Syracuse

The Greek city that beat Athens, held off Carthage for two centuries, and was taken by Rome largely because of one engineer's death. Founded by Corinthians around 733 BCE on a natural harbour in southeastern Sicily, Syracuse became the largest and richest Greek city in the west, at times rivalling Athens in size. Its politics oscillated between democracy and tyranny more violently than most: Gelon won at Himera in 480, traditionally the same year as Salamis, and Dionysius I built the western Mediterranean's strongest fortifications and an arsenal producing catapults, an invention credited to his engineers. The Athenian expedition of 415 to 413 was the greatest disaster of the Peloponnesian War: the entire fleet was destroyed in the great harbour and the survivors worked to death in the quarries, and Thucydides treats it as the turning point of the whole conflict. Carthage attacked repeatedly across two hundred years without taking the city. Hiero II kept a long peace as Rome's ally, and Archimedes worked there under him, devising the machines that held off the Roman siege of 213 to 212. Marcellus took the city and a soldier killed Archimedes against orders. Its plundered art helped introduce Greek style to Rome. Plato visited three times trying to educate a tyrant, and failed each time. Its Greek theatre, cut into rock, is among the largest surviving. The island of Ortygia was the original settlement and remains the old city. Syracusan silver decadrachms are considered the finest coins of the ancient world. The Ear of Dionysius is a limestone quarry cave with unusual acoustics. The city is a World Heritage site.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history