The Greek World in the Fourth Century: From the Fall of the Athenian Empire to the Successors of Alexander (Routledge History of the Ancient World) by Lawrence A. Tritle

Author:Lawrence A. Tritle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781134524747
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-10-16T05:00:00+00:00

SUCCESSORS OF DIONYSIUS I

On this view, the rule of his son and successor did mark some improvement in the short term, because there was now at least an uneasy peace. But the main reason for it was that Dionysius II had neither talent nor inclination to maintain his father’s fight against the Carthaginians or any other enemy. By nature he was lazy, not energetic, and in addition (for whatever sinister or myopic reason) his father had failed completely to equip him with suitable training or experience to take over. In fact, Dionysius II even preferred to spend more time at Locri, his mother’s birthplace, than at Syracuse. Two further visits by Plato proved fruitless, for all that they may have served to influence the philosopher’s own political thinking.

Inevitably, the stability of the regime was undermined. It might not have been, however, had Dionysius II chosen to take the easy option of transferring a large measure of his authority to his adviser Dion, the brother of his father’s Syracusan wife Aristomache, and now the senior member of the Syracusan side of the family. Dion, ten years or so older than Dionysius II, was a complete contrast to him – high-minded, well educated, capable, ambitious, aloof. It seems predictable that they soon found it impossible to work together. It was in deciding how to resolve the tension that Dionysius II fell short of his father. The negotiations with Carthage in 366 (after Dionysius I’s campaign during the last year of his life was not resumed) offered an opportunity. When indiscreet, even treasonable, correspondence sent privately by Dion to the enemy was brought to him, Dionysius II’s reaction was not to execute Dion at once, but merely to exile him to mainland Greece, even leaving his property untouched.

Only around 360 did Dionysius II at last decide to seize all Dions assets, and it was this confiscation along with other grievances that now impelled him to try and overthrow Dionysius II by force. In Greece there was no widespread enthusiasm for the venture, even among other Syracusan exiles. But Dion did succeed in attracting a miscellaneous assortment of supporters, in particular certain members of Plato’s Academy who were convinced that Greek states would truly benefit if philosopher-kings were to become their rulers. He eventually set sail from Zacynthus in 357, with a total of five ships and one thousand men. Dionysius, at Locri, had a substantial fleet waiting to intercept them, but in risking a more southerly route across the open sea they were blown off-course in a storm, landed first on the Libyan coast, and then made for Minoa, a small Punic town in south-west Sicily. Here the Carthaginians turned a blind eye, content enough not to obstruct incipient civil strife among the Greeks.

Dion attracted much support, and not least because Dionysius II’s forces were still expecting him to approach from a quite different direction, he was able to take over Syracuse; only the fortified island of Ortygia continued to hold out. Reinforcements,

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