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SIRACUSA HISTORY
Where settlers once from Corinth 's ithsmus built
Between two harbours their great battlements.
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Syracuse was colonized sometime in the 8C BC by Greeks from Corinth, who settled on the
island of Ortygia. Soon this power base was seized by a succession of mighty tyrants. Under their
rule the city enjoyed success and great splendour (5-4C BC); its population stabilised at the 300,000
mark, and established its supremacy over the rest of Sicily. Between 416 BC and 413 BC, there
developed a furious conflict between Syracuse and Athens. The Athenian warriors were captained
by Alcibiades. So the people endured one of the most famous and cruel periods of ancient history.
At last the city fell to the Romans, and so to subsequent invaders – Barbarians, Byzantines, Arabs
and Normans.
Tyrants of Syracuse – The tyrant in Antiquity corresponds with the modem dictator, and
several such figures populate the history of Sicily during the Hellenistic period, particularly in
Syracuse.
Gelon, already tyrant of Gela, extended his dominion to Syracuse in 485 BC. His
expansionist ambitions baited the hostile Carthaginians to such an extent as to provoke open
conflict. Gelon, in alliance with Theron, the tyrant of Akragas (Agrigento), succeeded in defeating
them at the famous battle of Himera in 480 BC. He was succeeded by his brother Hieron I (478-67),
and it was during his reign that Cumae was assisted in averting the Etruscan threat (474 BC); from
this battle there exists a bronze helmet, found at Olympia and now displayed in the British Museum,
London.
After a brief period of democracy, punctuated by battles against Athens, the famous
Dionysius the Elder acceded to the throne (405-367 BC). This shrewd strategist underpinned his
government with popular consensus, which he secured with gifts and favours, and by his reputation
as the defender against the Punic threat, which he did not, however, succeed in eliminating during
his tyrannical rule.
Syracuse became an independent and mighty force in its own right. On a more personal
level, Dionysius I appears to have been haunted with suspicions, ever fearful that someone might be
plotting against him. His fears developed into manias of persecution and culminated in his decision
to retreat with his court to the castle of Ortygia, which he made into an impregnable private fortress.
The story of his life is dotted with strange happenings from which were hatched numerous
malicious rumours, half fiction and half fact. Such writers as Valerius Maximus, Cicero and
Plutarch describe how the tyrant was so distrustful of the barbers that he entrusted the task of
shaving to his own daughters but fearing that even they might be tempted to murder him, he insisted
that sharpened walnut shells be used rather than razors or scissors; he had a small ditch dug around
his marital bed with a small bridge that he could remove when he retired for the night and, to show
that the life of a ruler was fraught with danger, he had a sharp sword suspended from a single
horsehair above the head of an envious member of his court called Damocles (hence the expression
“the sword of Damocles” to allude to a looming threat). His greed, it is said, led him to take
possession of the golden mantle from the statue of Zeus, replacing it with a woollen one.
Upon his death, he was succeeded to the throne by his young son Dionysius II, the Younger,
who lacked the political astuteness of his father: he was briefly toppled by his uncle Dion in 357 BC
who in turn was assassinated four years later (Dion’s life is celebrated in a poem by William
Wordsworth). Dionysius II was expelled a second time following a desperate plea from the
Syracusans to the mother-city Corinth; in 344 BC Timoleon, an effective general, was sent to the
rescue, as a wise and moderate statesman he restored peace to Sicily. There followed Agathocles,
who in order to secure power harboured no qualms in murdering the aristocracy; his attempts to rout
the Carthaginians from Sicily were also unsuccessful (culminating in his defeat at Himera in 310
BC).
The last tyrant to govern Syracuse was Hieron II (269-216), a mild and just ruler celebrated
by Theocritus (Idyll xvi), who oversaw the last golden age of Syracuse and signed up to an alliance
with Rome against the Carthaginians in the First Punic War. In 212 BC, despite the clever devices
designed by Archimedes, the town fell to Roman rule and became the capital of the Roman
Province of Sicily.
Archimedes – There exists no reliable source of information for details on the life of
Archimedes, the famous mathematician, born at Syracuse in 287 BC. It is said that he was so
absent-minded and absorbed by his research that he even forgot to eat and drink; his servants were
forced to drag him by force to the public baths and, even there, he continued to draw geometric
shapes in the ash. It was while he was soaking in his bath that he came upon the principle which
was to ensure his fame endured there-after: a body immersed in a liquid receives a force equal and
opposite to the weight of the volume of the liquid that has been displaced. Thrilled with his
discovery, he is supposed to have stood up suddenly and rushed out of the house shouting “Eureka”
(I’ve got it). Besides his contributions to the study of arithmetic, geometry, physics, astronomy and
engineering, Archimedes is credited with several significant mechanical inventions, notably the
Archimedes’ Screw – a cylinder containing a spiral screw for moving liquid uphill, like a pump (see
Saline dello STAGNONE); the cog-wheel; celestial spheres; burning glasses – a combination of
senses and mirrors with which he succeeded in setting fire to the Roman fleet. According to
tradition, Archimedes was so deeply involved in his calculations when the Romans succeeded in
penetrating the city, that he died more or less oblivious of what was happening from a sword wound
inflicted by a Roman soldier.
Poetic muses – Syracuse played its own part in developing its artistic prowess in Antiquity.
Several of its rulers became so taken with the power of patronage and the benefits of promoting the
arts that before long established foreign poets and writers were being welcomed to their court.
Some, like Dionysius the Elder, tried to establish themselves as writers but without any great
success. The first to take a truly effective interest was Hiemon who proclaimed himself protector of
poets and invited to his court such illustrious figures as Bacchylides, Xenophon and Simonides, and
highly competitive rivals Pindar and Aeschylus, one of the most eminent early Greek dramatists and
author of The Persians (470 BC) and The Women of Etna (now lost); both plays are known to have
been performed in the Greek theatre in Neapolis.
By contrast, Plato was to endure difficult relations with Syracuse, most particularly with its
rulers, Dionysius the Elder welcomed him reluctantly only to expel him shortly afterwards; after his
demise, the philosopher returned (under the protection of the regent Dion), to be expelled a second
time by Dionysius II after failing to persuade the tyrant to accept the principles of his Utopian state
(outlined later in his Dialogues in the section entitled Republic).
Theocrates, the protagonist of a kind of bucolic poetry at which Virgil was later to excel,
was probably a native of Syracuse, in more recent times.