Tyrant (40 page)

When it was the Syracusan’s turn, Dionysius knew he would find her ill-disposed by her long wait and perhaps vexed by the thought that he had no more seed for her. And so he was especially lavish in his attentions and his tenderness, and he satisfied all her senses to the utmost. He kissed her on the lips, then her breasts, her stomach and all over her body until he finally penetrated her, but he did not find the rapture in her body that he had expected. Doris, who was listening in from her own room, was surprised and rather pleased by all that silence. Was Aristomache so timid, as all the Dorian girls were said to be?

Dionysius promised the Syracusan that the next night he would lie with her first, and he was still holding her in his arms when the door opened gently and Doris appeared with a lantern in hand. She smiled at both and said: ‘Can I stay with you? I’m afraid to sleep alone.’

Aristomache was about to react, but seeing Dionysius’s amused expression, she held her tongue. Doris slipped into bed and began first to caress Dionysius, awakening the virility exhausted by that long night of love, and then Aristomache as well. The Syracusan stiffened, but did not push her away so as not to irritate her husband, who seemed delighted by the game.

Doris was the first to become pregnant.

D
IONYSIUS DECIDED TO
wait until the crops had been harvested before beginning the war, to avoid defections on the part of the allies due to the demands of their farms. In the meantime, he sent an envoy to Carthage with an ultimatum: the prisoners must be released without ransom, and the city government must recognize the independence of the Greek cities destroyed in the previous wars. Dionysius knew from his informers that the Punic capital had been greatly weakened by the plague, but he underestimated his enemy’s pride.

In Carthage, the government met to discuss – and almost immediately decided to reject – the arrogant impositions of the tyrant of Syracuse. Himilco was once again appointed to the supreme command and charged with waging war using every means possible. Word of Dionysius’s preparations had reached them, and their greatest fear was that after conquering Sicily, he would attempt to land in Africa. He had to be destroyed before he became too dangerous.

In the meantime, the Italian allies had arrived in Syracuse, while the Rhegines and Messanians were maintaining an attitude that alternated between indifference and hostility. It was feared that Rhegium might even ally with Carthage, if that’s what it took to humiliate Syracuse’s hateful dynast.

Everything was ready: two hundred battle ships, including thirty quinqueremes fresh from the dockyards, all under Leptines’s orders. Standing proud at the bow of the
Boubaris,
he reviewed the immense fleet that was weighing anchor to sail for Drepanum, in western Sicily. The fleet was followed by five hundred transports carrying food, water and the yet-to-be-assembled parts of the new siege machines.

The ground force was made up of forty thousand foot soldiers and three thousand horsemen, and the fleet carried nearly as many. Among them were many of the survivors of Selinus, Acragas and Himera, and the refugees from Gela and Camarina.

None of them had forgotten.

Dionysius addressed the arrayed troops after having mustered all of them at the city’s western gate. ‘Men!’ he shouted. ‘Sicilians and Italians of the Hellenic cities of the West! The moment of revenge has finally come. Much time has passed, nearly ten years, from the days in which you saw your cities die, your children butchered, your wives raped and killed!’ His voice seemed to crack as he said those last words. ‘I promised many of you then that I would bring you back home, that I would rebuild your cities, that I would avenge your dead.

‘I would have done this long before now, believe me! I know well what you went through, because my flesh and my blood have borne the same pain. I was the first to come to the aid of the Selinuntians, I was at Himera and at Acragas and I suffered bitter defeat at Gela, not by my own fault, but through the adversity of fortune and the perfidy of treason.

‘Those of you who were then twenty are now thirty, those of you who were thirty then are now forty, but I’m certain that your hatred and your thirst for vengeance have never abated over all these years. I know that you will fight without sparing your strength. I know that once you take up your shields and your swords, nothing will stop your onslaught.

‘This is not a war like any other. It is not like the bloody conflicts that have been fought between brothers out of narrow-minded rivalry, out of selfish commercial interests. This is the war of Greeks against barbarians, like at Marathon, like at Thermopylae and like Salamis. Like at Himera, at Cumae eighty years ago! All of Sicily will be Greek, as is right and just. It was our ancestors who reached this land from beyond the sea, who created marvellous cities, who opened harbours and markets, who planted olive trees and sowed wheat, who raised glorious temples to the gods. These temples have been sacked and destroyed, the tombs of our ancestors profaned, our families devastated, our children sold into slavery.

‘Enough now! The day that I promised you has come. Unleash your rage, men, remember what you’ve suffered, remember the cries of your violated women, remember the torment of your children, cut down on the streets and in your homes, their throats slit in the cradle . . . Avenge your honour!

‘We will not stop until the last of our enemies has been thrown into the sea, until the hateful race that has destroyed our cities has been completely annihilated.

‘I will be at your side, marching with you, I will be eating the same food and facing the same hardships and I swear to you, upon the infernal gods and upon my most sacred memories, that I will have no peace until I have brought this undertaking to conclusion, even if it should cost me my life!’

A roar greeted Dionysius’s words, the din of spears rhythmically, obsessively pounded against bronze shields.

But he signalled that he had more to say and the uproar died down until there was silence.

‘The barbarians employ,’ he thundered, ‘a handful of Greek traitors, mercenaries who have decided to combat against their own blood in exchange for money. I say to them: “Abandon your masters, join us as free men and redeem your shame. If you do not do so now, your punishment will be horrible, much worse than what we have in store for the barbarians. Beware, for here we come!”’

At the sound of these words, which were evidently meant as a signal, bugles blared and drums rolled to sound their departure and to mark their marching rhythm.

The great army surged forward between two wings of Syracusan citizens and inhabitants of the inland cities, who had come from everywhere to witness this superb spectacle. Dionysius rode a black horse identical to the one he had mounted in his first battle against the Carthaginians; he advanced at the head of the army covered by shining armour, flanked by Aksal and by his father-in-law Hipparinus riding a glossy-maned bay.

Behind him were three thousand horsemen lined up five-across, and behind them the heavy line infantry, divided by city, each group carrying its own standard and insignia, amidst a storm of applause and cheers.

Alongside the column, the naval squadron paraded on the foaming waves, led by the gigantic quinqueremes that ploughed through the sea with their huge three-rammed rostrums, each point sharp as a spear’s tip.

Himilco realized immediately that this was a challenge to the death, and his first move was to try to force Leptines’s fleet to turn back and defend Syracuse. He mounted a night assault with a dozen light ships on the Laccius port and the docks. They arrived completely unexpected, set fire to the shipyards and the vessels under construction and attempted an assault on the Ortygia fortress, but the Peloponnesian mercenaries remaining on guard at the stronghold reacted with great courage and determination and forced them to retreat. The Syracusans promptly sent a fast galley to notify Leptines that the enemy had been repulsed and that they did not require assistance.

Dionysius had in the meantime reached the place from which he planned to launch the attack on Motya. The fortified Carthaginian city stood on an island at the centre of the bay of Lilybaeum and was connected to the mainland by a long causeway. This causeway had been built in a north-south direction so as not to interfere with navigation in the lagoon surrounding the island, and as soon as the inhabitants of Motya heard that enemy forces were on their way, they began demolishing it to disallow access to their walls.

Between the bay of Lilybaeum and the open sea was another long island with a curious shape that had given it its name of ‘Goat Shin’. It was separated from the mainland by two narrow straits. Entering the lagoon around Motya was relatively easy from the southern straits, where the depth of the sea was sufficient to allow the passage of big warships, but it was practically impossible from the north, where the water was too shallow, with shoals and sandbanks that only the local Phoenician and Carthaginian sailors knew about.

Leptines stopped at Drepanum, the port of Eryx, a city north of Motya peopled by the Elymians, who were in the habit of welcoming anyone they were incapable of fighting off. There he divided the fleet into two parts: the transports were anchored much further south, near the promontory of Lilybaeum, while the war vessels entered the lagoon and were moored near the northern promontory, not very far from the start of the causeway that connected Motya to Sicily, which the Motyans had already partially demolished.

Dionysius assigned the navy the task of rebuilding the causeway and assembling the siege machines, while he himself – at the head of the ground troops – moved east to invade the territory of Panormus and Solus, laying waste to the countryside and sacking the farms. He tried as well to storm the Elymian cities of Segesta and Entella, also allied with Carthage, but did not succeed. He thus decided to return to Motya and take command of the operations personally.

In the meantime Himilco, who was cruising offshore, was kept constantly informed of the progress achieved by the Motyan defenders. He learned that Leptines had beached his ships in order to put their crews to work rebuilding the causeway, and he decided the time was ripe to launch his fleet into an attack.

He met up first with the transports in the Lilybaeum area and sank a good number of them, but in so doing ruined the element of surprise. Leptines was informed of the approach of the enemy fleet and sounded the alarm to muster his sailors. The ships were swiftly towed back into the water and the crews managed to take their places on board before Himilco could fall upon them.

Leptines sent out a couple of light reconnaissance craft, and the news they brought back cheered no one. ‘They are fanned out with their bows pointed north and they’ve closed off the southern mouth of the lagoon. We’re trapped,’ reported the scouts.

‘Not yet,’ replied Leptines. ‘Where’s my brother?’

‘The commander is at headquarters.’

‘Take me there.’

Leptines lowered himself into the dinghy towed by the
Boubaris
and raced to their headquarters at the mouth of the northern straits to report on the situation.

Dionysius darkened. ‘I would have kept a contingent of the fleet outside this blasted lagoon. Now what do we do?’

‘We’ll launch the quinqueremes and split them in two.’

‘No, we won’t. That’s exactly what they want. They’ve drawn us into this swamp to make it impossible for us to use our numerical superiority to advantage. I don’t want to risk our new units in such a disadvantageous situation. The quinqueremes need space to manoeuvre.’

‘You’re telling me? I’m the commander of the fleet!’ burst out Leptines.

‘And I’m the commander-in-chief! Have you forgotten that?’ shouted Dionysius even louder. ‘Why is it that you always have to charge with your head down like a bull? One wrong move and we are all fucked. Don’t you remember how things went in Gela? It was all preordained, all planned, and in the end we lost. We have the biggest fleet and the biggest army that the Greek nation has ever put together: we cannot fail, understand?’ He continued as if speaking to himself, fretting: ‘It had to happen just now that the causeway was almost ready . . .’

‘Well, let’s hear how you think you’ll get out of this one,
hegemon
,’ shot back Leptines, giving the title an ironic twist, ‘seeing that there’s no way out to the north; if any of the ships runs aground, the others will be shut off.’