in date with the yet more momentous success of the Greeks over the Persians at Salamis, raised the house of Deinomenes to a height of power at home and consideration abroad that had been attained by no previous Sicilian dynasty. The honours and results of this victory were shared by Thero (a son of Gelo's old comrade Ænesidamus), whom we now find established—how, we know not—as despot of Agrigentum. In two years more Gelo was dead, and Hiero succeeded to the whole of his dominions.
Thero and Hiero, representatives of the two old comrades Gelo and Ænesidamus, reigned pretty peaceably side by side, in Agrigentum and Syracuse respectively, till the death of Thero. At one time a conflict between them seemed imminent, but the danger was averted, and the credit of effecting a reconciliation is ascribed,[1] but on insufficient authority, to Pindar's rival-poet, Simonides. The son and successor, however, of Thero was overthrown by Hiero, who thus became to all intents and purposes supreme in Sicily. Syracuse remained his capital, but he founded also a city called Ætna, from its vicinity to the mountain of that name, and set up in it, as rulers, his son Deinomenes and his friend Chromius, either in conjunction or in succession. Further, on winning a chariot-victory at Pytho, he complimented his new city by associating its name, and not that of Syracuse, with his own, in the customary proclamation of the victor's father and native state.
After the fall of the Theronian dynasty in Agri-
- ↑ Scholiast on Pindar, Ol. ii. 29.
