The Ancients - Carthage vs Greeks? The First Sicilian War

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

480 BC is a year widely-celebrated in Greek history. When Leonidas' Spartan core and their Hellenic allies fought a powerful Persian army at Thermopylae, and an outnumbered, Athenian-led navy defeated a mighty Persian armada at Salamis. Yet it was not just off the coast of Athens that one of antiquity’s most well-known battles was fought that year. 600 miles to the west of Salamis, supposedly on the same day the naval engagement occurred, another battle was fought: the Battle of Himera. In this episode, Ancient World Magazine's Dr Joshua Hall talks us through the battle and highlights why it was so significant in the story of ancient Sicily.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, if someone was to tell you to pick a battle fought in September 480 BC, you would be forgiven for instantly choosing one of the most famous maritime clashes in the whole of history, the Battle of Salamis. But that wasn't the only key clash occurring at that time in that year. Hundreds of miles to the west, on Sicily, there was another

equally important battle going on between the tyrant of Syracuse, Galon and the Carthaginians. To put that loosely, there were also mercenaries, there were Greeks fighting on either side and more. But this battle, the Battle of Chimera, is sometimes overlooked and it deserves its moment. Now joining me to talk all about the battle, going from the background to the battle itself to its aftermath, I was delighted to get on the show Dr Joshua Hall. Josh, he works at the Ancient World magazine. He has done a lot of work about the Greeks in the Western Mediterranean in antiquity, whether they're on Sicily or in Southern Italy, or further west in Monde de France and Spain. So without further ado, here's Josh. Josh, great to have you on the show.

Nice to see you again, Tristan. Thanks for inviting me back. No problem. And for a topic like this, couldn't think of anyone else because the Battle of Hymera, at roughly the same time as these amazing, well, by amazing, I mean these extraordinary clashes at Thermopylae, at Salamis during the Persian War, on Sicily, there is also this vitally important clash occurring. Yes, and of course the Sicilians love to advertise that it happened at the same time and was playing a role in the same conflict between Greek and barbarian that the battles of Salamis and Thermopylae were in the east. And this battle, who are our main sources for it? And this battle, who are our main sources for it? So for Chimera, we have two sources that I would describe as narratives, despite one of them being very brief and essentially a summary. So we have Herodotus writing in the late 5th century, who gives us an account that is very short, but provides a few really good details and

helps us understand the aftermath of the battle more than the battle itself. But our second source that gives us essentially the largest or the most complete description of the battle is Diodorus Siculus, a first century BC writer of a universal history from Sicily. He is extremely important for us because not only does he preserve aspects of Greek history that haven't survived elsewhere, primarily about Sicily and the Western Greeks, but he also used Western Greek authors like Timaeus of Taormenium and Philistus of Syracuse, both of whom were born on Sicily, were Sicilian Greeks and wrote histories of their people. But he also used the much broader historian Ephesus,

who was active in the 4th century BC. And you mentioned the Western Greeks there. Of course, Sicily seems to form a main part of the Western Greeks. And Sicily in the early 5th century BC, is there a significant Greek presence on Sicily by this time? Yes, the Greeks had been emigrating to the central Mediterranean for a couple hundred years by this point. The foundation dates for a lot of the Greek cities on Sicily can be found in Thucydides, although how reliable they are, that's a very difficult question to answer. But the Greek cities on Sicily had probably been around for at least a century, all of them, if not a little bit longer. Some were founded in the 6th century, though. But the Greeks had established a presence on the island that was quite significant. I don't

like using the word colonized because modern senses of colonization don't overlap with what was going on in the ancient world, but they had really grabbed onto the coast of eastern Sicily all the way around most of the way west, where we run into Phoenician cities controlling the coastline, as well as some indigenous groups like the Alemians, who controlled land close to the coast. So time just before the Battle of Hymera and the whole war surrounding that breaks out, from what you're saying there, there seems to be a Greek presence stretching along the eastern, northern, and southern coastlines of Sicily. Yes, so the Greeks had established fairly significant cities, Syracuse being obviously

