Sicily

At some stage of his African campaigns Agathocles had taken the title of king. In his old age he took a wife of the house of Ptolemy; he gave his daughter Lanassa to Pyrrhus, and estab lished his power as the first Sicilian ruler of Corcyra.

The Appearance of Rome.

On the death of Agathocles ty rants sprang up in various cities. Acragas, under its king Phintias, won back for the moment somewhat of its old greatnes4. By a new depopulation of Gela, he founded the youngest of Siceliot cities, Phintias, at the mouth of the southern Himera. Messana was seized by the disbanded Campanian mercenaries of Agathocles (c. 282), who proclaimed themselves a new people in a new city by the name of Mamertines, children of Mamers or Mars. Mes sana became an Italian town—"Mamertina civitas." The Campanian occupation of Messana is the first of the chain of events which led to the Roman dominion in Sicily. Pyrrhus (q.v.) came as the champion of the western Greeks against all barbarians, whether Romans in Italy or Carthaginians in Sicily. His Sicilian war (278-276) was a mere interlude between the two acts of his war with Rome.

The Greek king, on his way back to fight for Tarentum against Rome, had to cut his way through Carthaginians and Mamertines in Roman alliance. His saying that he left Sicily as a wrestling-ground for Romans and Carthaginians was the truth of the matter. Very soon came the first war between Rome and Carthage (the "First Punic War").

Sicily never had a more hopeful champion than Hieron II. of Syracuse, who, claiming descent from Gelon, pressed the Mamer tines hard. He all but drove them to the surrender of Messana; he even helped Rome to chastise her own rebels at Rhegium.

The exploits of Hieron had already won him the title of king (27o) at Syracuse; but his alliance with Rome (263) marks a great epoch in the history of the Greek race. He was the first of Rome's kingly vassals. His only obligation was to give help to the Roman side in war; within his kingdom he was free.

First Punic War.

During the 23 years of the First Punic War (264-241) the rest of the island suffered greatly. The war for Sicily was fought in and around Sicily, and the Sicilian cities were taken and retaken by the contending powers (see PUNIC WARS). By the treaty which ended the war in 241 Carthage ceded

to Rome all her possessions in Sicily, which thus became the first Roman province.

We have no picture of Sicily in the first period of Roman rule. One hundred and seventy years later, several towns within the original province enjoyed various degrees of freedom, which they had doubtless kept from the beginning. Panormus, Segesta, with Centuripae, Halaesa and Halicyae, once Sicel but now Hellenized, kept the position of free cities. The rest paid tithe to the Roman people as landlord. The province was ruled by a praetor sent yearly from Rome. It formed, as it had even from the Carthagin ian period, a closed customs district. Within the Roman province the new state of things called forth much discontent ; but Hieron remained the faithful ally of Rome through a long life. On his death (215) and the accession of his grandson Hieronymus, his dynasty was swept away by the last revolution of Greek Syra cuse. The result was revolt against Rome, the great siege and capture of the city, the addition of Hieron's kingdom to the Roman province. Two towns only, besides Messana, which had taken the Roman side, Tauromenium and Netum, were admitted to the full privileges of Roman alliance. Some towns were de stroyed ; the people of Henna were massacred. Acragas, again held for Carthage, was the centre of a campaign (214-210).

Roman Sicily.

Independent Sicilian history now comes to an end for many ages. The allied cities kept their several terms of alliance ; the free cities kept their freedom; elsewhere the land paid to the Roman people, according to the law of Hieron, the tithe which it had paid to Hieron. But, as the tithe was let out to publicani, oppression was easy. The praetor, after the occupa tion of Syracuse, dwelt there in the palace of Hieron as in the capital of the island. But, as a survival of the earlier state of things, one of his two quaestors was quartered at Eryx, the other being in attendance on himself. Under the supreme dominion of Rome even the unprivileged cities kept their own laws, magis trates and assemblies, provision being made for suits between Romans and Sicilians and between Sicilians of different cities.