While the Greek states fought off the Persian Empire in the early fifth century BC, defeating Darius and Xerxes's armies at Marathon, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale, the Greeks of Sicily simultaneously defeated a vast Carthaginian invasion force at the battle of Himera in 480 BC. What followed was a period of comparative prosperity and calm for the Sicilian Greeks. After the Sicilians defeated even Athens and the Delian League during their expedition to Sicily between 415 and 413 BC, Carthage, all the while, was preparing for revenge. Allies from across the Greek world would be recalled back to the island for the Second Greco-Punic War. Carthaginian general Hannibal Mago would get his republic the revenge it sought.
Check out my previous post on The Battle of Himera, 480 BC
Check out my previous post on The Athenian expedition of Sicily, 415 - 413 BC
Check out my previous post on The Battle of Cyzicus, 410 BC
SEGESTA AND SELINUS
[ABOVE Segesta and Selinus within Sicily]
In 416 BC, the rival Greek-Sicilian states of Selinus and Segesta - the former a Dorian colony, the latter an Ionian - broke out into war over territorial disputes. Crossing the river the border dispute was over, the Selinuntians seized the immediate land. Marching out to meet them, Segesta’s soldiers forced the Selinuntians back across the river, taking back their land. With Segesta struggling, their delegates were sent to other Greek Sicilian states of Akragas and Syracuse for aid, but to no avail. Failing this, Segesta called out to Carthage for reinforcements, but again they would not come. When refugees from Leontini sought aid from Syracuse, Segesta and Leontini would join forces and call upon the assistance of their Ionian allies far to the east - Athens.
THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION
What followed was the ambitious Athenian expedition to Sicily, lasting from 415 to 413 BC. While Athens sent everything they could, and mustered some of their best commanders for the cause, the expedition would prove to be a disaster for the Athenians. The entire armada - up to 15,000 soldiers and over two-hundred large warships - were either killed, captured or enslaved. Very few made it back to Athens alive to report the defeat. Emboldened by their victory, Syracuse was able to send allied troops to aid Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, since Sparta sent many of their own forces to aid Syracuse. Among them was the general Hermocrates, who would prove a useful asset in the war for Sparta.
[ABOVE: Map of Athens's Sicilian Expedition, 415 - 413 BC]
DIOCLES OF SYRACUSE
[ABOVE: Portrait of Diocles of Syracuse from "Biography of the Illustrious Men of Sicily: Adorned with their Respective Portraits, Volume 4" by Domenico lo Faso Pietrasanta, 1821]
Next year in 412 BC, Diocles, one of Syracuse’s most influential leaders, was able to persuade the city to turn over to a more democratic form of rule, where administration would be taken care of by magistrates chosen by votes and where lawmakers would also be elected for making new laws and organising the city’s policies. Among these elected would be Diocles, who would help draft “The Laws of Diocese”. Even in death, he was honoured with his own built temple and the status of hero akin to Homer’s heroes of old.
CARTHAGE ANSWERS
Growing ever more concerned was Segesta, an ally of Athens during the Sicilian Expedition. They expected to have to pay their price for their part in damaging Syracuse during the war, fearing for their state’s own survival. Once again, another war between the two states resulted in Selinus taking the upper hand, demanding more land in return and pushing Segesta back. Desperate now, Segesta once again called upon Carthage for aid, and essentially gave their city’s autonomy over to the republic. Eager to capture such a strategically vital city, Carthage was still concerned over the power Syracuse held.
HANNIBAL
Their foremost citizen, Hannibal - no, not that Hannibal - advised Segesta to acquire their city, stating that they would have his and Carthage’s full support. Hannibal himself was voted to be the commander in the coming conflict, holding supreme power. This war to him was personal; his own grandfather, Hamilcar, was the commander of the Carthaginian forces who fought and died at the Battle of Himera seventy years before, and Hamilcar’s son, Gescon, had been exiled from Carthage due to his father’s own defeat, where he took his own life in Selinus. Hannibal, thus, resolved to personally wipe out the Greeks from Sicily.
