account of his superior acquaintance with the circumstances of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks; since his father Kleandridas, after having been banished from Sparta fourteen years before the Peloponnesian war, for taking Athenian bribes, had been domiciliated as a citizen at Thurii'. Gylippus desired the Corinthians to send immediately two triremes for him, to Asinê in the Messenian Gulf, and to prepare as many others as their docks could furnish. Thucyd. vi. 104. B.C. 414. of Nikias in the early spring. CHAPTER LIX. FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SIEGE OF SYRA- THE Athenian troops at Katana, probably tired of Movements inaction, were put in motion in the early spring, even before the arrival of the reinforcements from Athens, and sailed to the deserted walls of Megara, not far from Syracuse, which the Syracusans had recently garrisoned. Having in vain attacked the Syracusan garrison, and laid waste the neighbouring fields, they re-embarked, landed again for similar purposes at the mouth of the river Terias, and then, after an insignificant skirmish, returned to Katana. An expedition into the interior of the island procured for them the alliance of the Sikel town of Kentoripa; and the cavalry being now arrived from Athens, they prepared for operations against Syracuse. Nikias had received from Athens 250 horsemen fully equipped, for whom horses were to be procured in Sicily'-30 horse-bowmen and 300 talents in money. He was not long in furnishing them with horses from Egesta and Katana, from which cities he also received some farther Horses were so largely bred in Sicily, that they even found their way into Attica and Central Greece-Sophoklês, Ed. Kolon. 312— γυναῖκ ̓ ὁρῶ Στείχουσαν ἡμῖν, ἆσσον, Αἰτναίας ἐπὶ Πῶλου βεβῶσαν. If the Scholiast is to be trusted, the Sicilian horses were of unusually great size. cavalry-so that he was presently able to muster 650 cavalry in all'. Even before this cavalry could be mounted, Nikias made his first approach to Syracuse. For the Syracusan generals on their side, apprised of the arrival of the reinforcement from Athens, and aware that besieging operations were on the point of being commenced, now thought it necessary to take the precaution of occupying and guarding the roads of access to the high ground of Epipola which overhung their outer city. Local confortifica dition and tions of Sy the time we kias arrived -Inner and Outer City. Syracuse consisted at this time of two parts, an inner and outer city. The former was comprised in the island of Ortygia, the original settlement racuse, at founded by Archias, and within which the modern city is at this moment included: the latter or outer city, afterwards known by the name of Achradina, occupied the high ground of the peninsula north of Ortygia, but does not seem to have joined the inner city, or to have been comprised in the same fortification. This outer city was defended, on the north and east, by the sea, with rocks presenting great difficulties of landing-and by a sea-wall; so that on these sides it was out of the reach of attack. Its wall on the land-side, beginning from the sea somewhat eastward of the entrance of the cleft now called Santa Bonagia or Panagia, ran in a direction westward of south as far as the termination of the high ground of Achradina, and then turned eastward along the stone quarries now known as those of the Capucins and Novanteris, where the ground is in part so steep, that probably little fortification was needed. This fortified high land of 1 Thucyd. vi. 95-98. Localities without the outer city -Epipola. Achradina thus constituted the outer city; while the lower ground, situated between it and the inner city or Ortygia, seems at this time not to have been included in the fortifications of either, but was employed (and probably had been employed even from the first settlement in the island), partly for religious processions, games, and other multitudinous ceremonies-partly for the burial of the dead, which, according to invariable Grecian custom, was performed without the walls of the city. Extensive catacombs yet remain to mark the length of time during which this ancient Nekropolis served its purpose. To the north-west of the outer city-wall in the wall of the direction of the port called Trogilus, stood an unfortified suburb which afterwards became enlarged into the distinct walled town of Tychê. West of the southern part of the same outer city-wall (nearly south-west of the outer city itself) stood another suburb-afterwards known and fortified as Neapolis, but deriving its name, in the year 415 B.C., from having within it the statue and consecrated ground of Apollo Temenitês' (which stood a little way up on the ascent of the hill of Epipola), and stretching from thence down southward in the direction of the Great Harbour. Between these two suburbs lay a broad open space, the ground rising in gradual acclivity from Achradina to the westward, and diminishing in breadth as it rose higher, until at length it ended in a small conical mound called in modern times the Belvedere. This acclivity At the neighbouring city of Gela, also, a little without the walls, there stood a large brazen statue of Apollo-of so much sanctity, beauty, or notoriety, that the Carthaginians in their invasion of the island (seven years after the siege of Syracuse by Nikias) carried it away with them and transported it to Tyre (Diodor. xiii. 108). formed the eastern ascent of the long ridge of high ground called Epipolæ. It was a triangle upon an inclined plane, of which Achradina was the base: to the north as well as to the south, it was suddenly broken off by lines of limestone cliff (forming the sides of the triangle), about fifteen or twenty feet high, and quite precipitous, except in some few openings made for convenient ascent. From the western point or apex of the triangle, the descent was easy and gradual (excepting two or three special mounds or cliffs) towards the city, the interior of which was visible from this outer slope1. Possibilities of the siege when Ni kias first arrived in crease of delay. through his According to the warfare of that time, Nikias could only take Syracuse by building a wall of circumvallation so as to cut off its supplies by land, and at the same time blockading it by sea. Now Sicily-inlooking at the Inner and Outer city as above de- difficulties scribed, at the moment when he first reached Sicily, we see that (after defeating the Syracusans and driving them within their walls, which would be of course the first part of the process) he might have carried his blockading wall in a direction nearly southerly from the innermost point of the cleft of Santa Bonagia, between the city-wall and the Temenitês so as to reach the Great Harbour at a spot 1 In reference to all these topographical details, the reader is requested to consult the two Plans of Syracuse annexed to the end of this volume, together with the explanatory Appendix. The very perspicuous description of Epipolæ, also, given by Mr. Stanley (as embodied in Dr. Arnold's Appendix to the third volume of his Thucydidês), is especially commended to his attention. In the Appendix to this volume, I have been unavoidably compelled to repeat a portion of the matter contained in my general narrative : for which repetition I hope to be pardoned. In Plan I., the letters A, B, C, D represent the wall of the Outer City as it seems to have stood when Nikias first arrived in Sicily. The letters E, F represent the wall of the Inner City at the same moment. |