d in drawing the stones from the
quarries. This wall was not like Ortygia, a guard-house against the people
of Syracuse, but a defense against external enemies. As it was a great
public work of defense, the citizens worked with cheerfulness and vigor,
and so enthusiastically did they labor, that the work was completed in
twenty days. The city being now impregnable, he commenced preparations for
offensive war, and changed his course toward the citizens, pursuing a
mild, and conciliatory policy. He made peace with Messene and Rhegium, and
married a lady from Locri. He collected all the best engineers, mechanics,
and artisans from Sicily and Italy, constructed immense machines, provided
arms from every nation around the Mediterranean, so that he collected or
fabricated one hundred and forty thousand shields and fourteen thousand
breastplates, destined for his body-guard and officers, together with a
vast number of helmets, spears, and daggers. All these were accumulated in
his impregnable fortress of Ortygia. His naval preparations were equally
stupendous. The docks of Syracuse were filled with workmen, and two
hundred triremes were added to the one hundred and ten which already were
housed in the docks. The trireme was the largest ship of war which for
three hundred years had sailed in the Grecian or Mediterranean waters. But
Dionysius constructed triremes with five banks of oars, and had a navy
vastly superior to what Athens ever possessed. He now hired soldiers from
every quarter, enlisting Syracusans and the inhabitants of the cities
depending upon her. He sent envoys to Italy and the Peloponnesus for
recruits, offering the most liberal pay.

(M667) When all his preparations were completed, he married, on the same
day, two wives--the Locrian (Doris), and the Syracusan (Aristomache), and
both of these women lived with him at the same table in equal dignity. He
had three children by Doris, the oldest of whom was Dionysius the Younger,
and four by Aristomache. When his nuptials had been celebrated with
extraordinary magnificence, and banquets, and fetes, in which the whole
population shared, he convoked a public assembly, and exhorted the
citizens to war against Carthage, as the common enemy of Greece, B.C. 397.
He then granted permission to plunder the Carthaginian ships in the
harbor, and shortly after marched out from Syracuse with an army against
the Carthaginians in Sicily, consisting of eighty thousand men, while a
f