Dionysius I and the Rise of Syracuse
Dionysius took Syracuse in 405 BC at about twenty-five and held it for thirty-eight years. He came to power the way Greek tyrants generally did, by making himself the champion of the poor against an incompetent aristocracy — in this case one that was losing to Carthage, which had destroyed three Greek cities in Sicily in two years. He accused the generals of treason, was elected in their place, demanded a bodyguard, and used it. His war with Carthage ran for most of his life and swung both ways, and the preparation for it is the interesting part. He assembled the largest arms programme of the classical Greek world at Syracuse: workshops recruiting craftsmen from Italy and Greece, a fleet expanded to some 300 ships including quadriremes and quinqueremes, which were new, and the invention of the catapult. The gastraphetes, a mechanical bow, is first recorded in his arsenal around 399 BC, and torsion artillery followed. He fortified Epipolae above the city with a wall some five kilometres long built, according to Diodorus, by 60,000 men in twenty days. He also wrote tragedies and won a prize at Athens for one, having previously had his poetry mocked by Philoxenus, whom he sent to the quarries and then invited back to hear a new work. Plato visited and was reportedly sold into slavery for his opinions. He died in 367 BC. The sword of Damocles belongs to his court. He is said to have answered a flatterer who envied his position by seating him at a banquet under a blade suspended by a single horsehair, which is the most durable political metaphor anyone has produced.
- Year: 405 BCE
- Category: Military
