previous next
1

When Ariston was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Quintus Fabius Vibulanus and Lucius Cornelius Curitinus. This year the Athenians and Peloponnesians agreed to a truce of five years, Cimon the Athenian having conducted the negotiations. [2]

In Sicily a war arose between the peoples of Egesta and Lilybaeum over the land on the Mazarus River, and in a sharp battle which ensued both cities lost heavily but did not slacken their rivalry. [3] And after the enrolment of citizens which had taken place in the cities2 and the redistribution of the lands, since many had been added to the roll of citizens without plan and in a haphazard fashion, the cities were in an unhealthy state and falling back again into civil strife and disorders; and it was especially in Syracuse that this malady prevailed. [4] For a man by the name of Tyndarides, a rash fellow full of effrontery, began by gathering about him many of the poor, and organizing them into an armed unit he proceeded to make of them a personal bodyguard ready for an attempt to set up a tyranny. But after this, when it was evident that he was grasping after supreme power, he was brought to trial and condemned to death. [5] But while he was being led off to prison, the men upon whom he had lavished his favours rushed together and laid hands upon those who were arresting him. And in the confusion which arose throughout the city the most respectable citizens, who had organized themselves, seized the revolutionists and put them to death along with Tyndarides. And since this sort of thing kept happening time and again and there were men whose hearts were set on a tyranny, the people were led to imitate the Athenians and to establish a law very similar to the one they had passed on ostracism.3

1 454 B.C.

2 Cp. chap. 76.

3 Cp. chap. 55.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Syracuse (Italy) (1)
Sicily (Italy) (1)
Lilybaeum (Italy) (1)
Egesta (Italy) (1)
Athens (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
454 BC (1)
hide References (5 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: