Note 431 — Chapter XLIII · EVENTS IN SICILY DOWN TO THE EXPULSION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF POPULAR GOVERNMENTS THROUGHOUT THE ISLAND.

Herodot. vii, 155. Ὁ γὰρ δῆμος ὁ τῶν Συρηκοσίων ἐπιόντι Γέλωνι παραδιδοῖ τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἑωϋτόν.

Aristotle (Politic. v, 2, 6) alludes to the Syracusan democracy prior to the despotism of Gelo as a case of democracy ruined by its own lawlessness and disorder. But such can hardly have been the fact, if the narrative of Herodotus is to be trusted. The expulsion of the Gamori was not an act of lawless democracy, but the rising of free subjects and slaves against a governing oligarchy. After the Gamori were expelled, there was no time for the democracy to constitute itself, or to show in what degree it possessed capacity for government, since the narrative of Herodotus indicates that the restoration by Gelo followed closely upon the expulsion. And the superior force, which Gelo brought to the aid of the expelled Gamori, is quite sufficient to explain the submission of the Syracusan people, had they been ever so well administered. Perhaps Aristotle may have had before him reports different from those of Herodotus: unless, indeed, we might venture to suspect that the name of Gelo appears in Aristotle by lapse of memory in place of that of Dionysius. It is highly probable that the partial disorder into which the Syracusan democracy had fallen immediately before the despotism of Dionysius, was one of the main circumstances which enabled him to acquire the supreme power; but a similar assertion can hardly be made applicable to the early times preceding Gelo, in which, indeed, democracy was only just beginning in Greece.

The confusion often made by hasty historians between the names of Gelo and Dionysius, is severely commented on by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (Antiq. Roman. vii, 1, p. 1314): the latter, however, in his own statement respecting Gelo, is not altogether free from error, since he describes Hippokratês as brother of Gelo. We must accept the supposition of Larcher, that Pausanias (vi, 9, 2), while professing to give the date of Gelo’s occupation of Syracuse, has really given the date of Gelo’s occupation of Gela (see M. Fynes Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ad ann. 491 B. C.).