one of the largest and would go on to be essentially the greatest city of the Greek world if you believe the descriptions of people like Cicero. And some of these certainly grew out of smaller trading posts that were established fairly early on in Greek interactions with the central Mediterranean. But in many ways, they looked like Greek cities from the Aegean. They were large, they had a lot of the same features, such as significant temples, fortification walls by the end of the 6th century probably. And for all intents and purposes, really were creating a Greek world on the island by this point, especially by 480 when the Battle of Himera supposedly took place. And in the run-up to this battle, in the run-up to the war,

is there one Greekreek city state that is clearly dominant by this time is there one key power i would say no if we're looking for the most powerful greek state on sicily at this time it would have to be the quasi empire created by the denomenids gal Gelon and Heron especially, who were brothers that came from the city of Gela, which is north of Syracuse. They were essentially soldiers of the Geloan tyrant Hippocrates, but after Hippocrates' death,

Gelon overthrows his sons, either through some sort of devious machination or however else it happened, and seizes power in Gela. Eventually, he builds this Sicilian empire on the eastern part of the island and unites Gela, Syracuse, and other smaller settlements under his rule and sets himself up in Syracuse, which at this point had to have been the largest city, the largest of the Greek cities on the island, or at least in the far east of the island, and used Syracuse as a seat of power afterwards. So Gellon sounds like this powerful tyrant in eastern Sicily. He was. We don't know much about the other tyrants on Sicily at this point. We know that they existed. There was a bloke in Acragas named Theron who would be allied to Gelon in this war against the Carthaginians, but relations fell out between the two of them

later on as tyrants tend to not get along with one another. In the immediate run-up to Himera, there was a tyrant in the city of Himera itself named Tyrillus. And then if we look to the north of Syracuse and across the Straits of Messina to Region or Regium in southern Italy, there was a tyrant in place there named Anaxaleus, who seems to have had a decent power base in southern Italy. So there were definitely other tyrants active as well as the Phoenician governments on the west side of the island and then the indigenous states throughout. But we don't know all that much about their power necessarily. We hear more about

Gelon's army. I think the size of an army is a good representation of power simply because of the Battle of Himera. So Herodotus reported that at the time when Gelon was being asked to give aid to the Aegean Greeks, he had under his power 200 triremes, 20,000 hoplites, 2,000 horsemen, 2,000 archers, 2,000 slingers, and 2,000 troops that I call light cavalry. They're either light cavalry or infantry cavalry mixed together or something like that. It's a rather controversial term that I don't think we'll ever get to the bottom of because this is the only instance in all of Greek literature for it. But we hear in Diodorus that he had, I think, 50,000 troops in total in his army, which might be a little big.

Don't really know. Numbers of these armies are going to be imprecise in general, something we can talk about with Carthage in a minute. But I think that Gellon did have under his command a fairly sizable force, and one thing that he had others may not have had as many of was his mercenary contingent. So we hear not necessarily in the context of the battle itself, but in a different notice, necessarily in the context of the battle itself, but in a different notice, that he had about 10,000 mercenaries under his command at one point who he settled in Syracuse. Mercenaries will be loyal to whomever pays their bill. So with Gellon, he probably had the civic armies of Gela, Syracuse, and whatever other cities were under his power. But this core

of 10,000 or so mercenaries really gave him a secure position within his own country, and probably within Sicily more generally. Well, it sounds like there, in the run-up to the Battle of Himera, that Gelon has this very powerful army army and especially has this very powerful presence in eastern Sicily. But before we go on to the the battle itself and the campaign preceding it, we mentioned them a few times just a bit earlier. Let's go to the other side of the conflict, the other main player, Carthage, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians. And Carthage's presence on Sicily by the start of the 5th century BC, Carthage has also been on the island for a couple of centuries. Possibly. This is actually a very contentious element of the history the Carthaginians had been fighting wars on Sicily as well as on Sardinia for a little while before this battle, notably the dynasty that Hamilcar,

the commander who would be defeated at Hamera, his father was supposedly waging war on Sicily and all of this. But we don't know that much about it. Unfortunately, early Carthaginian history really puts us in the dark, and Greek authors don't help us in the way that they talk about Carthaginians, because they quite often will use Carthaginian and Phoenician as synonyms, or at least it seems like they're using them as synonyms. So when we hear about conflict between Phoenicians and Greeks in eastern Sicily before Hemera, what exactly do we mean?

