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Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans

Plutarch · c. 100 CE (composed over time) primary

passage 336 of 1497 · (336/1424)

in brief
With Timoleon holding only the “fringe” of Sicily at Tauromenium, Syracusans despair under Hicetes and Dionysius’ positions, and Sicilian leaders become wary due to treacheries like Callippus and Pharax, leaving Timoleon outnumbered.

but, imitating his gesture, bid him hasten his own departure, unless he had a mind to see that kind of dexterity practiced first upon the galley which brought him thither.

Hicetes, informed that Timoleon had made good his passage, was in great fear of what might follow, and sent to desire the Carthaginians that a large number of galleys might be ordered to attend and secure the coast. And now it was that the Syracusans began wholly to despair of safety, seeing the Carthaginians possessed of their haven, Hicetes master of the town, and Dionysius supreme in the citadel; while Timoleon had as yet but a slender hold of Sicily, as it were by the fringe or border of it, in the small city of the Tauromenians, with a feeble hope and a poor company; having but a thousand soldiers at the most, and no more provisions, either of corn or money, than were just necessary for the maintenance and the pay of that inconsiderable number. Nor did the other towns of Sicily confide in him, overpowered as they were with violence and outrage, and embittered against all that should offer to lead armies, by the treacherous conduct chiefly of Callippus, an Athenian, and Pharax, a Lacedaemonian captain, both of whom, after giving out that the design of their coming was to introduce liberty and depose tyrants, so tyrannized themselves, that the reign of former oppressors seemed to be a golden age in comparison, and the Sicilians began to consider those more happy who had expired in servitude, than any that had lived to see such a dismal freedom.

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topics: conquest, plunder, and captives · conspiracy and assassination · faction, party, and civil strife

Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · Plutarch · 90–120