CHAPTER LVII - Sicilian Affairs after the Extinction of the Gelonian Dynasty

Summary

Expulsion of the Gelonian dynasity from Syracuse, and of other despots from the other Sicilian towns.

In the preceding chapters, I have brought down the general history of the Peloponnesian war to the time immediately preceding the memorable Athenian expedition against Syracuse, which changed the whole face of the war. At this period, and for some time to come, the history of the Peloponnesian Greeks becomes intimately blended with that of the Sicilian Greeks. But hitherto the connection between the two has been merely occasional, and of little reciprocal effect: so that I have thought it for the convenience of the reader to keep the two streams entirely separate, omitting the proceedings of Athens in Sicily during the first ten years of the war. I now proceed to fill up this blank; to recount as much as can be made out of Sicilian events during the interval between 461–416 B.C.; and to assign the successive steps whereby the Athenians entangled themselves in ambitious projects against Syracuse, until they at length came to stake the larger portion of their force upon that fatal hazard.

The extinction of the Gelonian dynasty at Syracuse, followed by the expulsion or retirement of all the other despots throughout the island, left the various Grecian cities to reorganise themselves in free and self-constituted governments. Unfortutunately our memorials respecting this revolution are miserably scanty; but there is enough to indicate that it was something much more than a change from single-headed to popular government. It included, farther, transfers on the largest scale other both of inhabitants and of property.