Dionysius I of Syracuse

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Dionysius I ( ancient Greek Διονύσιος ; * around 430 BC; † spring 367 BC ) was the tyrant of Syracuse . He was one of the most powerful tyrants of the ancient world. His reign lasted from 405 BC. Until his death. Because of this and the circumstances of his rise, he became a prime example of a tyranny. He began his career within the framework of democratic institutions and initially worked as a popular speaker and agitator. After his election to the general college, he systematically discredited his comrades in office, allowed the people's assembly to give him special powers, built his bodyguard into a private militia, and finally seized power with a coup d'état. Formally, democracy continued to exist, in fact the rule of the ruler took on monarchical features.

The ancient image of tyrants was strongly influenced by the personality of Dionysius and the anecdotes circulating about him. The Sicilian state he created, one of the first Greek territorial states, was the strongest Greek military power at the time. Dionysios made Syracuse the largest city and most powerful fortress in the Greek world at that time. Central elements of the tyrant's foreign policy were the devastating wars against the Carthaginians , the subjugation of the Greek cities of Sicily and the military spread northward onto the mainland of southern Italy. Despite his impressive success as the founder of the state, with whom he anticipated the future formation of the empire of Hellenistic rulers in some respects , he was not in a position to provide his life's work with a sustainable, ideal and institutional basis.

Rise to power

Dionysius came from a respected, if not well-off, Syracuse family; his father Hermokritus was able to provide him with a good sophistic education. He began his career as a partisan of the politician and commander Hermocrates , who campaigned for the independence of the Sicilian Greeks from outside powers. When Hermocrates, who belonged to the aristocrats, in 407 BC BC tried unsuccessfully a coup d'état in Syracuse with private mercenaries, Dionysius was one of his fellow combatants and was dangerously wounded. Hermocrates fell in battle and his followers were banished. Dionysius was not only able to avoid exile, but even find a job as secretary of the college of Syracuse generals.

When the Carthaginians, the traditional enemies of Syracuse, conquered the city of Akragas (Agrigento) in December 406 , Dionysius, who had fought against the Carthaginians, appeared as a popular speaker against the generals, who had not prevented this defeat, and accused them of treason . He combined general accusations against the “powerful” and “rich”, whom he accused of unpatriotic attitudes. He made a name for himself as a representative of typical concerns of the Democrats, but when he was fined for his agitation, Philistos , a member of the upper class who was his loyal ally , paid for him . Dionysius succeeded in pushing through the deposition of the generals; he himself was one of their newly elected successors. In the spring of 405 the people's assembly elected him sole general with unlimited powers ( strategós autokrátor ). This was an extraordinary office intended for such times of crisis, but legal within the constitution. Starting from this base, Dionysius was able to undertake the coup with his troops in the summer of 405, which in fact overturned the constitution and made him a tyrant. An essential step in the preparation for the seizure of power was that Dionysius, after a fictitious assassination attempt on him at the army assembly, obtained approval to create a personal bodyguard. He was approved for 600 men, whereupon he immediately increased the strength of the crew to over 1000 on his own initiative and this force was excellently armed. The bodyguard was subordinate to him only and gave him a power base completely independent of the democratic will of the citizens.

This rise of Dionysius to power was made possible by the fact that on the one hand he knew how to agitate as a talented public speaker in the interests of democratic concerns, but on the other hand he maintained excellent relationships with aristocrats and representatives of the upper class such as Philistus from his role as a follower of Hermocrates. Hipparinos, the father of the later famous politician Dion of Syracuse , was one of the aristocrats who vigorously supported him even before he came to power .