Seeing that Selinus was not satisfied over the border treaty, Hannibal sent ambassadors to Syracuse. He believed that since Selinus refused to agree to arbitration, Syracuse would choose not to ally with them. When Selinus too sent ambassadors to Syracuse, refused arbitration and answered to Carthage’s party, Syracuse voted to maintain its alliance with Selinus and keep their peace with Carthage. For Hannibal, this would not do. Wielding supreme power and vying to destroy the Greeks, Hannibal sent five-thousand Libyan and eight-hundred Italian Campanian soldiers to Segesta for aid. These troops, once hired by the city of Chalcidice to aid Athens against Syracuse five years prior, had since found no one who would hire them, until Carthage amassed its vast wealth to supply them with armaments, horses and good salaries.
THE EXPEDITION OF 410 BC
Selinus prospered in these days as a wealthy and highly populated city. Calling upon their large citizen population, Selinus was able to muster a large army into battle order, laying waste to much of Segesta’s lands. Segesta’s forces, backed with Carthaginian and Italian soldiers, managed to catch Selinus off-guard, managed to put Selinus to flight, capturing all their loot and killing around a thousand soldiers. Both sides, immediately after the battle, sent ambassadors for aid, Segesta to Carthage and Selinus to Syracuse.
[ABOVE Balearic slingers, mercenaries regularly recruited by Carthage]
THE MAIN EXPEDITION, 409 BC
Foreseeing the scale of the war, Carthage entrusted personal command of their large army to Hannibal, who set about recruiting soldiers and mercenaries from across the republic - citizen soldiers from Africa itself and mercenaries from Iberia, Libya and the Western Mediterranean islands - alongside siege engines. Manned aboard fifteen-hundred transport ships and accompanied by sixty warships, Hannibal’s armada set sail in the spring of 409 BC, landing at the promontory that lay opposite Libya and setting up camp.
Estimates on the size of his army vary; modern estimates range from thirty to forty thousand, yet ancient sources claim much more monstrous numbers; according to Diodorus Siculus, the historian Timaeus stated the Carthaginians had “no more than one-hundred thousand men”, while Ephorus recorded a titanic two-hundred thousand infantry and two-thousand cavalry, supposedly similar in number to Xerxes’s army in 480 BC. Xenophon claims it to have been a hundred-thousand men. Either way, this was absolutely a force of concern. Selinuntian cavalry operating near Segesta quickly saw this vast army in Sicily, retreating back east to inform Selinus and Syracuse.
THE SIEGE OF SELINUS
Unloaded in western Sicily at Motyê to minimise suspicion of their intentions against Syracuse, Hannibal’s forces joined up with their Segestan allies before marching east to Selinus. Making it to the River Mazarus, Hannibal made it to Selinus. He divided his army into two parts, putting it under siege with six iron-plated battering rams and six siege towers, assaulting the walls with all haste. Utilising archers and slingers to fend off defenders from the walls, Hannibal was able to push the defenders back. The Selinuntians feared for their survival, but hopeful of Syracusan reinforcements, they remained optimistic, being able to fend off the first few assaults against the walls. Every able-bodied man was able to be armed, potentially a defending force of up to twenty-thousand. Elderly citizens and women unable to fight brought ammunition and food to the defenders.
[ABOVE: Plan view of the Acropolis of Selinus]
Hannibal promised his army that they could pillage Selinus of all its goods, should they make it in. With this, he and his army pushed the siege engines forward at speed, attacking the walls in several waves. Trumpets would sound the attack signal, and at one command the army would bellow their war cries before charging forward. Selinus’s walls were shaken by the battering rams, while missile troops mounted in the siege towers - themselves taller than the city’s walls - took out several defenders. Hannibal’s Italian contingent, eager to prove themselves, made for the city centre upon capturing the walls, however they were soon forced back when the Selinuntians regrouped and surrounded them in the city streets. Come nightfall, having suffered too many losses, Hannibal pulled back the siege.
SELINUS CALLS FOR AID
That night, Selinus dispatched emissaries on horseback to Akragas, Gela and Syracuse. Wishing to march to their aid as one united force instead of potentially being picked off as smaller, isolated contingents, Akragas and Gela waited for Syracuse to respond, since they were engaged in their own war with Chalcidice. Syracuse decided to put this war on halt, gathering their forces to march west.
