Diodorus Siculus, Library

Contents of the Sixteenth Book of Diodorus

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XLV. Tennes, having confided his scheme for betrayal to Mentor¹ the commander of the mercenaries from Egypt, left him to guard a portion of the city and to act in concert with his agents handling the betrayal, while he himself, with five hundred men, marched out of the city, pretending that he was going to a common meeting of the Phoenicians, and he took with him the most distinguished of the citizens, to the number of one hundred, in the role of advisers. [2] When they had come near the King he suddenly seized the hundred and delivered them to Artaxerxes. The King, welcoming him as a friend, had the hundred shot as instigators of the revolt, and when five hundred of the leading Sidonians carrying olive branches as suppliants approached him, he summoned Tennes and asked him if he was able to deliver the city to him; for he was very eager not to receive Sidon on the terms of a capitulation, since his aim was to overwhelm the Sidonians with a merciless disaster and to strike terror into the other cities by their punishment. [3] When Tennes assured him that he would deliver up the city, the King, maintaining his merciless rage, had all five hundred shot down while still holding the supplicant branches. Thereupon Tennes, approaching the mercenaries from Egypt, prevailed upon them to lead him and the King inside the walls. [4] So Sidon by this base betrayal was delivered into the power of the Persians; and the King, believing that Tennes was of no further use to him, put him to death.² But the people of Sidon before the arrival of the King burned all their ships so that none of the townspeople should be able by sailing out secretly to gain safety for himself. But when they saw the city and the walls captured and swarming with many myriads of soldiers, they shut themselves, their children, and their women up in their houses and consumed them all in flames. [5] They say that those who were then destroyed in the fire, including the domestics, amounted to more than forty thousand. After this disaster had befallen the Sidonians and the whole³ city together with its inhabitants had been obliterated by the fire, the King sold that funeral pyre for many talents, [6] for as a result of the prosperity of the householders there was found a vast amount of silver and gold melted down by the fire. So the disasters which had overtaken Sidon had such an ending, and the rest of the cities, panic-stricken, went over to the Persians.

[7] Shortly before this time Artemisia, who had held despotic rule over Caria, passed away after ruling two years, and Idrieus,⁴ her brother, succeeded to the despotism and ruled seven years. [8] In Italy the Romans made an armistice with the people of Praeneste, and a treaty with the Samnites, and they put to death two hundred sixty inhabitants of Tarquinii⁵ at the hands of the public executioners in the Forum. [9] In Sicily Leptines and Callippus, the Syracusans then in power, took by siege Rhegium,⁶ which was garrisoned by the tyrant Dionysius the younger, ejected the garrison, and restored to the people of Rhegium their independence.

¹ Cp. chap. 42.2.

² Cp. Hall, Cambridge Ancient History, 6.153: "Tennes was cynically executed by Ochus, and Mentor with equal cynicism taken into his service," with the doubts expressed by Beloch, Griechische Geschichte (2), 3.1.535, note 2: "Tennes' Hinrichtung lässt es zweifelhaft erscheinen, ob er wirklich ein Verräter gewesen ist und nicht vielmehr bloss eine Kapitulation abgeschlossen hat, die dann nicht gehalten worden ist."

³ Beloch doubts (Griechische Geschichte (2), 3.1.535, note 2) if the catastrophe at Sidon could have been as complete as Diodorus reports, since Sidon twelve years later (at the time of Alexander) was a large powerful city. Cp. Arrian Alexander 2.20 ff. and Curtius 4.1.15.

⁴ See chap. 42.6-7.

⁵ Cp. Livy 7.19.2-3, who gives 358 as the number executed.

⁶ Demolished by the Elder Dionysius but restored by the Younger according to Strab. 6.1.6.

This text is based on the following book(s):
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.
OCLC: 24758311
ISBN: 0674994132, 0674994221, 0674994396, 0674994280, 0674994647

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