294 BC.
The Sicilians needed to capture the city of Tempsa which they first besieged in late 294 BC. This strong fortress controlled the Calabrian coast and without taking it the Sicilians would be marooned in the toe of Italy. Conversely the Italians were desperate to hold it and the city would become the most bitterly contested point of the war and the site of several battles.
The First Battle of Tempsa in January 293 BC was the first sign for the Sicilians that this war would prove far harder than the relatively easy conquest of Sicily over the previous decade. The Bruttians and Lucanians had gathered together an impressive army under the leadership of the Greco-Egyptian mercenary general Kheperkare Xenid. The Italians attacked the mixed Region-Locri army besieging Tempsa, forcing Agathocles and his army to make a quick march from nearby Stylacium. The clash which would see both sides use over thirty thousand men each was one of the largest Italy had ever seen and proved bloody even for the victors.
For the Greeks, who won the battle at the cost of nearly twelve thousand soldiers the resiliency of the Italians had proved a very unpleasant surprise. Even during the wars against the Siculians Agathocles had rarely fought a large Italian force in the field. Expecting mere marauding barbarians the Sicilians had instead found themselves facing tough and disciplined hill dwellers. The Italians, proved fast and cunning foes, fighting in flexible relatively light formations not entirely unlike those adopted by the Syracusan hypaspists.
Worst of all was the revelation that the Italian tribes were willing and able to fight as one. Abruptly aware of how this reversed the balance of power Agathocles turned once again to Phoenician mercenaries of Gerbaal Ummashid. The elephants and cavalry of the mercenary would surely tip the scales back in Sicilian favour.
Unfortunately as long as Tempsa held out the Sicilians could not advance further and to the north the Bruttians and Lucanians and now the Messepians rebuilt their forces in safety. In late 293 BC the Italians attempted to get around the Sicilians lines by attacking Stylacium and Philokles and Agathocles were forced to lift there siege and clash with the raiding Bruttians. That battle in January 292 BC was a victory but it left the Sicilian forces further weakened.
The Battle of Stylacium, January 292 BC. Note that though under a Rhegion banner (as Philokles commanded) the Sicilians made up a large majority of troops at the battle.
The Second Battle Of Stylacium, waged in April that same year was a far larger clash than the first and though a Sicilian triumph left the manpower of Sicily drained to almost nothing. The Italians on the other hand gained the services of seasoned mercenaries, bulking out their armies still further.
The decisive battle of the entire war would come at Tempsa. After the Second Stylacium the Sicilians had resumed their siege of this vital city, desperate to take it before the Italians recovered. Unfortunately for them as precious Sicilian lives wasted away in the bleak conditions of a siege their enemies ate well and rested themselves. Only in April 291 BC did the Italians and their mecenaries advance south and this time they had numbers.
Philokles and Agathocles both hoped that the Phoenician elephants and light horse would make up for the Italian superiority in numbers. Unfortunately for them a poor choice of terrain, bad luck and the simple fact that the Italians had more warriors told the story. The result was a disaster for Sicily and her allies.
The Fourth Battle of Tempsa, May 291 BC.
Though the fighting would continue for another four years the Fourth Battle of Tempsa decided the course of the war. The forces of Locri and Rhegion had been all but annihilated and those of Sicily were now far too weak to continue to contest Calabria. In fact the immediate result was a retreat of the exhausted and demoralised Sicilian army all the way back to the Strait of Messania.
Agathocles, old and ill though he was had kept his shrewdness. He'd abandoned his camp including all the treasures and tokens of he traveled with to the enemy and led his surviving men on a vagrant path south. When he reached Rhegion the citizens threw open the gates assuming that he would seek shelter inside their walls and help defend against the Italians. Instead he scarcely paid the city a glance as he went straight for the harbour to commandeer ships. The Sicilians were abandoning mainland Italy outright.
The Basileus's flight was ruthless but it was pragmatic. Neither Rhegion nor Locri could reasonably be held while the wine dark waters between Italy and Sicily offered at least some hope for safety behind the triremes of Syracuse. For the next three years the Sicilians would be forced to wait and watch as the enemy first recovered the Calabrian towns conquered by Agathocles and then besieged Rhegion and Locri.