Family policy

The close relationship between the tyrant and parts of the aristocratic class was also evident in his marriage policy. In his first marriage he was married to a daughter of Hermocrates. She was mistreated in a failed uprising against Dionysius in 405 and took her own life as a result. He married again in 398 or after another dating in 393: he married two noble ladies, Doris from Lokroi and Aristomache , the daughter of Hipparinos , at the same time or in quick succession . Such bigamy was completely unusual among Greeks at the time, but it does not seem to have caused offense. The marriage with Doris was motivated by alliance politics: Because of the military confrontation with the Carthaginians, the tyrant wanted to prevent the Greek cities of Lower Italy from allying themselves with his enemies. Therefore, he first offered the city of Rhegion an alliance, which he wanted to strengthen by marrying a Rhegierin. Only after the people's assembly of Rhegier had rejected this, he concluded an alliance with Lokroi. As part of this political maneuver, he married the Lokrerin.

The future successor of the tyrant, Dionysius II , emerged from the marriage with Doris . From this marriage came a younger son, Hermokritos, who was probably named after his grandfather. From his marriage with Aristomache came the sons Hipparinos and Nysaios , who were later also rulers of Syracuse for a short time, as well as a daughter Arete , whom Dionysius gave to the son of his father-in-law Hipparinos, who later became famous Dion, as his wife. Dion, who later became a friend of Plato , enjoyed the full confidence of the tyrant. Dionysius also had a daughter named Sophrosyne, Aristomache, who married her half-brother Dionysius II.

First war against Carthage

Southern Italy at the time of Dionysius

Already at the beginning of 405, before the election as sole general, Dionysius moved with his army to Gela , a city that was threatened by the Carthaginian offensive. As in Syracuse, a conflict raged between democrats and aristocrats (oligarchs), in which Dionysius helped the democratic side to victory; He arranged for the condemnation and execution of wealthy members of the upper class and used their confiscated property to pay the mercenaries who were waiting for their pay. He made himself popular with the poor urban population of Gela as well as with the army. In July 405 the Carthaginian general Himilkon began the siege of Gela. Dionysius, who had meanwhile become a tyrant, advanced against him with a clearly outnumbered force. The Battle of Gela ended in defeat for the Greeks. Nevertheless, the ultimately unsuccessful but cleverly conceived plan of attack by Dionysius is considered to be a militarily-historically significant innovation. The concept only failed because it was too complicated for the circumstances at the time and the combined use of three separately operating army units overstrained the coordination skills of the Greek commanders. After the defeat, Dionysios had Gela evacuated and, on his retreat to the east, ordered the evacuation of the population of Kamarina . With that the whole south coast of Sicily was surrendered to the Carthaginians.

The Carthaginians found themselves ready to make peace before the end of 405, after an epidemic broke out in their army. The terms of the peace treaty greatly expanded the victors' sphere of influence. Dionysius was recognized as lord of Syracuse. However, the Greek and non-Greek cities that he wanted to incorporate into his empire were partly due to the Carthaginians and had to remain unfortified, partly they were declared autonomous. The treaty affected the entire island, including a city like Messana (now Messina ), which bordered neither Carthaginian nor Syracuse territory. As an overall regulation of the balance of power, this treaty became the model for the subsequent contractual agreements between Carthage and the Sicilian Greeks.

Existential crisis

Syracuse in antiquity with the offshore island of Ortygia

Dionysius could not come to terms with the contractual provision, which also guaranteed autonomy to the communities in the immediate vicinity of Syracuse, as it made any expansion impossible for him. Therefore, he broke the treaty as early as 404 by attacking the city of Herbessos. But there was a dangerous mutiny of his troops. Dionysius did not dare to face the mutineers in the area of ​​the undefeated Herbessus with his mercenaries who remained loyal. He rushed to Syracuse to prevent the riot from spreading to the city. However, the rebels allied themselves with oligarchic opponents of the tyrant from Syracuse and with the cities of Messana and Rhegion ( Reggio Calabria ), which had naval forces. Under these circumstances, Dionysios could not hold Syracuse, but had to retreat to the island of Ortygia . He had built a fortress on this island off Syracuse, which was connected to the city by a dam and closed the port from the open sea. This complex, fortified against the rest of the city, was his center of power, where his mercenaries were barracked. Ortygia was besieged for several months by the Syracusans, during which the tyrant's situation became more and more desperate and his mercenaries, whom the Syracusans had promised citizenship, began to overflow. At that time, according to an anecdote, in the circle of the tyrant, the later famous saying was made that the tyranny was a beautiful shroud. In the end, however, Dionysius, while he was apparently negotiating surrender with the Syracusans, managed to recruit mercenaries in western Sicily who had previously fought on the Carthaginian side. They entered his service and were able to break through to Ortygia. In addition, Dionysius won the support of Sparta . Sparta, traditionally allied with Syracuse, was the dominant power in Greece after the victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War . The Spartan statesman Lysandros sent an envoy whose action strengthened the position of the tyrant. Finally Dionysius was able to recapture the mainland with a surprise attack from Ortygia. After his victory, he was mild to the losers. From now on until his death there was no more uprising against the tyrannical rule.