A very good example of this is in about 510, a Spartan named Doreaeus, who was actually the elder brother of King Leonidas of Thermopylae fame, supposedly trying to found a city on western Sicily, but was defeated in battle and killed by the Carthaginians. We don't necessarily know if this was who defeated and killed him because other sources, this is Gelon using the Carthaginians killing Doryeus in a speech to Spartan ambassadors during the Persian Wars, trying to use history or turn history to his own advantage in negotiating with and shaming the Spartans for not coming and helping him fight against the evil Phoenician menace or the evil Carthaginian menace. In other places, we hear that Elenians and just Phoenicians in general fought against Doriaeus' expedition.

So it's unclear really what Carthage's role was, if anything, in this, because there was reason for the Phoenician cities, which may or may not have been under the hegemony of Carthage at this point in western Sicily, to stop a new Greek foundation. There's no reason that the Ilemians would necessarily want a new Greek city state or a new Greek city suddenly popping up in their territory because Doriaeus supposedly was settling in the territory close to Himera, or not Himera, sorry, Matia, which was essentially the largest and most significant Phoenician city on the island at this point. So there's good reason that it was simply a collection of peoples already living on western Sicily to fight against him. But the Doriaeus expedition and the fight against it

shows that it's difficult for us to say exactly what Carthage's role was in Sicily at this time. There is evidence that they were claiming hegemony over the Phoenician cities in a treaty preserved by Polybius that he dates essentially to 509 BC, or as he dates it, the first year of the Roman Republic. A treaty was struck between Carthage and Rome in which Carthage claimed essentially exclusive economic rights in Sicily. So Romans could trade, but you had to do it in the presence of a Carthaginian, I guess, trade magistrate. So that evidence, along with Justin, implies that Carthage had some sort of governing role

in Sicily before Himera. But we don't really have a lot of hard evidence on the ground for this. This is before the Carthaginians were minting coins, so unfortunately we don't have the numismatic evidence that we might otherwise have or that it would be nice to have to see who was minting money. Archaeology in this instance can't really help us all that much in trying to determine Carthage's role with the Phoenician cities on Sicily. So that's all to say that the Carthaginian involvement in Sicily at this point is a little controversial and not entirely clear. It's interesting what you were saying there with

Darius or Sparta, how there seems to have been some, if limited, conflicts between, let's say, the Greeks and the Carthaginians already on Sicily. And if we go to the conflict itself, and we've talked about the place of the battle numerous times now, Hymera. But where was Hymera? Hymera was on the north coast of Sicily, on what would probably have been the border of the Carthaginian or at least the Phoenician and Alemian territory. I would assume that it was very close to lands that they would have claimed to be their own. And what was Hymera's status by 480 BC? Was it more like a border town between the spheres of influence?

Was it a prosperous trading city? It was Apollos in and of itself. It had recently been liberated by Theron of Akragas, who drove out Tyrillus, or helped drive out Tyrillus, the tyrant of Himera. Unclear exactly what Theron's role then was in Himera, but it was a city-state of its own, and fairly large and prosperous by this point. I would say it was an average Greek city on the island. It's not just a little border post or some sort of backwater settlement. It was a significant town.

And really, all of the coastal cities in Sicily grew quite large. And it's certainly because of trade. Sailing routes ran around the coast. I don't remember if I mentioned this in our discussion of Massilia, but ancient ships had to beach quite often. Warships, at least, every night you drew them up onto dry land, generally. So sailing routes around the island stuck close to the coast. You wouldn't necessarily go out into blue water.

