Constitution established by Timoleon at Syracuse—afterwards exchanged for an oligarchy

It has been convenient, throughout all this work, to keep the history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks distinct from that of the Central and Asiatic. We parted last from the Sicilian Greeks1, at the death of their champion the Corinthian Timoleon (337 B.C.), by whose energetic exploits, and generous political policy, they had been almost regenerated—rescued from foreign enemies, protected against intestine discord, and invigorated by a large reinforcement of new colonists. For the twenty years next succeeding the death of Timoleon, the history of Syracuse and Sicily is an absolute blank; which is deeply to be regretted, since the position of these cities included so much novelty—so many subjects for debate, for peremptory settlement, orfor amicable compromise—that the annals of their proceedings must have been peculiarly interesting. Twenty years after the death of Timoleon, we find the government of Syracuse described as an oligarchy; implying that the constitution established by Timoleon must have been changed either by violence or by consent. The oligarchy is stated as consisting of 600 chief men, among whom Sosistratus and Herakleides appear as leaders2. We hear generally that the Syracusans had been engaged in wars, and that Sosistratus either first originated, or first firmly established, his oligarchy, after an expedition undertaken to the coast of Italy, to assist the citizens of Kroton against their interior neighbours and assailants the Bruttians.

To complete the picture of the Hellenic world while yet in its period of full life, in freedom and selfaction, or even during its decline into the half-life of a dependent condition—we must say a few words respecting some of its members lying apart from the general history, yet of not inconsiderable importance. The Greeks of Massalia formed its western wing; the Pontic Greeks (those on the shores of the Euxine), its eastern; both of them the outermost radiations of Hellenism, where it was always militant against foreign elements, and often adulterated by them. It is indeed little that we have the means of saying; but that little must not be left unsaid.

Massalia—its situation and circumstances

In my third volume (ch. xxii. p. 531), I briefly noticed the foundation and first proceedings of Massalia (the modern Marseilles), on the Mediter ranean coast of Gaul or Liguria. This Ionic city, founded by the enterprising Phokseans of Asia Minor, a little before their own seaboard was subjugated by the Persians, had a life and career of its own, apart from those political events which determined the condition of its Hellenic sisters in Asia, Peloponnesus, Italy, or Sicily. The Mas saliots maintained their own relations of commerce, friendship or hostility with their barbaric neighbours, the Ligurians, Gauls, and Iberians, without becoming involved in the larger political confederacies of the Hellenic world. They carried out from their mother-city established habits of adventurous coast-navigation and commercial activity.