Second war against Carthage

A piece of the city wall of Syracuse from the time of Dionysius

After the suppression of the rebellion, Dionysius turned back to his policy of expansion in 403. He undertook campaigns against autonomous cities in central and northeastern Sicily and devastated their areas. The citizens of conquered cities were at least partially sold into slavery. These were ongoing violations of the peace treaty with Carthage, which were already part of the preparation for a new war against the Carthaginians. The construction of new, large fortifications in Syracuse also served this goal. Dionysius had the plateau of Epipolai walled in the northwest of the city and included in the wall ring of Syracuse. There he built Fort Euryalos (today Castello Eurialo ). This important technical achievement was a milestone in the development of Greek fortification architecture. Dionysios is said to have deployed around 60,000 workers and personally monitored the work on the construction sites on a daily basis, also helping out with his own hands. At the same time he was massively upgrading. He expanded his fleet by more than 200 ships, some of which were of a new design ( five-rowers ) and siege engines. To do this, he called on engineers who at that time invented the catapult on his behalf , which revolutionized siege technology. Numerous mercenaries were recruited, including in Greece, where many battle-tested soldiers were unemployed after the end of the Peloponnesian War. After the armaments were completed, Dionysius called a popular assembly and allowed himself to be authorized to attack the Carthaginians; so he continued to respect democracy formally. To justify the war, it was stated that the aim was to liberate all Greek cities from Carthaginian rule. Before the attack, in the spring of 398, Dionysius asked the astonished Carthaginians to surrender. It is puzzling that the Carthaginians accepted the longstanding violations of the treaty and failed to recognize the offensive nature of the Syracuse armaments program.

Dionysius went with an army of allegedly 80,000 men, without encountering resistance, through the whole of Sicily to the far west, where he besieged the town of Motye, which was on a small island, and took it after a surprise attack by a Carthaginian fleet. Because of the bitter resistance of the residents, the fighting was costly. The construction of an assault dam through which the Greeks advanced to the island was a major technical achievement.

In the spring of 397 the Carthaginian counter-offensive began with a force superior in ships and crew under the successful general Himilkon in the previous war. The Carthaginians landed in Panormos ( Palermo ) and quickly retook a number of cities, including Motye. Dionysius did not risk a battle, but gave up western Sicily and withdrew to the east. Himilkon first secured the west and then advanced quickly along the north coast to cut off the enemy from mainland Italy, which he succeeded in conquering Messana. Numerous allies of the Syracusans now switched sides. Dionysius had to release thousands of slaves in order to man his ships with them. With his greatly reduced army, he took up a defensive position in the Syracuse area. When his poorly managed fleet suffered a heavy defeat at Katane ( Catania ) and lost a hundred ships, he had to withdraw behind the walls of Syracuse and be besieged there. The siege dragged on into the summer of 396. The Carthaginians were weakened and demoralized by an epidemic. Finally Dionysius, who had recruited new mercenaries and received support from Sparta, largely destroyed the enemy land army with a surprise attack. At the same time, the Syracusans won a sea victory. Himilkon fled to Africa with the rest of his ships. Dionysius could then go back to the offensive. After fighting with varying success, the Carthaginians 392 again sent a large fleet. Since both sides were now very exhausted - the Carthaginians had also been weakened by an uprising in Africa - they did not risk a decisive battle. Negotiations started. The peace that was concluded in 392 confirmed the traditional division of the island between the two powers, but in the details it was much more favorable to Dionysius than that of 405. From now on he had a free hand outside of Carthaginian territory.

