driven out the despot[A] Dionysius, but was
immediately afterwards slain by treachery, and those who, under Dion,
had freed the Syracusans, quarrelled amongst themselves. The city, which
received a constant succession of despots, was almost forsaken because
of its many troubles. Of the rest of Sicily, one part was rendered quite
ruined and uninhabited by the wars, and most of the cities were held by
barbarians of various nations, and soldiers who were under no paymaster.
As these men willingly lent their aid to effect changes of dynasty,
Dionysius, in the twelfth year of his exile, collected a body of foreign
troops, drove out Nysaeus, the then ruler of Syracuse, again restored
his empire, and was re-established as despot. He had strangely lost the
greatest known empire at the hands of a few men, and more strangely
still became again the lord of those who had driven him out, after
having been an exile and a beggar. Those then of the Syracusans who
remained in the city were the subjects of a despot not naturally humane,
and whose heart now had been embittered by misfortune:[B] but the better
class of citizens and the men of note fled to Hiketes, the ruler of
Leontini, swore allegiance to him, and chose him as their general for
the war. This man was nowise better than the avowed despots, but they
had no other resource, and they trusted him because he was a Syracusan
by birth, and had a force capable of encountering that of their own
despot.

[Footnote A: [Greek: tyrannos], here and elsewhere translated _despot_,
means a man who had obtained irresponsible power by unconstitutional
means.]

[Footnote B: Compare Tacitus, "eo immitior quia toleraverat."]

II. Meanwhile the Carthaginians came to Sicily with a great fleet, and
were hovering off the island watching their opportunity. The Sicilians
in terror wished to send an embassy to Greece, and ask for help from the
Corinthians, not merely on account of their kinship with them, and of
the many kindnesses which they had received from them, but also because
they saw that the whole city loved freedom, and hated despots, and that
it had waged its greatest and most important wars, not for supremacy and
greed of power, but on behalf of the liberty of Greece. But Hiketes who
had obtained his post of commander-in-chief with a view, not to the
liberation of Syracuse, but the establishment of himself as despot
there, had already had secret negotiations with the Carthaginians,
thoug