THE SECOND ASSAULT
[ABOVE: The Battle of Selinus]
Come dawn, Hannibal assaulted the city from every side. Selinus’s walls which were assaulted the previous night quickly fell when they were approached with siege engines. Clearing the debris, his soldiers attacked the defenders mustered at this gap in relays, gradually forcing the Selinuntians back and breaching into the city, with Hannibal’s men taking heavy losses in the process. The siege would last in total nine days, with men being sent in waves to repel one another. Cries from the city led many Selinuntians to fear that the city had fallen, causing a retreat into the city streets where they barricades the narrow passes.
THE MASSACRE
Engaged in the streets now, the Greek soldiers received help from above, as women and children boarded up in their homes threw down rock and tiles onto the Punic soldiers. However, the sheer reserve in manpower Hannibal could call upon gradually overwhelmed both the Greek soldiers and women, the Selinuntians were forced even further back. A final stand was held in the city centre’s market square, before all armed defenders were cut down. Selinus was then ripe for Hannibal’s promised plunder, with the houses breached and the women and children taken as war plunder to be done with as the Punic’s saw fit. Diodorus Siculus records the plunder:
… the barbarians, scattering throughout the entire city, plundered whatever of value was to be found in the dwellings, while of the inhabitants they found in them some they burned together with their homes and when others struggled into the streets, without distinction of sex or age but whether infant children or women or old men, they put them to the sword, showing no sign of compassion. They mutilated even the dead according to the practice of their people, some carrying bunches of hands about their bodies and others heads which they had spitted upon their javelins and spears.
Only women and children in the city’s temples were spared, fearing that assaulting them would make the women burn down the temple’s masses of stored wealth. In total, sixteen thousand Selinuntian men, women and children died, and five to six-thousand were taken captive, while twenty-six hundred managed to escape to Akragas, where they were warmly welcomed and given shelter and food. Those captured women and children were forced to watch each other as atrocious indecencies were inflicted upon them. Selinus itself was utterly plundered and burnt.
THE ALLIES GATHER
At this juncture, three-thousand soldiers from Syracuse arrive at Akragas. Learning of Selinus’s fall to Hannibal, they sent emissaries to demand the handover of the prisoners and the sparing of Selinus’s temples. Hannibal stated that the Selinuntians had proved incapable of self-defence and worthy of slavery, and that their temples were to be treated as he saw fit, since clearly the gods had abandoned the Greeks.
THE 2nd BATTLE OF HIMERA, 409 BC
[ABOVE: Sicily during the 2nd Battle of Himera, 409 BC]
THE FIRST ASSAULT
After destroying Selinus’s walls, Hannibal made next for Himera to the north. This was his main target, having been the city that killed 150,000 fellow Carthaginians and his grandfather Hamilcar. With forty-thousand men, Hannibal now pitched camp atop a series of hills not far from the city’s walls. Here he was joined by twenty-thousand local allies. Setting up his siege engines again, Himera’s walls were shaken and their defenders pushed back in waves. Many attackers even weakened the walls at their base, holding up the near-collapsing structures with wooden frames before setting these alight and retreating, causing entire sections of wall to collapse instantly. Fighting for their very survival, once again the Greek defenders were able to repel this first wave from this collapsed section. On top of this, Syracusan reinforcement from Akragas along with their allies - four-thousand in total - arrived at Himera under the command of Diocles.
[ABOVE: Remains of the Temple of Victory, Himera]
HIMERA SALLIES OUT
Morning brought the citizens of Himera, keen not to be encircled and set upon like their Selinuntian brothers, to resolve to sallying outside the city walls, protected by missile troops atop the battlements. Together with Diodes’s reinforcements, around ten-thousand soldiers mustered to engage Hannibal’s forces outside Himera. This move was not what Hannibal was expecting, and his army could barely muster a coherent defensive line to repel the Greeks; in this confusion, many of Hannibal’s own soldiers slew each other in the clash, more-so likely since many of his own mercenaries were indeed Greek Sicilians. Hannibal’s men fled to the hills towards camp, and in this fight and subsequent retreat, anywhere from six to twenty-thousand of Hannibal’s men were slain. In turn, however, the Himeraeans too were caught in a disorderly fashion as Hannibal’s encamped detachment lined up in proper battle formation. This organised force was able to push down hill against the now fatigued and disorderly Greeks, killing three-thousand and sending the rest fleeing for safety in Himera.