Expansion in southern Italy and on the Adriatic

In southern Italy , most of the Greek cities had formed a federation that obliged them to provide mutual military aid. The aim was to ward off attacks by the belligerent non-Greek population of the region ( Lucanians ) as well as to prevent the feared Dionysius attack on the mainland. In the autumn of 390 Dionysius took action against the city of Rhegion (Reggio Calabria) - a member of the Confederation - to bring the Strait of Messina under his control. He relied on an alliance with Lokroi, the hometown of his wife Doris. At first the attack failed. Then Dionysius decided to form an alliance with the Lucanians. In 388 he undertook a new campaign in which he first besieged the city of Kaulonia north of the mouth of the Elleporos River (today Stilaro). An army from the allied cities came to the aid of the besieged, but was decisively defeated on Elleporos. After taking Kaulonia, Dionysius destroyed the city and transferred its residents to Syracuse, where he granted them tax exemption for five years. He also conquered Skylletion, today's Squillace . He was able to gain sympathy by treating the underdogs mildly; He released ten thousand prisoners with no ransom. The conquered cities of Kaulonia, Skylletion and Hipponion ( Vibo Valentia ) he left to his allies, the Lokrians. Lokroi remained formally autonomous, but was in fact subject to the suzerainty of the tyrant. The cities further north remained independent and made peace with Dionysius. The conclusion of the Syracuse military operations was the conquest and complete destruction of Rhegion in 386 after an eleven month siege. The citizens of the city were enslaved, with the exception of those who could buy themselves off with a large sum. With this Dionysius had finally gained a foothold on the mainland; the south of Calabria to the Gulf of Squillace and the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia belonged to his sphere of power and influence. The expansion of Syracuse power to the mainland was also of great economic importance because of the control of the strait.

The successes in southern Italy enabled the tyrant to reach out to the Adriatic . His goal was to get the sea route to Epirus over the Strait of Otranto in hand and to own port places on the Adriatic coast. In these endeavors he achieved considerable success. A further advance into north-west Greece was out of the question, however, as resolute resistance from the great power Sparta, with which Dionysius was still allied, had to be expected.

In 384/383 Dionysius made an advance on the west coast of Italy, which was directed against the Etruscans , traditional opponents of the Greeks and allies of the Carthaginians. The Syracusans took Pyrgi , the port of the Etruscan city of Caere , whose army they defeated. They made rich booty and on this raid they also reached Corsica, then Etruscan .

Third and fourth wars against Carthage

Dionysius saw the peace with the Carthaginians only as an armistice. He allied himself with cities in the Carthaginian sphere of influence that were ready to rise against the Carthaginians. This step threatened the existence of the Carthaginian power in Sicily. Therefore, in 382, ​​the third war broke out between the two powers. This time the Carthaginians allied themselves with enemies of the Syracusans in southern Italy and for the first time sent an army to mainland Italy. However, Dionysios was able to conquer the city of Kroton ( Crotone ), which was the center of his opponents on the mainland. In Sicily he won a major victory at Kabala. Thereupon he asked the Carthaginians to completely evacuate Sicily; his war goal was her displacement from the island. However, that was unacceptable to Carthage. After a Carthaginian victory at Kronion, war weariness set in on both sides and peace was made again in 374. Because of his last defeat, Dionysius had to make weighty concessions. The river Halykos (now Platani ) was set as the border . This demarcation turned out to be permanent.

