Anaxilas, ruler of
Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against
their privateers by means of a standing fleet (about 272); soon
afterwards (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a
decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the
Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid. This is the victory
which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode; and there is still
extant an Etruscan helmet, which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the
inscription: "Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus,
Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma."(2)

Maritime Supremacy of the Tarentines and Syracusans--
Dionysius of Syracuse

While these extraordinary successes against the Carthaginians and
Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Greek cities in Sicily,
the Doric Tarentum rose to undisputed pre-eminence among the Italian
Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the
expulsion of the kings from Rome (243). The terrible defeat of the
Tarentines by the Iapygians (280), the most severe disaster which a
Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian
invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national
spirit in the development of an energetic democracy. Thenceforth
the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the
Italian waters; the Tarentines predominated in the Adriatic and Ionic,
the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas. The latter in
particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy.
After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria
(Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the
Campanian and the northern Etruscans. About the year 302, with a
view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special
expedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etruscan
coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba). Although
Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not wholly repressed--Antium,
for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down
to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome--the powerful Syracuse
formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians.
For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken
by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse
in the course of the Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the
Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athe