Sicily herself was 'safe' at least for the moment - the small Italian fleet had been swept from the sea at the start of the war - but at a terrible cost. The once proud Sicilian army had shrunk to less than half its old strength. Many locally famous families had been wiped out and it would take many years before enough sons of the polis reached the right age to take up spear and shield and don the cuirass and helmet of a soldier. Even the mercenaries had badly worn down, though there was scant sympathy for these children of hated Carthage.
Strangely despite the horrors of the Italian War in some ways Sicily, especially the Sicily of the towns rather than that of the smallholders and landlords, was still prospering. Even at the height of the war Sicilian merchants struck a deal with their Roman counterparts to sell wine to Latium. In 290 BC Syracuse was able to hold city games. In the royal court Agathocles still retained the support of his court and the populace much to the frustrations of Prince Archagathus who found himself going grey yet becalmed in politics with little to no power.
Archagathus is forced to wait.
The one attempt by the Sicilians to relieve Rhegion in 290 BC ended in another fiasco and thereafter the Sicilians were forced to lick their wounds and wait. The one ray of hope the gods provided was that now the Italians were the ones forced to endure the exhaustion of siege warfare, slowly bleeding themselves dry.
There were occasional discussions of peace but the demands of the Bruttians and Lucanians were so extravagant, including the transfer of Sicilian territory that the Sicilians rejected them outright. So the war remained locked into stalemate until the start of 287 BC when the Heraklians, another polis in the Italian mainland declared war on the distracted Lucanians. This gesture which would quickly prove most unwise was intended to take advantage of Lucanian distraction but from the point of view of Syracuse it meant the Bruttians had to march their troops to the defence of their ally.
The Sicilians, though not completely recovered crossed the straits and after a brief siege liberated Rhegion. They were marching on Locri when envoys from Bruttia arrived offering a white peace. Agathocles, aware of how weak his forces remained agreed and in August the Sicilians and Italians signed a peace. After seven years and tens of thousands of deaths the Italian War ended with no changes of territory.
It could have been worse. Rhegion and Locri, though battered maintained a precarious independence and not a single Italian soldier had set foot on Sicilian soil. Still even at best the war was a failure. The Sicilians had from the start underestimated the Italians and had gone to war before they had fully consolidated the conquest of Sicily. Bad luck and poor decisions had played a part. In the end ambition had outrun wisdom.
Sicily would survive but she had had a very painful lesson.
Peace at last.
Italy, 287 BC.
Footnotes:
[1] Adranus was a local Sicilian fire deity, whose temple was near Mount Etna.
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Chapter Six: The rise of Archgathus (286 BC to 277 BC)
Chapter Six: The rise of Archgathus (286 BC to 277 BC)
The long reign of Agathocles was divided in two by the First Italian War. Though he would remain monarch for several more years the shock of defeat and the long process of recovery meant there would be no more great conquests.
Were it not for the acute shortage of freeborn young men the second decade of the Third Century BC might have been seen as a golden age. Trade was brisk, Sicily herself peaceful and the adoption of the Siculian elite into the world of Syracusan nobility had lanced the boil of a key source of trouble.
In this quiet era Prince Archgathus was a restless soul. The heir to the Sicilian throne had waited so long for his moment that his own eldest son, another Agathocles was himself rapidly approaching manhood. Relations between Agathocles the Younger and his stepmother Catia had begun poorly and plummeted after Catia had produced children of her own for Archgathus. It scarcely helped that Catia was a natural leader for the Siculian or Italian faction at court, even more so than some of the great Italian nobles who had now crowded Syracuse. Catia had herself formerly been married to late 'king' or chieftain of the Siculians and landed firmly on her feet in the Hellenic world. As contemporary put it:
In appearance she was pleasing enough, being tall and spare in frame, dark in eye and hair. She favoured the Italian fashions in her hair and clothing, though she was learned in the ways of the Greeks and in much else so that were she a man some would have called her a polymath. Her voice was akin to silver, as charming as that of Circe or Medea and she was at least their equal in the arts of lust. Italian though she was she was as stubborn as any Spartan mother and it was an unwise man who made himself her enemy...
