Gelon and Hieron, the Tyrants of the Greek Colony of Syracuse


Dewing 780
Reverse: head of Arethusa with four dolphins
Silver decadrachm from Syracuse, ca. 470 B.C.
from the Arthur S. Dewing Greek Numismatic Collection

The colony at Syracuse


Map showing the colonies of Syracuse, and Syracuse's mother-city, Corinth


Syracuse and Delphi

The Syracusans built one of the earliest treasuries at Delphi, dating from the middle of the 6th century (Dinsmoor 1975, 116). This building, with its sculptural metopes, probably influenced the architecture and decoration of the lavish and still well-preserved Athenian treasury, built almost 50 years later, directly across the Sacred Way.

The Syracusan treasury was demolished in 413 B.C. in order to build a newer dedicatory building. This second Syracusan treasury was erected from the spoils of the Syracusans' crushing naval defeat of Athens, which had mounted an expedition to Sicily, attracted by Syracusan wealth and the prospect of enlisting the Sicilian cities in their conflict against the Spartans. Today, little remains of the Syracusan treasury at Delphi but the scattered foundations.

Syracuse and Olympia

In his discussion of Olympia's river, the Alpheius, Pausanias recounts a legend which establishes a link between Syracuse and Olympia at a geographical level:

They say that there was a hunter called Alpheius, who fell in love with Arethusa, who was herself a huntress. Arethusa, unwilling to marry, crossed, they say, to the island opposite Syracuse called Ortygia, and there turned from a woman to a spring. Alpheius too was changed by his love into the river.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.7.2


Later, in book 8, Pausanias writes that the Alpheius River is especially unusual because it often disappears underground along its course. Pausanias reports that the river, flowing past Olympia,

...falls into the sea above Cyllene, the port of Elis. Not even the Adriatic could check its flowing onwards, but passing through it, so large and stormy a sea, it shows in Ortygia, before Syracuse, that it is the Alpheius, and unites its water with Arethusa.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.54.3


Ships and Sea Travel

Trade

Colonies

Ancient Travellers


Plato, Letters, 7.338e-7.339d

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