So there was opportunity for trade for all of the cities, Phoenician, Greek, or whatever else. So it's worth thinking of Hemera as a proper city, I think, at this point. And it did have walls. It was fortified, supposedly, by this point. It wasn't just an open conglomeration of homes on the plain or anything like that. Of course, it sounds quite a significant polis for the time, as you mentioned the walls and you mentioned its importance for trade, for maritime trade on Sicily's, well, going alongside Sicily's northern coastline. And you mentioned there how Theron, this tyrant from the city of Akragas, which is on the opposite coast,

had just, as it were, forced out the tyrant of Hymera, Terilis. How does this action spark war? Well, this is, from what we can tell, or what I would argue, this is the catalyst for the Carthaginian invasion. We have two versions of why the Carthaginians came to Sicily in 480, but this is the one that sounds much more plausible to me. So, Teryllus' daughter was married to Anaxilaeus, the tyrant of Region in southern Italy that I mentioned earlier. of Region in southern Italy that I mentioned earlier. Anaxalaios then was guest friends of Hamilcar, the leading man, king, or general in Carthage at this time. I say all of those things

because his exact position is unclear. But being guest friends essentially meant that they were best buds. And so Anaxalaius, and obviously either by proxy or in person, Teryllus convinced Hamilcar that an invasion of Sicily was both to the benefit of the Carthaginians as well as to their little friendship circle. And that maybe he didn't necessarily have an obligation to come to Teryllus' defense, but it was certainly in his interest to do this. But again, that's only one of the versions of why the Carthaginians came that we hear about. So that's the one that, to me, seems much more plausible. Intricate political machinations between tyrants. It makes sense. However, Diodorus preserves a version by which the Carthaginian invasion in 480 was actually part of a concerted effort between Xerxes and the Carthaginians to destroy these evil freedom-loving Greeks. Obviously, I say freedom-loving very sarcastically there because we all know that the Greeks were slavers and not

exactly pleasant people, I'm sure. But we read in Diodorus that Xerxes being won over by Mardonius, one of his agents, and desiring to drive all the Greeks from their homes, sent an embassy to the Carthaginians to urge them to join in the undertaking and closed an agreement with them to the effect that he would wage war upon the Greeks who lived in Greece, while the Carthaginians should at the same time gather great armaments and subdue those Greeks who lived in Sicily and Italy. This is obviously later hyperbole. We'll get to, I'm sure, here in a bit, the political effects of the Battle of Chimera. But I think this is the best example of their ultimate result,

which was painting the conflict between Hamilcar, Chimera, Acragas, and Syracuse as one of Greeks versus marauding barbarians, equivalent to Xerxes crossing the Hellespont and trying to destroy Hellenic life as everyone knew it in the Aegean. You can really see the rhetoric later in book 11 in Diodorus because he goes on to say that Xerxes, vying with the zeal displayed by the Carthaginians, surpassed them in all preparations to the degree that he excelled the Carthaginians

and the multitude of peoples at his command. I mean, there really is no reason to think that there is this instant communication between Xerxes and Hamilcar and that they're competing to see who can raise the largest army and kill the most Greeks. It's absolutely absurd, to me at least. I mean, some people may read this and think, oh no, those Persians and Carthaginians really wanted to kill all the Greeks, but there's no reason for Xerxes to want an alliance with Carthage or really care about the Greeks in the central Mediterranean anyway. He's leading a Persian war that started before he even came to the throne. This is,

you know, the war in the Aegean is the result of the Ionian revolt, Athenian support of the Ionian revolt, and that complex web of alliances there. I don't think we need to see any truth to this supposed Persian and Carthaginian alliance and conspiracy to kill the Greeks. Absolutely. So that does take us back though to your question of how Tyrrilus being expelled from Hymera influenced and catalyzed the war. Yeah, I mean, absolutely, from what you were saying. And of course, let's not forget with the Persian War that there were lots and lots and lots of Greeks fighting on the Persian side, for instance, the Ionian Greeks or the Thessalians or the Boetians. And it sounds like on Sicily, although you mentioned Diodorus later trying

to portray it as a Greek versus quote-unquote barbarian conflict, the Carthaginian army itself, was it just fully made of Carthaginians and mercenaries, or were there Greeks fighting, from what you're saying, there were Greeks fighting on their side as well? There were. We don't hear anything about Anaxalaios' troops from Region coming, but the city of Salinas, one of the great Sicilian Greek poleis, was supposed to send a contingent of cavalry to to Hamilcar's camp was intercepted by Gellon. And a little stratagem emerged that ended in Hamilcar's death, supposedly, that we can talk about in a minute. But this obviously was not just a Carthaginian barbarian versus Greek situation. As you say, in the East, that wasn't the case. There were a lot of Greeks fighting on the sides of the Persians. And in the West, there were Greeks fighting alongside the Carthaginians.