In April 286 BC Catia and her stepson had almost reconciled when Agathocles the Younger married a Siculian woman, Blossia Prima. Catia herself had not arranged - the Catii and Blossi families were not close save in the pragmatic alliance all Italians had in a Greek universe. She did however let it be known she approved. Sadly such sentiments proved fleeting and as Agathocles the Elder still lived and Archgathus grew ever older and ever balder the tension between stepmother and stepson grew. Agathocles the Younger did not help matters for if he had inherited his father's craftiness he had also taken his cruelty and added an abrasive persona to it.
The growing presence of the Siculians in Syracuse did not rob the older families of their status. The Sicilian navy remained under the command of the faithful Hephaistion, long the old friend and comrade of the Basileus. The strategos [1] was also a post that would go to a Greek. Hitherto Agathocles the Elder had held it himself but a combination of his fading health and the less than spectacular performance of the army during the Italian War left it desirable to find a new face. The man who would take charge was Karsis of the prestigious Therid family, the same old rival who Archgathus had arranged to be sent to the Olympic Games. The humility of defeat and the approach of early middle age had changed the old brute and if he was still something of a fool Archgathus no longer considered him a risk. Knowing his own military skills were wanting and wishing to win the loyalty of the Therid family, the prince had sung the praises of Karsis to his father once more. The faltering Agathocles, relieved simply that his serial intrigant of an heir was happier to make friends than enemies agreed.
The last of the major players in the Syracusan court was Krateia, also a member of the Therid family. Her marriage to the Basileus and his own decline temporarily left the queen one of the most powerful people in the Hellenistic world. Mostly she functioned merely as his messenger to the rest of the court, but there were permanent suspicions among the nobles that with Agathocles the Elder spending days at a time hidden in his chambers as his moods failed him Krateia was the true ruler of Sicily.
When Agathocles had seized power it had been in the old manner of the Tyrants of Syracuse but his long reign and his pretensions to kingship had turned Syracuse and Sicily as a whole into as much a kingdom as Epirus or Macedon. Few doubted that when Agathocles the Elder finally passed on Archgathus would succeed him.
Death of Agathocles the Elder, April 280 BC.
The hour arrived at last on the morning of 20 April 280 BC. The Basileus had evidently passed on during the night as that was where Krateia found him. At the age of eighty two Agathocles the Elder, founder of the Kingdom of Sicily was dead.
Agathocles had sometimes been cruel and for much of his later years ill health had dogged him mentally and physically. After the failures of the Italian War he had vanished from public life. Still he was the man who had united Sicily and made Syracuse the capital of a great and wealthy kingdom. Life without him was unthinkable for many. At his lavish funeral many of the tears came not from hired mourners, but from the throngs of ordinary Syracusans lining the streets to pay their respects.
Even as Agathocles was being laid to rest in his mausoleum amid the splendor of Egyptian gold and Libyan ivory statues and richly painted frescoes by the master Hypathios the court was gathering around the next man to don the diadem. Truthfully to most the new Basileus did not seem promising. Everyone could agree that Archagathus was clever and during his wait for the throne he had learned the value of caution. Yet there was a streak of bitterness to his being, a frustration that what he regarded as rightfully his had come when he almost an old man himself. Little charisma clung to his words - a strong contrast to his wife Catia - and his talents at war left much to be desired.
Archagathus at fifty nine.
If the new Basileus had a gift it was in knowing how to listen to the advice of others, among them his father's boon companion Hephastion. Knowing how long it had taken for Sicily to recover from the last war he abandoned any idea of expeditions to mainland Italy. Instead under Archagathus Sicily would become a seapower, facing Carthage and contesting the waves and the islands with that great Phoenician republic. Archagathus knew that much of Sicilies wealth came from trade and in order to protect that trade that meant influence, which again returned to an inevitable clash with Carthage. Better to start that war on Sicily's terms than to wait for the Carthaginians to abandon their other distractions and move against the Greeks.
