[Teaser] Punic Sicilian War - The Rise of Dionysius

Happy Monday, Patrons!

Here is a sneak peak at the script for our upcoming video, the third installment of Punic-Sicilian Wars: The Rise of Dionysius.

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Enjoy! 

In the year 405 BC, the island of Sicily was a smoking ruin. The recent offensive by Carthage had created a situation in which the Punic power was the undisputed power of Sicily. Only one thing stood between Carthage and dominance: Syracuse, the city-state that had defeated the Carthaginian army on the field again and again. Syracuse was well aware of the imminent danger - and like in so many cases, democracy gave way to autocracy in this year of darkness.

The Rise of Dionysius

Dionysius of Syracuse was originally anything but an impressive character. He worked as a minor public official - a clerk in a bureaucracy. The Fates, though, decreed a very different thread for his life. With the war in Carthage, he left with the rest of the Syracusan army and ascended quickly through the ranks. The city clerk became a general, repeatedly defeating the larger Carthaginian army on the battlefield. Not only did he win, he ensured that his soldiers were unshakably loyal to his word. When an uneasy truce was signed between Syracuse and Carthage, he took the opportunity to continue his rise. He started out with a sympathy play: staging his own attempted assassination. The assassin was caught "just in time," of course - and as a result, he assigned himself a bodyguard of six hundred men within the city limits. That bodyguard, due to the eagerness of his soldiers, swelled over a thousand men before Dionysius, apparently frustrated with the slow ineffectiveness of Syracusan democracy, sent his men and mercenaries to occupy every corner of the city as a military police force. Over the next few years, he crushed any opposition to his rule, began an intense militarization process, and turned Syracuse into a virtually impenetrable fortress. The Tyrant of Syracuse prepared for war.

Perhaps one of the more important reforms of Dionysius was his introduction of standardized weapons and armour. Where mercenaries and citizen-soldiers had previously formed the backbone of conflict in the Mediterranean, Syracuse now commissioned weapons and armour from across the Hellenic world. Smiths in Sicily, Italy, and even the Greek mainland produced at least 140,000 sets of armour and even more weapons, with which Syracuse developed the greatest state armoury of the period. Dionysius wasn't idle, either: throughout the period of "peace," he maintained raids and probing attacks on cities and villages under Carthaginian control. By 398, he was ready for a full scale invasion. After giving an ultimatum to Carthage to abandon its hegemony, he summoned his army and marched west.

As the Syracusan forces moved along the southern coast, they left a trail of destruction in their path. Carthaginians and collaborators were murdered out of hand, with their property being looted. Opportunistic Sicilians joined the army as it marched, and by the time Dionysius reached the gates of Motya in the summer of 398, his army numbered at least 80,000 infantry.