three governors whom Epicydes had left in his place; which was immediately put in execution. After which, having assembled the people, they represented, "that for whatever miseries they had suffered till then, or should suffer from thenceforth, they ought not to accuse fortune, as it depended upon themselves alone to put an end to them that if the Romans had undertaken the siege of Syracuse, it was out of affection, not enmity, to the Syracusans: that it was not till after they had been apprized of the oppressions they suffered from Hippocrates and Epicydes, those ambitious agents of Hannibal, and afterwards of Hieronymus, that they had taken arms and begun the siege of the city, not to ruin it, but to destroy its tyrants; that as Hippocrates was dead, Epicydes no longer in Syra cuse, his lieutenants slain, and the Carthaginians dispossessed of Sicily, both by sea and land, what reason could the Romans now have for not inclining as much to preserve Syracuse, as if Hiero, the sole example of faith to them, were still alive? That neither the city nor the inhabitants had any thing to fear but for themselves, if they suffered the occasion of renewing their amity with the Romans to pass that they never had so favourable an opportunity as the present, being just delivered from the violent government of their tyrants; and that the first use they should make of their liberty, was to return to their duty.” This discourse was perfectly well received by all. It was, however, judged proper to create new magistrates before the nomination of deputies; the latter of whom were chosen from among the former. The deputy who spoke in their name, and who was instructed solely to use his utmost endeavours that Syracuse might not be destroyed, addressed himself to Marcellus to this effect: "It was not the people of Syracuse who first broke the alliance, and declared war against you, but Hieronymus, less criminal still to Rome than to his country; and afterwards, when the peace was restored by his death, it was not any Syracusans that infringed it, but the tyrant's instruments, Hippocrates and Epicydes. They were the enemies who made war against you, after having made us slaves, either by violence, or fraud and perfidy; and it cannot be said that we have had any times of liberty, that have not also been times of peace with you. At present, as soon as we become masters of ourselves, by the death of those who held Sicily in subjection, we come the very instant to deliver up to you our arms, our persons, our walls, and our city, determined not to refuse any conditions you shall think fit to impose. For the rest," continued he, addressing himself to Marcellus, "your interest is as much concerned as ours. The gods have granted you the glory of having taken the finest and most illustrious city possessed by the Greeks. All we have ever achieved either by sea or land, augments and adorns your triumph. Fame is not sufficient to make known the greatness and strength of the city you have taken; posterity can judge of them only by its own eyes. It is necessary that we should show to all travellers, from whatever part of the universe they come, sometimes the trophies we have obtained from the Athenians and Carthaginians, and sometimes those you have acquired from us; and that Syracuse, thus placed for ever under the protection of Marcellus, may be a lasting, an eternal monument of the valour and clemency of him who took and preserved it. It is unjust, that the remembrance of Hieronymus should have more weight with you than that of Hiero. The latter was much longer your friend than the former was your enemy. Permit me to say that you have experienced the amity of Hiero; but the foolish enterprises of Hieronymus have fallen solely upon his own head." The difficulty was not to obtain what they demanded from Marcellus, but to preserve tranquillity and union among those in the city. The deserters, convinced that they should be delivered up to the Romans, inspired the foreign soldiers with the same fear. Both the one and the other having therefore taken arms, while the deputies were still in the camp of Marcellus, they began by cutting the throats of the magistrates newly elected; and dispersing themselves on all sides, they put all whom they met to the sword, and plundered whatever fell in their way. That they might not be without leaders, they appointed six 333 officers, three to command in Achradina, and three in the isle. The tumult being at length appeased, the foreign troops were informed from all hands, that it was concluded with the Romans, that their case should be entirely distinct from that of the deserters. At the same moment, the deputies sent to Marcellus arrived, who fully undeceived them. Among those who commanded in Syracuse, there was a Spaniard named Mercius, whom they found means to corrupt. He gave up the gate near the fountain Arethusa, to soldiers sent by Marcellus in the night to take possession of it. At daybreak the next morning, Marcellus made a false attack at Achradina, to draw all the forces of the citadel and the isle adjoining to it, to that side, and to facilitate the throwing some troops into the isle, which would be unguarded, by some vessels he had prepared. Every thing succeeded according to his plan. The soldiers, whom those vessels had landed in the isle, finding almost all the posts abandoned, and the gates by which the garrison of the citadel had marched out against Marcellus still open, took possession of them after a slight encounter. Marcellus, having received advice that he was master of the isle, and a part of Achradina, and, that Mercius, with the body under his command, had joined his troops, ordered a retreat to be sounded, that the treasures of the kings might not be plundered. They did not amount to as much as was imagined. The deserters having escaped by a passage expressly left open for them, the Syracusans opened all their gates to Marcellus, and sent deputies to him with instructions to demand nothing farther from him than the preservation of the lives of themselves and children. Marcellus having assembled his council, and some Syracusans who were in his camp, gave his answer to the deputies in their presence: "that Hiero for fifty years had not done the Roman people more good, than those who have been masters of Syracuse some years past had intended to do them harm; but that their ill-will had fallen upon their own heads, and that they had punished themselves for their violation of treaties, in a more severe manner than the Romans could have desired: that he had besieged Syracuse during three years, not that the Roman people might reduce it to slavery, but to prevent the chiefs of the revolters from continuing their oppression: that he had undergone many fatigues and dangers in so long a siege; but that he thought he had made himself ample amends by the glory of having taken that city, and the satisfaction of having saved it from the entire ruin it seemed to deserve." After having placed a guard upon the treasury, and safeguards in the houses of the Syracusans who had withdrawn into his camp, he abandoned the city to be plundered by his troops. It is reported, that the riches which were pillaged in Syracuse at this time, exceeded all that could have been expected at the taking of Carthage itself. An unhappy accident interrupted the joy of Marcellus, and gave him a very sensible affliction. Archimedes, at a time when all things were in confusion at Syracuse, shut up in his closet like a man of another world, who had no regard for what passed in this, was intent upon the study of some geometrical figure; and not only his eyes, but, the whole faculties of his soul were so engaged in this contemplation, that he had neither heard the tumult of the Romans, universally busy in plundering, nor the report of the city's being taken. A soldier came suddenly in upon him, and ordered him to follow him to Marcellus. Archimedes desired him to stay a moment, till he had solved his problem, and finished the demonstration of it. The soldier, who regarded neither his problem nor the demonstration, enraged at this delay, drew his sword and killed him. Marcellus was exceedingly afflicted when he heard the news of his death. Not being able to restore him to life, of which he would have been very glad, he applied himself to honour his memory to the utmost of his power. He made a diligent search after all his relations, treated them with great distinction, and granted them peculiar privileges. As for Archimedes, he caused his funeral to be celebrated in the most solemn manner, and erected a monument to him among the great persons who had distinguished themselves most at Syracuse. ARTICLE III. ABRIDGMENT OF THE HISTORY OF SYRACUSE. SECTION I. TOMB OF ARCHIMEDES DISCOVERED BY CICERO. ARCHIMEDES, in his will, had desired his relations and friends to put no other epitaph on his tomb, after his death, than a cylinder circumscribed by a sphere, and to note below them the relation which those two solids, the thing containing, and the contained, have to each other. He might have filled up the bases of the columns of his tomb with relievos, wherein the whole history of the siege of Syracuse might have been carved, and himself appearing like another Jupiter thundering upon the Romans; but, he set an infinitely higher value upon a discovery, a geometrical demonstration, than upon all the so-much celebrated machines of his invention. Hence he chose rather to do himself honour with posterity, by the discovery he had made of the relation of a sphere to a cylinder of the same base and height; which is as two to three. The Syracusans, who had been in former times so fond of the sciences, did not long retain the esteem and gratitude they owed a man