While the treasury faithfully began pouring money into building and then crewing a formidable fleet the intrigues at court continued. Krateia essentially vanished after the death of her husband, retreating to a virtuous if dull widowhood. This naturally saw Catia rise. She was now the consort of the monarch and inevitably even those who lamented the light touch of a Siculian accent that laced her Greek were prepared to deal with her. Unfortunately for Catia her elevation had been matched by that of her stepson. Agathocles the Younger had become the direct heir and if Archaganthus failed to match the legendary stamina of his own father there might be a second Agathocles ruling Sicily before too long.
Agathocles the Younger disliked his stepmother but his relations were no closer with his father. They were no closer with anyone. The prince, now in his early twenties was crafty as any in his family and not without skill at war, the law or theology but he had a very dark side. Tales abounded of his treatment of slaves; many who found themselves in his employ disappeared never to be seen again. At other times once beautiful young men and fair young women would be sold in short order, their faces purple with healing bruises, their backs raw from the lash, their hands shaking and eyes dead.
In May 278 BC matters reached a crisis point. Catia had born several children for Archaganthus and had had even persuaded the Basileus to give their youngest son the Italian name of 'Gauis'. More important, at least to others in court, was her nine year old son Andromenes. Despite his youth Prince Andromenes was a bright and pleasant boy, displaying little of the personality flaws that clung to the Agathoclid men like filth to swine.
Intrigues at court...
At the banquet the Prince [Agathocles the Younger] was celebrating a recent hunting trip with his cronies and feasting on a delicacy; fine imported olives from Cyrene. He had with him a favoured slave girl who he fed from his hand as a man might his dog. When he began clutching at his throat the others thought him choking, until they saw the slave girl in the same trouble...
The murderer of Agathocles the Younger was the worst kept secret in Sicily but few mourned this Agathocles. Prince Andromenes had the makings of a fine king - and at least in public no one wished to speak unfavourably of Queen Catia.
The death of Agathocles the Younger, May 278 BC.
Later that same year the navy had reached size enough to compete with Carthage and carry an army to distant shores. Archaganthus and his father before him had always considered the islands of Mliet [2] intrinsically part of Sicily. The islands themselves were tiny and scarcely inhabited but they made a useful trading post for ships to shelter in and would show that the Sicilians had regained their old power.
In September the Sicilians declared war. Archaganthus knew that much of Carthage's strength lay far to the west where they were faces troubles in rich but barborous Spain but that did not mean no danger. Carthage was the hegemon of half a dozen Phoenician statelets along the North African coast, each nominally independent yet subject to the whims and needs of the mighty oligarchy. Together the soldiers and ships of this smattering of cities was quite impressive. Fortunately Archaganthus had allies of his own.
The Kingdom of Epirus, later to prove such a bitter disappointment to Sicily seemed a powerful ally in 278 BC. Phyrrhus, a younger monarch than Archaganthus had perhaps fallen short of the Olympian pretensions of his boyhood but he was a canny and ambitious ruler. As a formal ally of Sicily the Epiroites would - it was supposed - be of great aid in the expected land fighting in Africa. In the event neither the fighting nor the aid would materialise.
Mliet was close to Sicily and undefended. Her fall was swift. From there the Sicilians struck at the island known to the Greeks as Kossyra or Kossyros and to the Phoenicians as Yermena [3]. She too fell without a fight. The Sicilians knew that while their fleet was powerful it was still less so than the combined fleet of their enemies. If the Sicilians could sink or blockade the smaller isolated forces of the petty Phoenician states then they could rule the waves and plunder the islands at their leisure. The next target were the Qarkna Islands close to the African coast and most ambitiously the rich isle of Tipaza, fabled home of the Lotos Eaters [4].
