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Epicydes replied, that "if they had been commissioned with any message for them, they would have given them an answer; and when the government of Syracuse was in the hands of those persons to whom they were come, they might visit Syracuse again. If they should commence hostilities, they would learn by actual experience that it was by no means the same thing to besiege Syracuse and Leontini."
During the three years' administration of Sicily by Gaius Verres the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to 120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80; so that in four of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent of the landholders preferred to let their fields lie fallow than to cultivate them under such government.
He left all those engagements, and all those pleasures of which he had of late been so much enamoured, and crossing the sea he came into Sicily. Learning that I had quitted Palermo, he resolved to pursue his search of me to Leontini.
The Egestaeans now reminded the Athenians of the alliance made in the time of Laches, during the former Leontine war, and begged them to send a fleet to their aid, and among a number of other considerations urged as a capital argument that if the Syracusans were allowed to go unpunished for their depopulation of Leontini, to ruin the allies still left to Athens in Sicily, and to get the whole power of the island into their hands, there would be a danger of their one day coming with a large force, as Dorians, to the aid of their Dorian brethren, and as colonists, to the aid of the Peloponnesians who had sent them out, and joining these in pulling down the Athenian empire.
The period of truce terminating without any definite peace being arrived at, the summer of the tenth year is chiefly notable for the expedition sent under Cleon to recover Amphipolis, and for a recrudescence of the old quarrel in Sicily between Leontini and Syracuse.
The Athenians held an assembly and, after hearing from the Egestaeans and their own envoys a report, as attractive as it was untrue, upon the state of affairs generally, and in particular as to the money, of which, it was said, there was abundance in the temples and the treasury, voted to send sixty ships to Sicily, under the command of Alcibiades, son of Clinias, Nicias, son of Niceratus, and Lamachus, son of Xenophanes, who were appointed with full powers; they were to help the Egestaeans against the Selinuntines, to restore Leontini upon gaining any advantage in the war, and to order all other matters in Sicily as they should deem best for the interests of Athens.
Plato, besides, says nothing of what a Tyranny would change to. According to the cycle theory it ought to pass into the ideal state again, but as a fact one Tyranny is changed into another as at Sicyon, or into a Democracy as at Syracuse, or into an Aristocracy as at Carthage. The example of Sicily, too, shows that an Oligarchy is often followed by a Tyranny, as at Leontini and Gela.
That these fears were not unfounded was proved when, a few years afterwards, the Syracusans expelled the commons of Leontini, and took possession of their territory. The Leontine exiles sought refuge at Athens, but their appeal for help remained for a time unanswered, as the Athenians were then fully occupied in Greece.
Syracuse and the towns that had been previously dependent on it were classed among the communities tributary to Rome Tauromenium and Neetum alone obtained the same privileges as Messana, while the territory of Leontini became Roman domain and its former proprietors Roman lessees and no Syracusan citizen was henceforth allowed to reside in the "island," the portion of the city that commanded the harbour.
Afterwards some of them were dissatisfied, and leaving Syracuse occupied Phocaeae, a quarter of the town of Leontini, and Bricinniae, a strong place in the Leontine country, and being there joined by most of the exiled commons carried on war from the fortifications.
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