Timoleon

Greek statesman, and general of Corinth. He overthrew the tyranny of his brother Timophanes, and retired from public life; but when Dionysius the Younger and others tried to establish themselves in Syracuse, he was prevailed upon to return. He manoeuvred Dionysius into abdication and fought the Carthaginians, who were supporting the other tyrants, defeating them at the Crimessus in 341.

Timoleon (c.

As the champion of Greece against Carthage he is closely connected with the history of Sicily, especially Syracuse. When his brother Timophanes, whose life he had saved in battle, took possession of the acropolis of Corinth and made himself master of the city, Timoleon, after an ineffectual protest, tacitly acquiesced while the friends who accompanied him put Timophanes to death.

Public opinion approved his conduct as patriotic; In 344 envoys came from Syracuse to Corinth, to appeal to the mother-city for relief from the internecine feuds from which the Syracusans and all the Greeks of Sicily were suffering. Corinth could not refuse help, though her chief citizens declined the responsibility of attempting to establish a settled government in the factious and turbulent Syracuse.

Timoleon, being named by an unknown voice in the popular assembly, was chosen by a unanimous vote to undertake the mission, and set sail for Sicily with a few of the leading citizens of Corinth and a small troop of Greek mercenaries. At this time Hicetas, tyrant of Leontini, was master of Syracuse, with the exception of the island of Ortygia, which was occupied by Dionysius, still nominally tyrant.

Hicetas was defeated at Adranum, an inland town, and driven back to Syracuse. Timoleon was thus master of Syracuse.

He at once began the work of restoration, bringing new settlers from the mother-city and from Greece generally, and establishing a popular government on the basis of the democratic laws of Diocles.

Hicetas again induced Carthage to send (340-339) a great army (70,000), which landed at Lilybaeum (now Marsala). With a miscellaneous levy of about 12,000 men, most of them mercenaries, Timoleon marched westwards across the island into the neighbourhood of Selinus and won a great and decisive victory on the Crimissus.

Carthage made, however, one more effort and despatched some mercenaries to prolong the conflict between Timoleon and the tyrants.

Timoleon then retired into private life without assuming any title or office, though he remained practically supreme, not only at Syracuse, but throughout the island. He was buried at the cost of the citizens of Syracuse, who erected a monument to his memory in their market-place, afterwards surrounded with porticoes, and a gymnasium called Timoleonteum.

Lives by Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos;