Note 483 — Chapter XLIII · EVENTS IN SICILY DOWN TO THE EXPULSION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF POPULAR GOVERNMENTS THROUGHOUT THE ISLAND.

Diodor. xi, 73. τήν τε Ἀχραδινὴν καὶ τὴν Νῆσον· ἀμφοτέρων τῶν τόπων τούτων ἐχόντων ἴδιον τεῖχος, καλῶς κατεσκευασμένον.

Diodorus goes on to say that the general mass of citizens τὸ πρὸς τὰς Ἐπιπολὰς τετραμμένον αὐτῆς ἐπετείχισαν.,—if we could venture to construe this last word rigidly, we might suppose that the parts of the city, exterior to Achradina and the island, had before been unfortified.

Aristotle (Politic. v, 2, 11) mentions, as one of his illustrations of the mischief of receiving new citizens, that the Syracusans, after the Gelonian dynasty, admitted the foreign mercenaries to citizenship, and from hence came to sedition and armed conflict. But the incident cannot fairly be quoted in illustration of that principle which he brings it to support. The mercenaries, so long as the dynasty lasted, had been the first citizens in the community: after its overthrow, they became the inferior, and were rendered inadmissible to honors. It is hardly matter of surprise that so great a change of position excited them to rebel; but this is not a case properly adducible to prove the difficulty of adjusting matters with new-coming citizens.

After the expulsion of Agathoklês from Syracuse, nearly two centuries after these events, the same quarrel and sedition was renewed, by the exclusion of his mercenaries from magistracy and posts of honor (Diodor. xxi, Fragm. p. 282).