DIOCLES’ REINFORCEMENTS
This battle was already over by the time twenty-five triremes, originally dispatched to aid Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, now returned to Sicily to aid against Hannibal. Word even reached Himera that Syracuse was ready to send every soldier they could muster - several thousand more men - to aid Himera, but that Hannibal would use this to board his ships back at Motyê to sail around Sicily and attack Syracuse while it lay undefended. Diocles thus abandoned Himera, taking with him half the populace and keeping the other half at Himera, to many of the Himeraeans’ complaints, loading the people aboard triremes in the dead of night back east to Syracuse.
[ABOVE: The Second Battle of Himera]
THE SECOND ASSAULT
Those left behind spent the night armed atop the walls, assumedly a sleepless night for many of them. The following day saw a resuming of attacks by Hannibal, and the defenders fought with no thought towards their own safety, expecting their reinforcing triremes from Syracuse to arrive soon. They did, just not in time; they could be seen from the walls as they crumbled under the pressure of the Carthaginian siege engines, allowing Hannibal’s Iberian mercenaries to flood into the city, receiving support from above via Carthaginian missile infantry.
VENGEANCE
With the streets eventually cleared of soldiers, the entire city’s population was set upon by Hannibal’s men. Hannibal ordered prisoners be taken instead, stopping the massacre but not stopping the utter plunder of the city’s riches, before these temples storing the riches were set ablaze. Two-hundred and forty years after its founding, and seventy years after his grandfather had fallen in battle, Hannibal razed Himera to the ground, avenging his ancestors. On the spot where his grandfather was slain by Gelon’s men, Hannibal had the captive men - some three-thousand in total - brought to this very spot, tortured and then ceremonially executed. Thousands of women and children were held captive.
AFTERMATH
Hannibal broke up his army following victory at Himera. He sent his Greek-Sicilian and Italian contingents back to their homes, with the Italics complaining that, although they had made a key push in the city and had given many soldier’s lives in the fighting, they were woefully underpaid, to no reply. Hannibal, meanwhile, took the rest of his army aboard ships and set sail for Carthage to drop the campaign’s war booty off, where he was met with adoration by crowds coming out to greet the general who, as Diodorus puts it,
… one who in a brief time had performed greater deeds than any general before him.
[ABOVE: "Citizen Soldiers of Carthage on Parade", by George Rochegrosse, 1938]
HERMOCRATES
Affairs in Greece had caused the Syracusan general, Hermocrates, to become exiled back to Sicily. This general had fought and commanded with renown for his Spartan allies, but now was returning west after being overpowered by his political rivals, handing over the thirty-five triremes he was sent with to their new commanders. One thing he was bringing back with him, however, was vast swathes of gold he had acquired through his friendship with Pharnabazus II, Persian satrap of Phrygia, which he immediately put to work after landing at Messenê; he had five triremes built and mounted with a thousand hoplites. When a further thousand men from Himera arrived seeking protection, Hermocrates set sail for Selinus, building up a section of the city’s ruined walls and calling upon all local survivors to join him - six-thousand picked soldiers were able to join him, providing him with provisions and resources too.
CAMPAIGNS
With his base of operations established at the ruins of Selinus, he attacked and lay waste to Motyê, where Hannibal first docked in Sicily. He then marched north-east towards Panormus (modern Palermo), ravaging the local countryside and defeating the city’s army in open battle, killing up to five-hundred men. His successful and sudden campaign won him commendation of much of Sicily’s Greek population, and even the apologies of Syracuse. He thus planned his return to his home state, knowing that his enemies within would still be keen to work against him.
RETURN TO SYRACUSE
Hermocrates first made for the ruins of Himera, again to collect survivors and to pay respects to the fallen, with many in his army doing so by collecting the bones of the fallen. Marching east, his army came to the border of Syracusan territory. Within the walls opposing his return was Diodes; the law stated that the remains of Greeks carried like his army were was forbidden. However Hermocrates was bagging on winning over the hearts of the Syracusan people, hoping they would feel for his wish to honour fellow brave Greeks who stood up against a foreign foe. His plan worked; a procession and burial was held for the fallen defenders of Himera, and Diodes was even exiled.