And Hamilcar himself was actually half Greek. His mother was Syracusan. So in itself, Hamilcar isn't exactly the arch-villain barbarian. He is half Greek and half Carthaginian. It seems unlikely to me that he would want to completely wipe out the Greeks if some of them were his kin. Obviously, I can't speak for everyone because we all know that terrible tyrants and megalomaniacs do completely illogical things, but nothing about the story of Chimera screams barbarians versus Greeks. Well, let's continue that story now. So this large Carthaginian army, I'm guessing we don't

know exactly what the numbers are, but I'm guessing it's a large force. It sails over to Sicily. And what does it do? Does it head straight for Chimera? So it kind of depends on how you interpret the evidence. Just thinking real quick about the size of the army, we hear that it was 300,000 strong. This is obviously not true. That's a massive army, just like Xerxes' millions. The 300,000 of Carthage is certainly a fabrication. There was a trend in the mid-20th century to try to weasel out the, quote, real numbers present in ancient armies. And one theory was essentially you reduce the number to a tenth. So Hamilcar would have had about 30,000 troops with him. car would have had about 30,000 troops with him. Obviously, this is not a scientific approach, but 30,000 troops may be a figure that we can assign to it if we use this older, very clunky type of

approach. But that's about the size of Galon's army, probably. We heard earlier from Herodotus that he told the Aegean Greeks that he could field about 20,000 hoplites and then, you know, a few thousand each of these different troop types. So that was probably about the size of the Carthaginian army as well. Obviously, though, Gelon had allies there, probably in larger strength than Hamilcar in the form of Theron, who was already in Hamerip. than Hamilcar in the form of Theron, who was already in Hamera. But back to the rest of your question. The Carthaginians supposedly landed on Sicily in the harbor of Panormus, which was one of the Phoenician cities on the west side of the island. And from there, they began doing what all invading armies do. They set out foragers and raiding parties throughout the territory of the

Greek cities, but did make Himera a goal. It was, you know, the city that they were trying to restore to Rilis too, and so Hamilcar pretty much made a beeline for this city. But even then, once they got there, he did supposedly route a group of himerians who had come out to try to drive his army off but then sent foragers out to essentially loot the countryside of himera that's quite interesting how you say that a bunch of himerians sally out as it were from behind their strong defenses that you mentioned earlier and i guess that once again raises suspicion on the numbers let's say if they were willing to go out from their defenses and fight the carthaginians on the open field of course it fails but once again it suggests that perhaps the carthaginian army was not as large as some of our sources

might suggest it definitely does i mean 300 000 troops would have been able to circumvallate the city with ease. I mean, there would have been really no hope, I think, for the Himerans if the army was really that large. Theodorus's description of the various wars between Carthaginians and Greeks over time. The Carthaginians wouldn't come back to Sicily, as far as we know, after 480 until 410-409, when supposedly Hamilcar's heirs came to avenge his death at Hymera. And they go on to attack a number of cities, Salinas, Himera, Akragas. And if the sources are to be believed, did a pretty good job of hurting the Greeks, we'll say, of Sicily in that war. But when they come to cities, we see the inhabitants sallying out. It's almost universal. And just off the top of my head head i actually think we do hear about it

for every one of those cities in the later war we may not hear it for every single one but i'm thinking for some reason that we do so i think with the hymerians sallying out at this point it was either the common practice of the time or it was tapas? I'd like to think that it was common practice, because it does make sense. You would want to try to drive an attacking army away from your city before they could invest it, you know, before they could start trying to either starve you out or just force their way through your defenses. But again, if the army was 300,000 strong, I doubt that the Himarans would have sent anyone out, as you say. So it probably is evidence that Hamilcar's army was much smaller than what Diodorus implies.