In 368 Dionysius broke the peace and attacked the Carthaginians again. The reason for this was an erroneous report that a fire had destroyed the entire Carthaginian fleet. As in the first war, the Greek troops quickly advanced to the western tip of the island, but then had to retreat to their territory after a successful counterattack by the Carthaginian fleet. An armistice was then agreed. Apparently there was no further fighting, because in the spring of 367 Dionysius died. So the conflict ended in a draw again.

Domestic and cultural activity

Syracuse coin from the first years of the reign of Dionysius

Like other Greek tyrants, Dionysius did not formally repeal the old constitution. The institution of the people's assembly as the representative of the citizens continued, and the tyrant insisted on obtaining their consent on important decisions. However, the people's assembly did not have the right to elect the highest officials and could not take initiatives of its own accord.

Dionysius took various measures that changed the ownership and demographic structure. After the collapse of an uprising by members of the upper class in 405, he distributed the property of his refugee opponents to his favorites as well as to citizens and mercenaries. In the course of the wars against the Carthaginians, he ordered that entire citizenships of other cities be transplanted to Syracuse. From his high officers and other favorites ( phíloi "friends") a new upper class emerged, which took the place of the aristocrats who were defeated and driven out in the uprising of 405. The core of this upper class was made up of the tyrant's family and the families by marriage with them, a group whose cohesion he promoted through his marriage policy and whose members he entrusted the most important political, diplomatic and military tasks.

The monarchical principle also let Dionysius emerge externally in his appearance and his magnificent court. He wore a ruler's robe based on the Persian model, which was due to the fact that his virtually absolute power reminded contemporaries of Persian conditions.

Because of the keeping of the court, the armaments, the building activity and above all the bodyguards and the mercenary armies, the tyrant's need for money must have been extraordinarily high. Nevertheless, he was always able to cover the expenses incurred and recruit new mercenaries. The details of his successful fiscal policy are largely unclear. In times of crisis, high special taxes were required; It is uncertain whether there was also regular direct taxation based on the oriental model, which was not common in Greek cities at the time. Dionysius not only confiscated the property of his political opponents, but also temple treasures. The booty of war was an important source of income; it included the prisoners of war who were sold as slaves. The raid against Etruria was particularly profitable.

Dionysius, like other Greek tyrants, drew poets to his court. Among them were Philoxenus of Kythera and the tragedian Antiphon, whom he later executed. The ruler also wrote poetry himself; his own works were predominantly or exclusively tragedies, from which only a few verses have survived. He sought recognition for his poetry in Greece with varying degrees of success; at the Olympic Games in 388 he had it presented, but received rejection. The quality of his verse is mostly judged negatively in the sources, but political antipathy may have played an important role. Dionysius is said to have sentenced Philoxenus to forced labor in the notorious Latomien (stone quarries), allegedly as a punishment for criticizing the ruler's poems. In any case, Philoxenus ridiculed the tyrant in his dithyramb of Cyclops .

During the reign of Dionysius, the philosopher Plato made his first trip to Sicily, who at that time was not yet famous nationwide. It should have come to a conversation between the two, but it apparently ended without understanding and had no consequences. In his seventh letter, Plato criticized the luxurious life at the court of Syracuse. The legendary tradition according to which the angry Dionysius had Plato sold as a slave is not credible according to current research. Only after the death of Dionysius I did Plato begin to play a political role in Syracuse.

The succession

Against Dion's advice, Dionysius appointed his son Dionysius II as the sole successor and passed his two sons from his marriage to Aristomache, who were not yet grown up at the time of his death. Thanks to the loyalty of the mercenaries to the dynasty, the change of power was carried out smoothly. But Dionysius II was not prepared for his role as ruler, because his father had kept him away from state affairs and did not trust him. At the court of the inexperienced new tyrant, Dion was initially able to gain a position of power, although as the uncle of the sons Aristomaches, who had passed over, he belonged to the rival line of the tyrant family. Dion wanted to either bring Dionysius II permanently under his control or disempower him in favor of his nephews. This constellation led to a power struggle that was ultimately fought militarily and brought about the downfall of the dynasty. The state founded by Dionysius I collapsed and disintegrated into a large number of local tyrannical rule. In this way, the main merit of Dionysius I from the point of view of his contemporaries, the amalgamation of Sicilian Greeks against the Carthaginians, was nullified in the second decade after his death. The forcibly created territorial state proved to be unable to survive, as its existence was based only on the political and military skill and the willpower of its founder and there was no ideal or institutional anchoring.