[ABOVE: A Syracusan tetradrachm showing the nymph Arethusa (obverse) and a quadriga chariot (reverse), c.415 - 405 BC]
DEATH
Hermocrates did not receive a formal pardon or full acceptance back into Syracuse, fearing that his recent growth in power might lead to him wishing to become a tyrant. Not wishing to resort to force just yet, Hermocrates withdrew back west to Selinus. When his friends eventually sent for him, the two sides met at nighttime at Gela to join forces before returning to Syracuse sometime in 407 BC. This proved a cause for concern for Syracuse. Gathering armed in the marketplace, many of the supporters of this force were slain, including Hermocrates himself. Survivors were put on trial and exiled. Among the survivors was one named Dionysius.
Not wishing to resume hostilities with Carthage after Hermocrates’s campaigns, Syracuse sent envoys to the city. Carthage was utterly resolved however to the conquest of the entire island. More soldiers and provisions were gathered in North Africa with intent to sail to Sicily, who arrived after volunteer citizens sailed over to found a new city, just slightly east of Panormus. Nearby the thermal hot springs, Carthage founded their own Himera: the city of Thermae Himerese.
HANNIBAL RETURNS
Hannibal by now had won the fullest of love with the people, rulers and armies of Carthage, being appointed for yet another campaign to Sicily. In his old age, however, Carthage sent another general to serve beside him: his cousin, Himilco. Given vast amounts of money to fund their war, they sent once more for soldiers from across the republic, in Libya, the Balearics, Iberia, Numidia and Italics. Again, the size of this force varies in sources: Timaeus claims one-hundred and twenty-thousand, and Ephorus claims a titanic three-hundred thousand, although modern estimated guess a more conservative sixty thousand. Ready by 406 BC, they boarded a thousand transport ships, supported by forty triremes, ahead of Hannibal and Himilco.
[ABOVE: Carthaginian hoplite]
When this armada reached the region of Eryx, they came across a Syracusan navy of roughly equal strength that came out to meet them. The following engagement lasted all day, and saw fifteen Phoenician warships crushed, with the rest fleeing for safety in the open waters. When news of this reached Hannibal and Himilco back in Carthage, they set sail with fifty ships, keen to attack the Syracusans and make the way safe for the rest of the Punic fleet.
THE SIEGE OF AKRAGAS, 406 BC
Fearing for their survival, Sicily flew into panic. Syracuse did what they could to muster support, calling upon the Italians and the Spartans to aid. Most fearful of all was Akragas, also known as Agrigentum, to the south of the island, the closest Greek Sicilian city to Carthage. They were, luckily, a very prosperous city in Sicily, and were able to bring their vast amounts of grain and supplies to within the city walls, which they planned to be able to use to wait out a coming siege. Much of their yearly harvest was regularly sold to Carthage, and now war with them was coming, this fact could be used against their foe. Agrigentum, at the time, could muster a defence force around twenty thousand.
[ABOVE: Tetradrachm from Akragas, c.410 BC]
Reaching Akragas, Hannibal’s forces made two encampments outside the city walls; one where they stationed their Iberian and Libyan troops - numbering some forty thousand - and the rest, closer to the city and protected with a ditch and palisade. Carthaginian envoys first attempted to sway Akragas to peace, and when this inevitably failed, the siege began. Akragas’s walls were manned at once. Among the ranks was a Spartan general named Dexippus, who commanded some fifteen hundred mercenaries, among his ranks being eight hundred Campanian Italian troops who were once underpaid by Hannibal. These mercenaries held a hill overlooking the city, known as the Hill of Athena.
[ABOVE: The Siege of Agrigentum / Akragas, 406 BC]
FIRST ASSAULT, PLAGUE AND HANNIBAL'S DEATH
Hannibal and Himilco spotted a weakness in the city’s walls, advancing two siege towers there. Many casualties were inflicted from above thanks to missile fire, but by nighttime, the defenders repelled the invaders, destroying the towers in the process. Eager to launch further assaults quickly, Hannibal ordered for local tombs and monuments to be taken down and dismantled, using the material to construct mounds up to the city walls. One tomb torn down was the largest in the region: the Tomb of Theron. Before its deconstruction, it had been shaken by lightning strikes, its local soothsayers speaking out against its use in the battle. At that moment, as if the gods themselves punished the Punic forces, plague broke out among the army. Several thousand soon lay dead and several more inflicted with side effects and injuries. Among the dead was none other than Hannibal.
