442 HISTORY OF GREECE important basis, but not sufficient for his objects without the pres- ence of a special body of guards, constantly and immediately avail- able, chosen as well as controlled by himself, yet acting in such vocation under the express mandate and sanction of the people. He required a farther vote of the people, legalizing for his use such a body of guards. But with all his powers of delusion, and all the zeal of his par- tisans, he despaired of getting any such vote from an assembly held at Syracuse. Accordingly, he resorted to a manoeuvre, pro- claiming that he had resolved on a march to Leontini, and sum- moning the full military force of Syracuse (up to the age of forty) to march along with him, with orders for each man to bring with him thirty days' provision. Leontini had been, a few years be- fore, an independent city ; but was now an outlying fortified post, belonging to the Syracusans ; wherein various foreign settlers, and exiles from the captured Sicilian cities, had obtained permission to reside. Such men, thrown out of their position and expecta- tions as citizens, were likely to lend either their votes or their swords willingly to the purposes of Dionysius. While he thus found many new adherents there, besides those whom he brought with him, he foresaw that the general body of the Syracusans, and especially those most disaifected to him, would not be disposed to obey his summons or accompany him. 1 For nothing could be more preposterous, in a public point of view, than an outmarch of the whole Syracusan force for thirty days to Leontini, where there was neither danger to be averted nor profit to be reaped ; at a moment too when the danger on the side of Gela was most serious, from the formidable Carthaginian host at Agrigentum. Dionysius accordingly set out with a force which purported, ostensibly and according to summons, to be the full military mani- festation of Syracuse ; but which, in reality, comprised mainly his own adherents. On encamping for the night near to Leontini, he caused a factitious clamor and disturbance to be raised during the 1 Diodor. xiii, 95. AVTT/ 6' ij (Leontini) TOTS Qpovpiov r/v rolf ZvpaKov- oiot, 7r?.^pef vTTapxov ipvyuduv Kal %e.vuv uv&puTGtv. *HA7rie yap TOVTOVI avvayuviGTus e&iv, uvdptjirovf deopevovf usTafli H^f ruv 6e IiVpaKovaiuj, Tot)f Tvhfiarovf ov6' fytjeiv etf Aeovrivovf. Many of the expelled Agrigentines settled at Leontini, by permission of the Syracusans (Diodor. xiii, 89).