Hephastion and the Sicilian fleet clash with an enemy squadron off Qarkna, May 277 BC
It was at Qarkna that the strategy proved its first success. The Carthaginian client state of Emporia owned the small islands and in a show of admirable stubbornness and thick headedness sought to challenge the Sicilians at sea. The result was an easy victory for Hephastion who sent the enemy triremes to the bottom and took their still living admiral prisoner. Needless to say the islands surrendered at speed.
In the early summer of 278 BC Archaganthus's grand strategy seemed to be working handsomely and some in Syracuse were beginning to consider bigger prizes than humble Mliet. Mainland Africa was still a hard nut to crack and as yet the bulk of the Carthaginian fleet had yet to be faced but talk of capturing Sardinia and perhaps even points further west was common at court. Unfortunately for the Sicilians the gods had other plans. On 13 July the Bruttians declared war on Locri. Sicily, as patron of the polis was obliged to step in, as what Rhegion. The ambitious Bruttians were swiftly joined by the Lucanians and the Messepians. The Second Italian War had begun.
The reaction in Syracuse was undisguised horror and fury. No one had expected the truce at the end of the previous war would lead to an eternal peace but the assumption had been the Southern Italian tribes would be too busy eyeing the growth of Rome and her allies to bother with the remnants of Greek Italy. Evidently that was not the case and a Sicily scarcely recovered from the last conflict - which she had not won - was not faced with resisting the Italian hordes.
With no other choice Archaganthus signed a peace with Carthage, gaining only Mliet as the Sicilians turned their army and fleet back to Italy.
Sicily after the peace with Carthage, July 277 BC.
Footnotes:
[1] Military general, in practice the leader of Sicilian forces in the field.
[2] The Maltese archipelago.
[3] Pantelleria.
[4] The Kerkennah Islands and Djerba respectively.
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Chapter Seven: The Second Italian War (277 BC to 270 BC)
A Lucanian tomb fresco of a warrior on horseback.
Chapter Seven: The Second Italian War (277 BC to 270 BC)
The Sicilians were poorly prepared for war in Italy and morale was low from the start. Still there was little choice in the matter, and the army once again sailed for Calabria, to be joined in time by the mercenaries of Gerbaal Ummashid. The Phoenician sellsword had maintained a balancing act during the brief clash between Carthage and Sicily, avoiding being hired by either side and thus destroying half his potential business. There may have been another reason as it was rumored Gerbaal was not in the finest of health. The Basileus overlooked that gossip. Gerbaal was the only mercenary the state could afford and if he was past his prime then at least his elephants and horses could still make a difference under the overall leadership of Karsis.
The Sicilians had high hopes for their alliance with the potent Greek kingdom of Epirus. King Pyrrhus was famed for his ambition and with his kingdom lying so close to Messapia the feeling in Syracuse was that the Epiriotes would land in Italy at any point. Unfortunately Pyrrhus had other ideas. Pyrrhus was busy waging a war for control of the Peloponnese and though he dutifully declared war on the Southern Italians the fleet and army of Epirus never materialised in the west.
The one advantage Sicily possessed that she had lacked in the previous war was her own great fleet. With total command of the sea the Sicilians could and did land troops to raid Messapia and parts of Calabria. This succeeding in drawing off the enemy at times and provided some sort of morale boost for the beleaguered Greeks of Italy. In extremis the existence of the proud Sicilian navy meant that the island herself was under no danger of direct invasion. The Italians, even combined had scant naval forces and in truth the ships still under the grizzled Hephaiston would see far more action against pirates than 'formal' sailors of Bruttia, Lucania or Messapia.
Unfortunately all those quinqueremes with their proud sails billowing in the winds, their relentless oarsmen and their fearsome bronze rams could not solve the basic problem. Even with Gerbaal's mercenaries and the able bodied men of Locri and Rhegion the Sicilians were outnumbered by more than two to one. Any lone southern Italian state would have been overcome, two represented a difficult struggle but all three united were simply too powerful to face. In battle after exhausting battle the Sicilians were pushed back, and if they inflicted similar or even slightly graver losses on the enemy the Italians could replace them far more easily.
The difference was not so much one of pure population as of how many within that group could march to war. By a simple counting of heads almost as many people lived in Sicily as in the entire of Southern Italy. Unfortunately for the Sicilians the rough Italian tribes were every freeborn man was expected to pick up a sword and shield could raise far more fighters than Sicily with her numerous slaves and her teeming urban classes ill-marked by law and tradition to fight in the field. Nor could Sicily easily try and broaden this pool; the memories of the slave revolt while the Syracusans fought the Siculians remained fresh and terrifying.
There was one possibility. Rome, the formidable military republic to the north had poor relations with the southern Italians and though she could not honestly be called any sort of an ally to Sicily there were trading links between Syracuse and the ports of Latium. That the ambitious Romans might intervene was not beyond the desperate hopes of the Greeks. Unfortunately even in this strange hope they were to be disappointed. The Romans had preoccupations elsewhere, certainly enough to keep them from fighting the Italian bloc. The most they were prepared to do was lean on Messapia (the weakest of the southern states) and bully them into a border adjustment in Rome's favour, something that drew not a single Italian warrior from the south [1].
After some fighting in Calabria the Sicilians were pushed back, first to Rhegion and Locri proper then to Sicily proper. The great Battle of Lokroi Epizephyroi in October 276 BC saw the unified Greek armies defeated by the sheer numerical strength of the enemy. While it was retreat and not a rout, and Karsis saved the bulk of his troops it ultimately forced the Sicilians to abandon the mainland.
The Battle of Lokroi Epizephyroi, October 276 BC.
Archagathus was not at the battle, nor did he set foot on Italian soil throughout the war. The Basileus was not a man naturally given to modesty but he knew his limits as a general and being a born lover of intrigue was not prepared to leave Syracuse herself unattended. A cautious and crafty man he was perhaps the first to realise what the other Sicilians would be forced to face in time; this was not a winnable war.
It was difficult indeed for the leading citizens of Syracuse to come to terms with the idea of a peace with the Italians. The previous war against the Bruttians and their allies had been unsuccessful even by the most generous of definitions but the fact that no land had been exchanged allowed many Greeks to delude themselves into seeing the result as a draw, or even somehow a victory given the number of the barbarians. Archagathus and his father before him had encouraged that sort of magical thinking.
The situation was very different in the 270s, but some lies are hard to break. By December 275 BC when the Bruttians first sent their envoys to Syracuse asking for terms the Greeks had scarcely set foot in Italy for over a year, save for pinprick raids by Gerbaal's mercenaries and the cities of Rhegion and Locri were firmly in Italian hands. Nevertheless the reaction in the court was one of outrage and immediate dismissal. It was still unthinkable to surrender the outposts of the Greeks still left in Italy.
The war was a delicate period for the Siculians in Syracuse. Prior to the conflict they had been happy to lean on their Italian heritage, led by the confident Catia. The fighting had done nothing to hurt the standing of the powerful royal consort but other great families were in a less secure state and scrambled to show their loyalty to the Agathoclid dynasty. Archagathus, whatever his other flaws was no fool and derived much cynical from the banquets he was invited to and the florid oaths in his honour.
Even among this bootlicking and frantic attempts to prove loyalty there were opportunities for genuinely talented Siculian-Italian families to rise. One such were the once obscure and now prospering Nigidii clan of Hippana. Appius Nigidus, had been born in 304 BC and as a youth had seen his hometown pass from Carthaginian to Syracusan control. The young Appius had enjoyed an adventurous life as a mercenary and had learned much during his time in North Africa fighting against the Libyan tribes. This brilliant man now approached the Basileus with a mind overflowing with ideas on how to reform the army.
The 'Nigidian Reforms' of 270 BC.
The character of Appius Nigidius.
The so-called 'Nigidian Reforms' of 270 BC restored morale and helped ease the recruiting of men but they came far too late to win the war for Sicily as Archagathus well knew. Far more important was the unique brilliance of Appius Nigidius himself. The Basileus was most taken with the young Italian, to the point of eventually marrying him to Archagathus's daughter Phillo.