HIMILCO TAKES COMMAND
With no time to mourn, Himilco, assuming overall command now, halted the destruction of the temples and monuments. He quickly apologised to the Greeks gods, sacrificing a boy by drowning him in the sea for Poseidon. He did not neglect strategy, however, and the siege continued; the mounds already constructed would serve their purpose as Himilco filled the city’s local river banks that bordered the walls with more material, bringing siege engines up to them and commencing daily attacks.
SYRACUSE RESPONDS
Fearing Akragas may meet the fates of Selinus and Himera, Syracuse put a general named Daphnaeus in command as reinforcements from Italy and Messenê arrived at the city. On their march to relieve Akragas, troops from Camarina, Gela and other interior Sicilian settlements joined Daphnaeus’s army, joined by thirty warships that followed them along the coast. His army, Diodorus Siculus records, numbered thirty thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry.
INITIAL SUCCESS
In response, as Daphnaeus had already crossed the River Himera, Himilco sent his Iberians, Campanians and over forty thousand troops to meet the Greeks. A vicious fight ensued, with the Syracusans emerging victorious, killing six thousand Punics in total. Knowledge that this was but a fraction of Himilco’s army kept the Greeks from pursuing and cutting down any more men; this is how the Himeraeans lost their city three years prior. Allegedly, they were not pursued further as they ran past the walls of Akragas by the city’s defenders as Himilco had managed to bribe some generals not to come out and attack any such stragglers, under threat that their then-unprotected city would be destroyed completely.
Daphnaeus’s army occupied the hill and enemy encampment before meeting with Akragas’s army. The discussed how the generals had let the Carthaginian straggler go. Four out of five of these commanders were soon stoned to death. Dexippus also received abuse from the armies, for although he was experienced and capable, he had supposedly acted treacherously.
AKRAGAS ATTACKS
Following this assembly, Daphnaeus marches his men out, intent to put the Punic camp siege. He withdrew from this effort upon seeing just how well fortified it was, however, having arrived underprepared. However his cavalry were able to occupy the roads leading to the city, allowing them clear coverage of the rest of his army while it scoured for resources. Himilco’s men, as a result, were running low on supplies. Some mercenaries among their ranks, Sicilians and Campanians alike, even threatened to turn themselves over to the enemy if they did not receive their promised portion of rations.
THE PORT ATTACK
It’s here that Himilco learnt that Akragas was receiving much of their supplies by sea through their harbour, sustaining much of their populace. He thus planned to summon forty triremes from Panormus and Motyê and attack Akragas’s harbour. Since no moves had yet been bade by Himilco at sea, Syracuse felt confident in leaving their harbour relatively unprotected. The Punic navy’s sudden appearance caught the Greeks off-guard, resulting in eight sunken vessels and the rest being pursued to the coastline. With such a reversal of favour, Campanian troops serving under Akragas defected over to Himilcar for a small bribery.
ABANDONING AKRAGAS
With the port blockaded and the Greek navy weakened, soon supplies began trickling in slower and slower each day. Allegedly, even the Spartan Dexippus was bribed for a small amount of coin too, without hesitation. Akragas’s generals met to discuss the situation, quickly coming to the conclusion that defending the city was hopeless - in the dead of night, they abandoned Akragas aboard their ships.
FATE OF THE SURVIVORS
Not only were the city’s good and supplies left behind, but even the old and weak were left as the populace headed further and further away, with everyone’s thoughts of safety being only directed towards themselves. Those left behind often resorted to taking their own lives, seeing no hope without their family, friends or home. Those who escaped were given safe passage and arms by Gela. Eventually, these refugees would find safety in the city of Leontini.
After breaching the walls, Himilco had all who were left behind put to death. Men, women, children and anyone seeking refuge within a temple - even the Temple of Athena - were killed. Diodorus Siculus describes the slaughter:
… he set fire to the temple and burned the dedications in it… Himilco… collected as great a store of booty as a city could be expected to yield which had been inhabited by two hundred thousand people... Indeed a multitude of paintings executed with the greatest care was found and an extraordinary number of sculptures of every description and worked with great skill. The most valuable pieces, accordingly, Himilco sent to Carthage, among which, as it turned out, was the Bull of Phalaris, and the rest of the pillage he sold as booty.
