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Updated: June 24, 2025
The great armament instead of thrusting at Syracuse wasted its time and efficiency on side-issues, mainly owing to the cold leadership of Nicias. This valuable respite was used to the full by Hermocrates, who at a congress held at Camarina was insistent on the racial character of the struggle between themselves who were Dorians and the Ionians from Athens.
But I shall leave these things for another opportunity, and, in this twelfth book of the lives of great men compared one with another, begin with his who was the elder. Dionysius the First, having possessed himself of the government, at once took to wife the daughter of Hermocrates, the Syracusan.
They accordingly went out in mass at daybreak into the meadow along the river Anapus, their new generals, Hermocrates and his colleagues, having just come into office, and held a review of their heavy infantry, from whom they first selected a picked body of six hundred, under the command of Diomilus, an exile from Andros, to guard Epipolae, and to be ready to muster at a moment's notice to help wherever help should be required.
If these measures were vigorously carried out, they might successfully defy the Athenians to do their worst. Acting on this advice, the Syracusans deposed the existing generals, and chose Hermocrates, with three others, to fill their place. The reform of the army was at once taken in hand, and ambassadors were sent to Corinth and Sparta to ask for aid.
Here is Timaeus, of Locris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is himself in wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has held the most important and honourable offices in his own state, and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; and here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the matters of which we are speaking; and as to Hermocrates, I am assured by many witnesses that his genius and education qualify him to take part in any speculation of the kind.
After many expressions of opinion on one side and the other, according to the griefs and pretensions of the different parties complaining, Hermocrates, son of Hermon, a Syracusan, the most influential man among them, addressed the following words to the assembly: "If I now address you, Sicilians, it is not because my city is the least in Sicily or the greatest sufferer by the war, but in order to state publicly what appears to me to be the best policy for the whole island.
He then laid siege to Himera, which he also took, and slaughtered three thousand of the inhabitants, in expiation of the memory of his grandfather. These were Grecian cities, and the alarm throughout Greece was profound for this new enemy. These events look place about the time that Hermocrates was banished for an unsuccessful maritime war.
Early in the winter Athenian envoys appeared at Camarina with overtures of alliance, and Hermocrates was sent to represent the interests of Syracuse. The Ionians of Greece had long groaned under their yoke, and the same fate was in store for the Ionians of Sicily, if they allowed themselves to be beguiled by specious lies.
The latter writers assign the rebuilding to Hermocrates, 408-407 B.C. But our accounts of Hermocrates do not suggest that he rebuilt anything at Selinus of any sort, except defences. Here, however, the other streets do not seem to have been planned uniformly at right angles to the two main thoroughfares, and the rectangular scheme is therefore less complete and definite than at Selinus.
Of these the Siceliots, urged principally by the Syracusan Hermocrates to join in giving the finishing blow to the power of Athens, furnished twenty-two twenty from Syracuse, and two from Silenus; and the ships that we left preparing in Peloponnese being now ready, both squadrons had been entrusted to Therimenes, a Lacedaemonian, to take to Astyochus, the admiral.
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