eduction of the whole island the aim of their policy. We cannot
here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and
the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the
immediate results of these struggles; we notice their effect only so
far as Etruria is concerned. The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius
(who reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were severely
felt. The far-scheming king laid the foundation of his new colonial
power especially in the sea to the east of Italy, the more northern
waters of which now became, for the first time, subject to a Greek
maritime power. About the year 367, Dionysius occupied and colonized
the port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and the
ports of Ancona, Numana, and Atria, on the coast of Italy. The memory
of the Syracusan dominion in this remote region is preserved not only
by the "trenches of Philistus," a canal constructed at the mouth
of the Po beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of
Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (368 et seq.) at Atria,
but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian eastern sea
itself, which from this time forth, instead of its earlier designation
of the "Ionic Gulf",(3) received the appellation still current at the
present day, and probably referable to these events, of the sea
"of Hadria."(4) But not content with these attacks on the possessions
and commercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea,
Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming
and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport of Caere (369). From this blow
it never recovered. When the internal disturbances that followed the
death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and
their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but
slight interruptions they thenceforth maintained, it proved a burden
no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks; so that, when Agathocles
of Syracuse in 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he
was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war. The Etruscans
perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably
still at that time retained. The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy,
which still existed in the time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus
broken up; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength.

The Romans Opposed to the Etruscans in Veii

This rapid collapse of the