He did not, however, destroy the city entirely, wishing to use it as a base for further operations.
[ABOVE: The Akragas Inscription, c.406 BC, found in 1934 by Guillaume Lapeyre, detailing the Sicilian War]
DIONYSIUS
When news of Akragas’s fall rang all through Sicily, many settlements began sending their people to Syracuse, while others sent theirs across the straits to mainland Italy. With Akragas’s refugees reaching Syracuse, many pondered on what action to take next, until Dionysius, son of Hermocrates, accused the generals of betraying their cause to Carthage, stirring up the assembly to enact on them and getting fined for rousing an uproar. Dionysius encouraged the city's archons to raise the most competent - not most popular - generals to defeat Himilco.
[ABOVE: Portrait of Dionysius I, depicted by Giullaume Rouille in "A List of Iconic Figures", 1553]
TYRANT OF SYRACUSE
Dionysius would spend the next weeks in Syracuse being admired by the people as not just the only competent general, but an outstanding one above all. He would come to disassociate with other commanders, spreading rumour that they were in negotiations with the Carthaginians. Many outstanding citizens tried warning the commoners that he was attempting simply to gain power for himself. Dionysius’ on the other hand, advised the government to recall those Syracusans they had previously exiled, for while they called for mainland Italians to aid them in the war, it was madness, he stated, to call upon the aid of foreigners above their own kin. From here, Dionysius would be geared towards becoming tyrant of Syracuse.
Envoys soon came from Gela requesting troops. Dispatched from the city with two thousand infantry and four hundred horsemen, he arrived at Gela, under the watch and command of Dexippus, the Spartan sent there by Syracuse. Quickly putting down the city’s ongoing civil strife with death penalties and paying his own soldier’s wages, he won over the loyalty of Gela’s troops and its people, who believed him to have been the one to liberate them. Dionysius requested Dexippus join him in his fight against Carthage, and when the Spartan refused to follow his designs, the Syracusan said he would return home. This brought out the cries of the Geloans, bleeding with him to stay. Dionysius said he was simply returning to collect more soldiers, to then return to Gela’s army and march against Himilco.
Returning to Syracuse, Dionysius found the city calm. People watched theatre while generals sat idly. As it turns out, they had been bribed by Carthaginian envoys to ignore Himilco’s ongoing war. Furious, Dionysius declared that he would lay down his command, seeing it unfair that he was the only one fighting for his country while everyone else betrayed it. Very few citizens stood up in support of Dionysius retaining command, but their calls were enough and Dionysius was given supreme power.
He first called upon all male citizens of fighting age up to forty years arm and ration up and march with him to Leontini, at the time a Syracusan outpost filled with foreigners and exiles. Camping i the countryside one night, Dionysius falsified a plot against him, seeking refuse in the Acropolis and using this to demand a personal bodyguard of six hundred men - later one thousand - of his own choosing, supposedly emulating Peisistratus of Athens about one hundred years prior. With his, he managed to secure his tyranny by 405 BC, exiling Dexippus back to mainland Greece in the process, and having his strongest rivals, Daphnaeus and Demarchus, killed. He would go on to become ancient Greece’s longest reigning tyrant.
THE BATTLE OF GELA, 405 BC
Having brought their plunder from Akragas back to Carthage, Himilco and his army, after wintering in the Greek city ruins, prepared several engines of war to move against their next target: Gela. Ravaging their lands of goods, he supplied his army before marching up to the River Gela where he pitched camp, setting his army to work by cutting down a local forest and constructing trenches around their camp to defend against Dionysius’s army they expected to aid Gela. The men of Gela wished to send the women and children to Syracuse to save them, but the women, refused, throwing themselves inside the city’s temples and begging the gods that they would share the same fates, should it come down to it.
[ABOVE: Archaeological map of ancient Gela by P. Orlandini, 1968]
INITIAL GREEK SUCCESSES
Some initial success for the Geloan army could be found early on here; small detachments were sent out to attack raiding and looting parties, which they did with great success. And when Himilco assaulted the walls in relays and with his large siege engines, the defenders fought back valiantly, even using the women and children to have any damaged sections repaired overnight. On top of this, Dionysius, together with his army and some Italian and Sicilian mercenaries, was marching to Gela’s relief with, supposedly, fifty-thousand soldiers, over thirty-thousand according to Timaeus, including warships.