Archagathus was happy to embrace the remarkably talented Appius because he was utterly confident that the young man presented no threat either to Archagathus himself or to his son and heir Prince Andromenes. Appius cared only for the study of war and had no real ambitions beyond them. Frankly when it came to leadership in the field and politicking in the court he could be shockingly gauche. Genius or no he would not try and seize Syracuse for himself.
With his keen grasp of strategy Appius had quickly come to agree with the Basileus that the war was lost. Unfortunately the Nigidii family were far too low down the ranks of Sicilian nobility to carry much sway in the court. It would take another dribble of exhausting raids and the final failure of an expedition to relieve Rhegion that convinced the rest of Sicily that the mainland Greek cities could not be saved. On 5 September 270 BC Sicily signed a peace with the Bruttians, formally recognising the reality.
Peace with Bruttia, September 270 BC.
It is fair to say that the Second Italian War struck Sicily at a particularly bad time. The treasury was relatively low, the victim of the naval buildup for the anticipated war with Carthage. The reserve of manpower was still relatively modest. Gerbaal, the only mercenary the Sicilians could afford was in a state of personal decline that left him little use save against enemies that he outnumbered. All this caveats should be aknowledged. Even so it is difficult to believe Sicily could have won outright. The odds were simply too much against her. In the First Italian War, waged far more on Sicilian terms what had saved the Sicilians was not some brilliant feat of arms. It was the intervention of an outside party that had forced the Bruttians and their allies to cut a hasty peace with Syracuse. Otherwise the conclusion may have been much like that of 270 BC.
The long Second Italian War was very similar to the first. The Sicilians had fought hard and well and even succeeded in inflicting more casualties than they received but eventually had been worn down by the numbers of the enemy. Once again Sicily herself had remained immune to attack thanks to the Sicilian control of the seas. Much like the earlier clash Sicily proper had even modestly prospered from trade and taxation. However the consequences of the war were much more profound. With the surrender of Rhegion and Locri the sole independent Greek polis in the whole of Southern Italy was Heraclea. Every other city lay under Italian control.
Greek cities under barbarian rule was not a new experience as the Greek cities of Asia could well attest. The Italian tribes were more Hellenised than the old Persians had been and further contact with Greek culture and wealth would only accelerate this trend. Already the courts of Bruttia, Lucania and Messapia echoed to the sound of Greek. It was possible, even likely that in time the local Greek families could rise to prominence with their new masters, especially where the Italian hand lay light. Still, it was hard not see it as a loss to the Hellenic world. Croton, Thurii and Tarentum had all once been ambitious and powerful city states, whose agendas had shaped the known world. Now they were simply names on a map.
The consequences for Sicily were just as great, though it would take years for the true nature of the changes to become apparent. In the short term Sicily lost the tribute and trade she had received from Rhegion and Locri. Surprisingly this problem would swiftly be solved. In December 270 BC, mere months after the end of the war the Bruttian king Hostus Abetius sent envoys to Syracuse requesting a new trade deal. Seemingly the Italians had developed a taste for Sicilian wine. An amused Archagathus was ready to agree and soon after Sicilian merchant vessels began returning to now-Italian ruled Locri and Rhegion. History does not record the reaction of the locals upon seeing their former allies return with cargoes of amphorae rather than hoplites.
The trade deal with the Bruttians reflected the natural caution of the Basileus and the need to fill a whole in the treasury left by cashiering off Gerbaal's band of expensive thugs but it also pointed out the road towards normalisation with the Southern Italians. For centuries Syracuse had struggled to win dominance over Magna Graecia. With this second clash decisively proving the strength of the Italians that ambition would have to be abandoned. In its stead the Sicilians might look to becoming more of a seapower, a process already begun before the war by Archagathus. Overseas trade and navy seemed the way forward and as long as the Sicilian wooden wall in the Strait of Messana held Sicily had little to fear from mainland barbarians.
A defeat was a defeat, but in a strange way it was also a liberation from commitments Sicily could not honour.