who had done so much honour to their city. Less than one hundred and forty years after, Archimedes was so perfectly forgotten by his citizens, notwithstanding the great services he had done them, that they denied his having been buried at Syracuse. It is from Cicero we have this circumstance. At the time when he was quæstor in Sicily, his curiosity induced him to make a search after the tomb of Archimedes ;* a curiosity that became a man of Cicero's genius, and which merits the imitation of all who travel. The Syracusans assured him that his search would be to no purpose, and that there was no such monument among them. Cicero pitied their ignorance, which only served to increase his desire of making that discovery. At length, after several fruitless attempts, he perceived, without the gate of the city, facing Agrigentum, among a great number of tombs in that place, a pillar almost entirely covered with thorns and brambles, through which he could discern the figure of a sphere and cylinder. Those who have any taste for antiquities may easily conceive the joy of Cicero upon this occasion. He cried out," that he had found what he looked for." The place was immediately ordered to be cleared, when they saw the inscription still legible, though part of the lines were obliterated by time so that, says Cicero, in concluding his account, the greatest city of Greece, and most flourishing of old in the studies of science, would not have known the treasure it possessed, if a man, born in a country considered almost as barbarous, had not discovered for it the tomb of its citizen, so highly distinguished by force and penetration of mind.‡ We are obliged to Cicero for having left us this curious and elegant account; but we cannot easily pardon him the contemptuous manner in which he speaks at first of Archimedes. It is in the beginning, where, intending to compare the unhappy life of Dionysius the tyrant, with the felicity of one passed in sober virtue, and abounding with wisdom, he says, "I will not compare the lives of a Plato or an Architas, persons of consummate learning and wisdom, with that of Dionysius, the most horrid, the most miserable, and the most detestable that can be imagined. I shall have recourse to a man of his own city, A LITTLE, OBSCURE PERSON, who lived many years after him. I shall produce him from his dust,§ and bring him into view with his rule and compasses in his hand." Not to mention the birth of Archimedes, whose greatness was of a different class, the great Cic. Tusc. Quæst. 1. v. n. 64.66. † 'Eugrxa, in verb. Archim. Ita nobilissima Greccia civitas, quondam vero etiam doctissima, sui civis unius acutissimi monumenturn ignorasset, nisi ab homine Arpinate didicisset. He means the dust used by geometricians. Non ergo jam cum hujus vita, qua tetrius, miserius. detestabilius excogitare nihil possum, Platonis aut Architæ vitam comparabo, doctorum hominum et plane sapientum. Ex eadem urbe Humilem Homuncion nem a pulvere et radio excitabo, qui multis annis post fuit, Archimedem, est geometrician of antiquity, whose sublime discoveries have in all ages been the admiration of the learned, should Cicero have treated this man as little and obsure, as a common artificer employed in making machines, unless it be, perhaps, because the Romans, with whom a taste for geometry, and such speculative sciences, never gained much ground, esteemed nothing great but what related to government and policy? "Orabunt causas melius, cœlique meatus Describent radio, et surgen ia sidera dicent: Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento." Virgil. Æn. 6 "Let others better mould the running mass Plead better at the bar. describe the skies, And when the stars descend, and when they rise: But, Rome, 'tis thine alone with awful sway To rule mankind, and make the world obey; Disposing peace and war, thy own majestic way."-Dryden. SECTION II.-SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF SYRACUSE. THE island of Sicily, with the greatest part of Italy, extending between the two seas, composed what is called Græcia Major, in opposition to Greece properly called, which had peopled all those countries by its colonies. Syracuse was the most considerable city of Sicily, and one of the most powerful of all Greece. It was founded by Architas the Corinthian, in the third year of the seventeenth Olympiad.