eir prevention of Hellenic
colonies on the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of
the Syrtes, the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their
sea a closed one, and monopolized the western straits. In the
Tyrrhene and Gallic seas alone the Phoenicians were obliged to
admit the rivalry of other nations. This state of things might
perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans and the Greeks served
to counterbalance each other in these waters; with the former, as the
less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered into an alliance against
the Greeks. But when, on the fall of the Etruscan power--a fall
which, as is usually the case in such forced alliances, Carthage had
hardly exerted all her power to avert--and after the miscarriage of
the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth as indisputably
the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of Syracuse
naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower Italy
and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the
Carthaginians also were compelled to adopt a more energetic policy.
The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between
them and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius
of Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the
intervening Sicilian states--a result which both parties had an
interest in accomplishing--and the division of the island between
the Syracusans and Carthaginians. The most flourishing cities in
the island--Selinus, Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana--were
utterly destroyed by the Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy
conflicts: and Dionysius was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed
or suppressed there, so that, leaning for support on foreign
mercenaries enlisted from Italy, Gaul and Spain, he might rule in
greater security over provinces which lay desolate or which were
occupied by military colonies. The peace, which was concluded after
the victory of the Carthaginian general Mago at Kronion (371), and
which subjected to the Carthaginians the Greek cities of Thermae (the
ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa, Selinus, and a part of the
territory of Agrigentum as far as the Halycus, was regarded by the two
powers contending for the possession of the island as only a temporary
accommodation; on both sides the rivals were ever renewing their
attempts to dispossess each other. Four several times--in 360 in the
time of Dionysius the