Sources

The main source, from which almost all useful information about Dionysius comes, is the universal historical work of Diodors , entitled Library , which was published in the 1st century BC. BC originated. The rise and the reign of Dionysius are described in the part that extends from the 91st chapter of the 13th book to the 74th chapter of the 15th book. The period up to the middle of the eighties of the fourth century is described in much more detail than the later reign of the tyrant; evidently Diodorus was able to draw his knowledge of the earlier years from a more detailed account. Since the assessment of the credibility of his messages depends on their origin, a central task of modern source research is to clarify which information he has taken from which lost works and where their authors obtained their knowledge from. The origin of the material has been discussed controversially for a long time. What is certain is that the authors of the depictions used by Diodorus assessed the personality and government of the tyrant very differently.

reception

Fantasy portrait of Dionysius from the Promptuarium iconum insigniorum a seculo hominum by Guillaume Rouillé (1553)

Even during Dionysius' lifetime, his public image was significantly influenced by the propaganda carried out both by himself and by his opponents; his enemies were mainly active in Athens. The great historical work of the Philistos , in which four books were devoted to his reign, offered a detailed presentation from the perspective of his followers . Plutarch called Philistus "greatest friend of tyrants". Only fragments of this writing have survived. The sharpest contrast to this was formed by the also lost historical work of Timaeus of Tauromenion , which described the epoch from a radically anti-tyrant perspective. Timaeus recorded many of the anecdotes circulating in opposing circles, which contributed significantly to the fact that Dionysius was generally regarded as a typical tyrant after his death - an assessment that was already a matter of course for Aristotle .

Timaeus received much more attention than Philistus in ancient times. In addition, for philosophically oriented circles there was Plato's fundamental criticism of the tyrannical rule, which among other things resulted from the experiences of the philosopher on his first trip to Sicily. The type of tyrant described in Plato's dialogue Politeia largely bears the traits of Dionysius.

The very negative overall impression of Dionysius generated by the ancient critics remained predominant up to the modern age. Cicero , who contributed significantly to the transmission of the anti-tyrant tradition to later epochs, erroneously referred the famous anecdote of the Damocles sword and the story of Damon and Phintias to Dionysius I; both were originally handed down as incidents at the court of Dionysius II. Under the influence of this tradition, Dante sent the tyrant to hell.

More recently, Lionel Sanders and Brian Caven have critically examined the foundations of the traditional valuation of Dionysius and have come to a more favorable judgment. Modern research has introduced the term "younger tyranny " for the epoch that began with the rise of Dionysius I. It serves to distinguish it from the "older tyranny" of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Between them lay a time without tyrants.

Source editions and translations

  • Friedrich Vogel (Ed.): Diodori bibliotheca historica , Volume 3, Teubner, Stuttgart 1964 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1893; critical edition)
  • Diodoros: Greek World History, Book XI-XIII , translated by Otto Veh, Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-7772-9739-9
  • Diodoros: Greek World History, Book XIV-XV , translated by Otto Veh, revised by Thomas Frigo, Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-7772-0125-1