* The two first ages of its history are very obscure, and therefore we are silent upon them. It does not begin to be known till after the reign of Gelon, and furnishes in the sequel many great events, for the space of more than two hundred years. During all that time it exhibits a perpetual alternative of slavery under the tyrants, and liberty under a popular government, till Syracuse is at length subjected to the Romans, and makes part of their empire. I have treated all these events, except the last, in the order of time. But as they occur in different sections, and are dispersed in different books, I have thought proper to unite them here in one point of view, that their series and connexions might be more evident, from their being shown together and in general, and the places pointed out where they are treated with due extent. Gelon. The Carthaginians, in concert with Xerxes, having attacked the Greeks who inhabited Sicily, while that prince was employed in making an irruption into Greece; Gelon, who had made himself master of Syracuse, obtained a celebrated victory over the Carthaginians, the very day of the battle of Thermopyla. Hamilcar, their general, was killed in this battle. Historians speak differently of his death, which has occasioned my falling into a contradiction. For, on one side I suppose, with Diodorus Siculus,† that he was killed by the Sicilians in the battle; and on the other, I say, after Herodotus, that to avoid the shame of surviving his defeat, he threw himself into the pile, in which he had sacrificed human victims.t Gelon, upon returning from his victory, repaired to the assembly without arms or guards, to give the people an account of his conduct. He was chosen king unanimously. He reigned five or six years, solely employed in the truly royal care of making his people happy. Book II. Part ii.-B. VII. Ch. ii. Sect. 1.§ Hiero I. Hiero, the eldest of Gelon's brothers, succeeded him. The be ginning of his reign was worthy of great praise. Simonides and Pindar celebrated him in emulation of each other. The latter part of it did not answer the former. He reigned eleven years. Book VII. Ch. ii. Sect. 1. 3d division.|| Thrasybulus. Thrasybulus, his brother, succeeded him. He rendered himself odious to all his subjects, by his vices and cruelty. They expelled him from the throne and city, after a reign of one year. B. VII. Chap. ii. Sect. 1. 3d division. T * A. M. 3295. A. M. 3525. In the History of the Carthaginians. A. M. 3520. TIMES OF LIBERTY. After his expulsion, Syracuse and all Sicily enjoyed their liberty for the space of almost sixty years." * An annual festival was instituted, to celebrate the day upon which their liberty was re-established. SYRACUSE ATTACKED BY THE ATHENIANS. During this short interval, the Athenians, animated by the warm exhortations of Alcibiades, turned their arms against Syracuse; this was in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. How fatal the event of this war was to the Athenians, may be seen, B. VII. Ch. iii. end of Sect. 6.t Dionysius the elder. The reign of this prince is famous for its length of thirty-eight years; and still more for the extraordinary events with which it was attended. Book II. Part i. Ch. 1.-B. I. Part ii. Ch. 1. Dionysius the younger. Dionysius, son of the elder Dionysius, succeeded him. He contracted a particular intimacy with Plato, who went to his court at the request of Dion, the near relation of Dionysius, and had frequent conversations with him. He did not long improve from the wise precepts of that philosopher, but soon abandoned himself to all the vices and excesses which attend tyranny.§ Besieged by Dion, he escaped from Sicily, and retired into Italy. Dion's excellent qualities. He was assassinated in his own house by Callippus. T Thirteen months after the death of Dion, Hipparinus, brother of Dionysius the younger, expelled Callippus, and established himself in Syracuse. During the two years of his reign, Sicily was agitated by great commotions.** Dionysius the younger, taking advantage of these troubles, re-ascended the throne, ten years after having quitted it.17 At last, reduced by Timoleon, he retired to Corinth. Book II. Part iii. Ch. 1.-B. XI. Sect. 5.11 TIMES OF LIBERTY. Timoleon restored liberty to Syracuse. He passed the rest of his life there in a glorious retirement, beloved and honoured by all the citizens and strangers. B. XI. Ch. ii. Sect. 6.§§ This interval of liberty was not of long duration. Agathocles. Agathocles, in a short time made himself tyrant of Syracuse. B. II. Part ii. Ch. 1. near the end.III He committed unparalleled cruelties. He formed one of the boldest designs related in history; carried the war into Africa; made himself master of the strongest places, and ravaged the whole country. After various events, he perished miserably. He reigned about twenty-eight years. TIMES OF LIBERTY. Syracuse took new life again for some time, and tasted with joy the sweets of liberty.¶¶ But she suffered much from the Carthaginians, who disturbed her tranquillity by continual wars. She called in Pyrrhus to her aid. The rapid success of his arms at first, gave him great hopes, which soon vanished. Pyrrhus, by a sudden retreat, plunged the Syracusans into new misfortunes. B. I. Part ii. Chap. 2. near the end. B. XVI. Sect. 7.*† A. M. 3644. A. M. 3544. † A. M. 3588. A. M. 3598. A. M. 3632. tt A. M. 3657. * A. M. 3725. |