Pitching camp by the sea near Gela, Dionysius’s light infantry raided the Carthaginian forces foraging for resources in the countryside, while his ships and cavalry depleted them of acquired resources in their own lands. Later dividing his main force into three, he sent one to attack Himilco’s entrenched fort, one to move along the coast and the other other his personal command to advance through the city where Himilco’s war engines were stationed.
[ABOVE: The Timoleon Walls that surrounded Gela]
His fleet was able to find an unfortified section of the Carthaginian camp, causing Himilco to have to rush defenders there en mass. Dionysius’s coastal division managed to put to flight many defenders, depleted in their numbers due to many being redirected to protect against the Greek fleet, while those attacking the entrenched fort were pushed back by the Carthaginians. The Italic forces were pushed back after being engaged for too long and receiving no aid in the meantime. Dionysius’s own contingent were unable to make enough headway through the city streets, and the Geloans came too late with their aid. Spanish and Italian troops under Himilco, meanwhile, managed to kill over a thousand enemy, with several hundred others falling across the three-point battle. Dionysius withdrew to within the walls.
THE SACK OF CAMARINA, 405 BC
Seeing his unfavourable position, Dionysius, calling a war council, dispatched envoys to collect their dead under truce, while sending out the mass of the city to safety, leaving only some two-thousand light troops behind. Within time, the Carthaginians moved their quarters to within the city, plundering it. Arriving in Camarina, Dionysius told the citizens there too to follow him to safety to Syracuse. Almost everyone followed, leaving only the old and frail behind while taking what few valuables with them they could.
[ABOVE: House of the Altar Quarter archaeological site, Camarina]
The sight of so many refugees caused Dionysius’s army to become enraged with the unsuccessful general, especially since he had retreated during the last engagement, sacrificing none of his own men in the process while loosing well over a thousand of the rest of his army. Even the Italian forces and most of the cavalry within his army deserted. When they noticed that his mercenaries were not deserting, they went to Syracuse, plundering Dionysius’s home and seizing his wife, leaving her as Diodorus described,
so ill used as to ensure the tyrant’s keeping his anger fiercely alive, acting as they did in the belief that the vengeance they wreaked on Dionysius’ wife would be the surest guarantee of their holding by each other in their attack upon him.
[ABOVE: Map of ancient Camarina, created in 2018]
Bringing a select force of six-hundred infantry and a hundred cavalry to Syracuse, Dionysius speedily caught the soldiers by surprise. He burnt the city gates down with reeds his men collected, before making his way into the city and defeating all those who opposed his force.
DISEASE AND PEACE
Meanwhile, Himilco’s forces were yet again struck with disease, ravaging much of his forces. Sending envoys to Syracuse, they sued for peace, which Dionysius was all too happy to agree to. Peace terms were as follows: Carthage, together with their original colonists, got to keep the Elymi and Sicani, inhabitants of the destroyed cities of Selinus, Akragas and Himera, and those who fled from Gela and Camarina were allowed to dwell in their cities too, but would have to pay tribute to Carthage. Inhabitants of Leontini and Messenê and the Siceli were allowed to live under their own laws, and Syracuse was to be subject to their new tyrant, Dionysius. Selinus and Himera were to remain under Carthaginian control, despite their ruined state. Captives and ships from either side were to be returned.
With half their soldiers lost to the plague, Himilco and the Carthaginians returned to Libya, taking the plague with them and killing several more in Africa. With that, the second Greco-Punic war had come to a bloody, indecisive end. The Carthaginians had clearly won the battles, but logistics, plague, the loss of Hannibal and the retained resilience of Syracuse ultimately forced them out. Dionysius would continue the expansion of his kingdom, and war between the two powers would resume another day…
NEXT POST: SPARTA'S RESURGENCE: The Battle of Notium, 406 BC
Coming soon...
SOURCES
- Diodorus Siculus, "Library of History", book 13.43 - 114
- Xenophon, "A History of My Times", book 1.1.37
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"Punic-Sicilian Wars - Hannibal's Revenge (410 BC) DOCUMENTARY" by "Invicta"
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