CHAP. XXII. tius seems to have thought that the sanctity of the place fitted it for the site of a new city, in which the Sicels might recognise a common capital of the nation. He transported Menæ into the plain, but enclosed a space capable of containing a much larger population; and settlers were found in abundance, attracted as well by the fertility of the soil, as by the fame of the sanctuary, from which the new city took the name of Palice. Ducetius now felt himself strong enough to attempt some offensive movements against the Greeks. He recovered Ætna-the ancient Inessa-from Hiero's colonists, who seem to have retained their monarchical government, as we read that their ruler was treacherously murdered by Ducetius. The Sicel prince then laid siege to a fortress called Motyum, belonging to the Agrigentines, who obtained succours from Syracuse. But the allied forces were defeated and driven out of their entrenchments. Motyum fell into the hands of Ducetius. The Syracusans seem to have required that their generals should conquer: they punished Bolco, who had commanded in the last campaign, as a traitor, and in the following spring they sent out a large force under another general, who was ordered to subdue Ducetius. He executed his commission, and in a hard-fought battle routed and dispersed the Sicel army. Ducetius was left with a small band of followers, which, as his affairs grew more and more hopeless when the victorious Syracusans were joined by the Agrigentine forces which had recaptured Motyum, was thinned by frequent desertions. At last, finding that he was in danger of being betrayed to the enemy, he resolved on a bold expedient. In the dead of night he quitted his retreat, alone and unobserved, and rode to Syracuse. In the morning he was found in the posture of a suppliant, on one of the altars in the agora. An assembly was called to deliberate on the treatment which he should receive. Counsellors were not wanting to recommend the most rigorous course; but the people was unanimous on the side of mercy. The suppliant was conveyed to Corinth, where he was enjoined to reside during the rest of his life. But the exile had never renounced his hopes, or soon felt them revived. Five years after his deportation he quitted Corinth, procured or feigned the sanction of an oracle for a new colony, and arrived in Sicily with a numerous band of followers, which he led to a site on the north coast of the island, called Caleacte (Fair Strand), and here proceeded to found a new city. He was joined by some of the Sicels and by Archonides, the ruler of Herbita. His return was the cause or pretext of a war between Agrigentum and Syracuse: the Agrigentines complained of the lenity which had spared so dangerous an enemy. Their secret motive was probably jealousy of the growing power of Syracuse, which had been greatly augmented by conquests in the Sicel territory. Most of the other Greek towns sided with one or the other of the rival states, and it was evident that the dominion of Sicily depended on the issue of the struggle. A battle was fought near the banks of the Himera, and the fortune of Syracuse was again triumphant. The Agrigentines were defeated with the loss of 1000 men, and were fain to sue for peace, and to acknowledge the supremacy of Syracuse, which was now established over all the Greek, or at least over all the Dorian cities of the island, except Camarina. A few years after she was delivered from her apprehensions on another side by the death of Ducetius, who was cut off by sickness in the midst of his ambitious projects. The Syracusans attacked all the Sicel towns in succession; and it must have been in this war that Palice was de CHAP. XXII. СНАР. XXII. stroyed1, if, as Diodorus asserts, the last which held out was one called Trinacia, which was defended with desperate valour, but was at length stormed and rased to the ground. Such was the state of affairs in Sicily when the Peloponnesian war broke out. Syracuse was bound to the Peloponnesian cause, not only by her filial connection with Corinth, but by her jealousy of the maritime power of Athens, even if no rumour had reached her of the ambitious views which the Athenians had begun to direct toward Sicily. But the cities of Chalcidian origin, which were averse on national grounds to the predominance of a Dorian state, and saw their independence and even their existence threatened by the power of Syracuse, regarded the contest which was beginning in Greece between the Ionian race, to which they themselves belonged, and the Dorians, with opposite feelings, and hoped to find a protectress in Athens. Whether such hopes had encouraged the Leontines to betray their impatience of the supremacy of Syracuse, or they had been wantonly attacked, does not appear. But in the fifth year of the war (428) they were engaged in a struggle with Syracuse, in which the Dorian and Chalcidian cities of the island took part with their natural allies; all but Camarina, which it would seem, through jealousy of her powerful neighbour, sided with the Leontines. The Syracusan confederacy was the stronger, and its armament blockaded Leontium by land and sea, and reduced the Leontines to such distress that, seeing no prospect of relief at home, they applied for succour to Athens. The embassy which they sent on this occasion was memorable, both for the important consequences Wesseling's conjecture on Diodor. xi. 90., that his author had related the particulars of the fall of Palice in one of his lost books, would only be necessary, if it was possible to place any reliance on the memory or accuracy of Diodorus. which ensued from it, and because it was headed by the celebrated Gorgias, one of the earliest and the most eminent among the men who reduced oratory to an art and philosophy to a profession. Sicily was the birth-place of Greek rhetoric. The great in-. crease of litigation which arose from the expulsion of the tyrants, through the claims of those whom they had deprived of their property, gave a new impulse to the practice of forensic eloquence, and led several ingenious men to study the principles on which its efficacy depended, and to frame rules and precepts for learners. Gorgias had been preceded by Corax and Tisias; but he unfolded and illustrated their system, and combined his rhetorical exercises with philosophical speculations derived from the Eleatic school, and with others of an ethical nature which afforded topics for declamation. The Athenians are said to have been captivated by his elaborate harangues, though they had undoubtedly much better models at home, and the eloquence of their great orators was removed as widely as possible from the frosty glare which seems to have marked the compositions of Gorgias. In private too he delighted the most gifted and aspiring of the Athenian youth, both by his rhetorical exhibitions and by his dialectic subtilties; and as he demanded a high price for his instructions, he found his stay at Athens so profitable, that he was induced to repeat his visit, and to enlighten other parts of Greece with his new wisdom. He was no less successful in the discharge of his commission, which indeed would have been safe enough in the hands of a less brilliant orator; for it met the wishes of the Athenians. They granted the request of the Leontines; yet the state of their own affairs for they were still suffering from the pestilence, and their treasury was drained by the growing expenses of the war-and the novelty of the enter CHAP. XXII. CHAP. prise inclined them to caution. They contented themselves with sending twenty galleys under Laches and Charœades, not without the hope of making a useful diversion in favour of their allies, but chiefly with the view of exploring the state of Sicily, and of ascertaining what encouragement it held out to their schemes of conquest. The squadron sailed to Rhegium, which, after the expulsion of the sons of Anaxilaus, had been much agitated by contending factions, but was at this time ruled by a party friendly to the Athenians. To Athens indeed it was naturally attached as a city of Chalcidian origin; and this attachment was strengthened by its enmity to Locri, which was in part, as we have seen, a Spartan colony, and was an ally of the Peloponnesians. At Rhegium therefore the Athenian commanders took their station, and waited for opportunities of action. The Rhegians were not able to furnish any considerable reinforcement to their armament, and their first operations were of little moment. An expedition which they made in the winter after their arrival against the Eolian islands, failed in its main object, the reduction of Lipara. Yet their presence seems to have animated their Sicilian allies to more vigorous efforts, and perhaps relieved Leontium for a time by drawing off the Syracusan squadron which blockaded it. But in the following summer they gained a more important advantage, which compensated the loss of their general Charcades, who was killed in an engagement with the Syracusans. Laches, now sole commander, landed a body of the allied troops on the Sicilian coast, and marched against the fort of Mylæ, in the territory of Messana. It was garrisoned by two of the Messanian tribes, probably not much less than half of their whole force. They attempted to draw the invaders into an ambush, but were defeated with great loss, and were |