literature

Web links

Commons : Dionysios I of Syracuse  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, p. 37f .; Debra Nails: The People of Plato , Indianapolis 2002, p. 133.
  2. ↑ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, p. 37.
  3. ↑ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, pp. 39–42.
  4. ↑ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, p. 42f .; Helmut Berve: The tyranny among the Greeks , Vol. 1, Munich 1967, p. 223f.
  5. ↑ An overview of the family relationships is provided by the family tree in Debra Nails: The People of Plato , Indianapolis 2002, p. 130.
  6. ↑ For the dating see Ignazio D'Angelo: Locri Epizefirii e Dionigi I di Siracusa. In: Aevum 84, 2010, pp. 41–60, here: 49.
  7. ↑ See Ignazio D'Angelo: Locri Epizefirii e Dionigi I di Siracusa. In: Aevum 84, 2010, pp. 41–60, here: 47–49.
  8. ↑ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, pp. 68f., 207 notes 52 and 53.
  9. ↑ For this peace treaty and its history, see Michael Kleu: Von der Intervention zur Herrschaft. On the intention of Carthaginian interventions in Sicily up to the peace of 405. In: David Engels u. a. (Ed.): Between ideal and reality. Rule in Sicily from antiquity to the late Middle Ages , Stuttgart 2010, pp. 13–36, here: 28–31.
  10. ^ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I. The figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, p. 63; Helmut Berve: The tyranny among the Greeks , vol. 1, Munich 1967, p. 243f.
  11. ↑ The chronology was controversial for a long time until the outbreak of war was dated to the year 398; see Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I. Gestalt und Geschichte des Tyrannen von Syrakus , Wiesbaden 1958, p. 207, which is followed by Helmut Berve: Die Tyrannis bei den Greeks , Vol. 1, Munich 1967, p. 230.
  12. ↑ On these undertakings of Dionysios see Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I. Gestalt und Geschichte des Tyrannen von Syrakus , Wiesbaden 1958, pp. 120–126.
  13. ^ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I. The figure and history of the tyrant of Syracuse , Wiesbaden 1958, pp. 158-160; Lionel J. Sanders: Dionysius I of Syracuse and Greek Tyranny , London 1987, pp. 7-9.
  14. ^ For financial policy see Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I. Gestalt und Geschichte des Tyrannen von Syrakus , Wiesbaden 1958, pp. 161–167. See Helmut Berve: Die Tyrannis bei den Greeks , Vol. 1, Munich 1967, pp. 239–241.
  15. ^ For details see Lionel J. Sanders: Dionysius I of Syracuse and Greek Tyranny , London 1987, pp. 1f.
  16. ^ Karl Friedrich Stroheker: Dionysios I. Gestalt und Geschichte des Tyrannen von Syrakus , Wiesbaden 1958, p. 99 emphasizes the anecdotal nature of this message; Brian Caven: Dionysius I. War-Lord of Sicily , New Haven / London 1990, pp. 223f. she considers implausible.
  17. ↑ For the background, see Lionel J. Sanders: Dionysius I of Syracuse and Greek Tyranny , London 1987, pp. 15-19.
  18. ↑ On this anecdotal tradition see Konrad Gaiser : Der Ruhm des Annikeris . In: Konrad Gaiser: Gesammelte Schriften , Sankt Augustin 2004, pp. 597–616.
  19. ↑ On Philistos' representation of Dionysius see Stefan Schorn : Politische Theory, 'Fürstenspiegel' and Propaganda. Philistus of Syracuse, Xenophons Hieron and Dionysius I of Syracuse . In: David Engels u. a. (Ed.): Between ideal and reality. Rule in Sicily from antiquity to the late Middle Ages , Stuttgart 2010, pp. 37–61, here: 41–47.
  20. ↑ Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy , Inferno 12,100-108.
  21. ↑ On this term and its use, see Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg : The assessment of Dionysius I of Syracuse . In: Wolfgang Will (Ed.): To Alexander d. Size Festschrift G. Wirth on the occasion of his 60th birthday on December 9th , 1986 , Vol. 2, Amsterdam 1988, pp. 1147–1151, reprinted in: Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg: Greek Studies , Berlin a. a. 2009, pp. 225-250.
predecessor Office successor
Thrasybulus Tyrant of Syracuse
405–367 BC Chr. 		Dionysius II
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on October 26, 2010 in this version .
personal data
SURNAME Dionysius I of Syracuse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Tyrant of Syracuse
DATE OF BIRTH around 430 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 367 BC Chr.