220 HISTORY OF GREECE. Athens, and Syracuse were the three great imperial cities of Greece, and his Sicilian witnesses, proud of the great past power of Gelo, might well ascribe to him that competition for preem- inence and command which Herodotus has dramatized. The immense total of forces which Gelo is made to promise becomes the more incredible, when we reflect that he had another and a better reason for refusing aid altogether. He was attacked at home, and was fully employed in defending himself. The same spring which brought Xerxes across the Hellespont into Greece, also witnessed a formidable Carthaginian invasion of Sicily. Gelo had already been engaged in war against them, as has been above stated, and had obtained successes, which they would naturally seek the first opportunity of retrieving. The vast Persian invasion of Greece, organized for three years before, and drawing contingents not only from the whole eastern world, but especially from their own metropolitan brethren at Tyre and Sidon, was well calculated to encourage them : and there seems good reason for believing that the simultaneous attack on the Greeks both in Peloponnesus and in Sicily, was concerted between the Carthaginians and Xerxes,^ — probably by the Phenicians on behalf of Xerxes. Nevertheless, this alli- ance does not exclude other concurrent circumstances in the interior of the island, Avhicli supplied the Carthaginians both with invitation and with help. Agrigentum, though not under the dominion of Gelo, was ruled by his friend and relative Thero : while Ehegium and Messene under the government of Anaxilaus, Himera under that of his father-in-law Terillus, and Selinus, seem to have formed an opposing minority among the Sicilian Greeks ; at variance with Gelo and Thero, but in amity and correspondence with Carthage.^ It was seemingly about the year 481 B.C., that Thero, perhaps invited by an Himersean party, expelled from Himera the despot Terillus, and ' Ephorus, Fragment. Ill, ed. Didot; Diodor. xi, 1, 20. Mitford and Dahlmann (Forschungen, Herodotus, etc., sect. 35, p. 186) call in question this alliance or understanding between Xerxe 5 and the Carthaginians ; but on no sufficient grounds, in my judgment.
- Herodot. vii, 165; Diodor. xi, 23: compare also xiii, 55, 59. In like
manner Rhegium and Messene fonned the opposing interest to Syracuse, nnder Dionysius the elder (Diodor. xiv, 44).