And you mentioned there, of course, this sally fails, and so the Carthaginians start investing in a siege of the city. Things are going well for the Carthaginians. And we've also mentioned earlier how Theron, inside the city, was an ally of Gel city. Things are going well for the Carthaginians. And we've also mentioned earlier how Theron inside the city was an ally of Gelon and how Gelon creates this large army to march to his allies aid. And so Gelon, he marches across to Hymera. It's quite a trek, but it sounds like he marched across to Hymera with this significant army. What does he do when he reaches the city of Hymera? What's the the situation we don't necessarily know exactly what the situation was but it sounds like the carthaginians were probably raiding the territory i don't think that they were attacking the walls of the city itself but

theron and the hymerans had blocked up all of the gates apparently you know trying to give themselves a bit of extra protection, because the gates are generally the weakest part of any circuit wall defense for a city. So that actually makes a lot of practical sense that they had done this. But Gellon supposedly covered the distance swiftly, as Diodorus says, and on the approach of his army, the Hymerans and presumably Theron and his men were emboldened seeing them, because obviously Diodorus records that they were 50,000 strong instead of the slightly smaller army we hear of later, or I guess earlier in Herodotus. But as soon as Galon gets to the territory of Hymera, he constructs a camp for his army. He doesn't go into the city immediately.

He builds a camp, fortifies it with a deep ditch and palisade. Again, Diodorus's chronology is not great here, but it sounds like immediately after doing this, he just sent his entire body of cavalry, which could have been as many as 4,000, against the enemy that were ravaging the countryside. against the enemy that were ravaging the countryside. And supposedly the Carthaginians did not expect this, didn't even know that Gellon was marching towards them, and they were just completely taken by shock with Gellon's cavalry driving them from the countryside and taking a lot of prisoners.

Again, Diodorus's numbers probably shouldn't be trusted, but he says that they took more than 10,000 prisoners and brought them into the city. This is a huge number of people. I don't know that marshalling 10,000 prisoners of war would have been practical, and certainly not bringing them into the city, even if you were going to enslave them. It's very dubious, the number at least. But I think that the general, or the gist of it, is very believable. You know, Galon takes the Carthaginians by surprise, captures a lot of their foragers, probably kills quite a few of them as well by deploying his cavalry in a very smart way. And now, instead of Himera standing standing alone there's this new fortified camp out in front of

the city we can probably imagine standing between the carthaginians and the himerans okay it sounds like there then that even if the numbers are dubious there might be some truth in the story that gelon claims first blood as, as it were, and quite decisively, quite significantly as well, if this cavalry is able to capture the raiders or disperse the Carthaginian raiders who are caught unawares. What happens next? We kind of mentioned it earlier, but does Gellon fall upon some very good luck, some good fortune? He does, supposedly. This is the point at which his own cavalry intercept a messenger coming from the Greek city of Salinas to Hamilcar, saying that, yes, we're dispatching the cavalry that you requested. Expect them the next day. And at this point, he has an idea that

in order to defeat the Carthaginian army, instead of necessarily beating them in open battle, which Diodorus says he does anyway, he's going to kill the general, you know, cut the head off the snake and the body will fall, that type of concept here. So he orders that his cavalrymen ride out of his camp and at sunrise, after making a circuitous travel of the land around Hymera to make it look like they really did come from Salinas, to ride up to the camp of the Carthaginians at sunrise, let them be admitted or taken mission into the camp as allies, and then immediately gallop up to Hamilcar where he was preparing to make a sacrifice. We hear it was supposedly to Poseidon, obviously.

It was to a Carthaginian god, Baal, almost certainly. And then kill him and also set fire to his ships. Obviously, burning the ships makes sense, but I think there might be a bit of a Trojan metaphor here, Trojan war imagery carrying over, you know, burning of the ships and all that. But that is the stratagem that seems to have won the day for him that,

you know, his cavalry went in, killed the general. There's a pitch battle going on between the Carthaginians and Galon's army. It supposedly lasts all day even though, you know, Hamilcar is slain, we hear that it was a vicious battle. Herodotus

doesn't report this stratagem necessarily, but he does say that the battle lasted all day, if I remember correctly. Yes, so the Carthaginian version of the story, as Herodotus tells it, reported that it lasted from dawn until late evening, in which a massive slaughter ensued. But his version of Hamilcar's death is different.

It wasn't clever Syracusan cavalrymen who kill him. Hamilcar was preparing a sacrifice as the battle was going you know trying to get the god's favor to win the day for him and seeing that his cause was lost he threw himself onto the pyre thus sacrificing himself appeasing the gods or something so this risky stratagem if we believe the more well i'll say more likely series events but of course we never really know but if we believe that series events this clever stratagem by galon it works the carthaginians completely fall for it they the cavalry are welcomed into the camp and in this massacre that follows they kill hamilcar the general but as you

were saying at the same time, perhaps somewhere else, there is this land battle going on, raging between Gelon's infantry phalanx and the Carthaginian lines, which you say lasts the whole day. And in the end, what does happen? As you say, the Carthaginian line, it falls apart. Yeah, the Carthaginians supposedly suffer a significant defeat. Again, Titoris is not all that clear here. At one point he says that all of the barbarians were killed in the battle, but later on it's clear that there were survivors. Almost certainly the army broke, as in most ancient battles, began to flee, and then Galon's cavalry and infantry probably chased them down and slaughtered quite

a few of them. Some of the Carthaginian army were said to have taken refuge on a hill, but because it had no water, they had to eventually surrender for thirst, which is also something that we see crop up in other places in ancient history. So it's possible that this did happen. All of the survivors were enslaved. Some were taken by the Syracusans, but many were divided up between all of the allies present, supposedly inequitable figures based on how many soldiers they had contributed to the battle. And while Diodorus likes to make it seem like the entire army was killed and all of this, While Diodorus likes to make it seem like the entire army was killed and all of this, news does make it back to Carthage, and there were survivors.

Not all of the ships were burned, supposedly. There were some offshore that Hamilcar had been using for routine operations, whatever that means, probably communications. And they had picked up survivors who had made it back either to the naval camp or simply to the beaches. But again, most of this fleet was destroyed on its way back to Carthage in a storm. So supposedly only one ship made it back. But the city goes into mourning after this. And if we can believe that aspect of Diodorus' story, he paints it to be a very significant mourning. story, he paints it to be a very significant mourning.

A modern equivalent would be flying flags at half-staff, putting out black banners and all of that. Just extreme mourning as if the evacuation at Dunkirk had gone the wrong way type of moment, which to me signals both the heavy involvement of Carthaginian citizen soldiers in the battle, more so than anything. But we also hear that they were afraid that Gelon was going to sail across

the sea that separates Sicily and Libya and invade Carthage itself. Whether or not we should believe that this was a genuine fear, I don't know. I mean, supposedly Dionysius I in the 4th century had planned on doing this. Agathocles later on actually did sail across, but I don't necessarily think we should see a whole lot of truth to the fear of Gellon sailing across the sea. Well, regardless, it sounds like it leaves a significant effect on Carthage and the Carthaginian psyche. It did, and if we can believe Herodotus, it leaves a significant effect on Carthage and the Carthaginian psyche. It did. And if we can believe Herodotus, it actually had an effect throughout the Western Phoenician world. According to him, the Carthaginians and Phoenicians set up monuments to Hamilcar and offered him sacrifice sometime in the wake of this battle, obviously post-480.

So it may have had genuine effects on the Western Phoenician psyche, even beyond Carthage. Ah, very interesting. And going back to the battle itself, of course it seems to have this long-lasting effect for the Carthaginians. I'd like to go on to the long-lasting effect for the Syracusans and the rest of the Greeks in Sicily in a second. But we've been talking quite a lot of the literature that talks about this battle, those literary sources that mention the Battle of Hymera.

Do we have any archaeological evidence that can tell us more about the battle? I'm not necessarily sure I'd say that it tells us more. It tells us something else. It's evidence of the battle itself. Recently, I say recently, I think it's been over the past decade or so, mass graves have been excavated at Heimerim that have been attributed to the battle itself because the skeletons show signs of conflict. If I remember right, one of them even had either a sword or a spear tip still stuck in the ribcage when it was buried. So we do have archaeological evidence for the battle in the form of mass graves, almost certainly of Himerian soldiers or allied soldiers who fell at the battle.

But how much this really changes our view of the battle, I would say almost none at all, aside from, you know, perhaps confirming that the battle did happen, or giving more weight to the idea that the battle did happen and is a historical event, because one or two people have questioned whether or not Chimera actually happened. It's not a strand of scholarship that I put stock in, but that is kind of the best archaeological evidence we have for this. But we don't necessarily need to look to archaeology to confirm literature, and we really shouldn't do that. That's kind of a methodological gray area in looking at archaeology to either confirm or contradict what we find in literary evidence. I think it's better to see archaeology as something that can help us understand certain events from a different

perspective. And lastly, to wrap it all up, how significant is the Bastille of Haimera, not just for Gelon and his allies, but for Sicilian history in general in antiquity? The Sicilians frame it as being essentially their Salamis moment. So in the Sicilian versions of events, it occurred on the same day as the Battle of Salamis, which obviously you're celebrating as well for its 2499th or 2500th anniversary this year. It was a turning point in the war against the Persians in the East, and so the Sicilian Greeks framed the Battle of Heimera in the same way, saying that it took place on the same day, even though that was challenged in antiquity. Aristotle at one point uses it as an illustration of why history is not necessarily a great form of literature or a great genre,

because these things happened, but they weren't dependent upon each other necessarily. They just happened to happen in the same period. But it's used as a way to legitimize the power of Sicilian Greeks, I think, because the Persian Wars held a special place for the Aegean Greeks in the coming decades. When we get to the period of the Peloponnesian War and we hear you know complaints between different greek powers especially at platia you know the platians are complaining to the besiegers oh don't you remember our great fight here alongside you against the persians earlier in the century and all of this and the sicilians really do use hymera in the same way it's also equated to the Battle of Thermopylae at one point, but Salamis is generally the one that it's equated to. But we also have in Diodorus

a very telling way of how the Sicilian Greeks saw this. He writes, because of this achievement at Hymera, many historians compare this battle with one which the Greeks fought at Plataea and the stratagem of Gelon with the ingenious schemes of Themistocles in the east and, you know, the significance of driving Xerxes back. But, of course, he goes on to say that it was actually a greater victory in the west. Gelon's victory was much better because, unlike Themistocles, Gelon was loved by his people. He received greater approbation every year at the hands of the Syracusans, grew old in the kingship, and died in the esteem of his people. Compared to Themistocles, who obviously had to flee to the court of Xerxes for protection because he was driven out of Athens, or Pausanias, who was executed by the Athenians. or Pausanias, who was executed by the Athenians. It's great comparisons because, I mean, there's obviously some truth to it that Gelon profited much better than Themistocles did off of his victory, but it's all just a bit of pan-Hellenic posturing

and trying to negotiate the Syracusans and the Siciliate Greeks' place in wider Greek history and culture. Especially by, you know, by the point that Diodorus is writing this, there were a few centuries in between where all of these events had been interpreted, reinterpreted, and sold in different ways to different groups of people throughout the Mediterranean. And I think that this is really the Battle of Himera's place in history as part of this massive pan-Hellenic and eventually, with the coming of other peoples, pan-Mediterranean political game that everyone had to play. You couldn't sit on the sidelines. Even small city-states, small palaces, in the wake of the Persian Wars, were dedicating massive trophies and statues at Delphi to show their role in the war.

And you have, I think it's Philip I of Macedon, who was kind of a quasi-Persian supporter, sitting on the sidelines, not necessarily helping out the Greeks. He sets up this massive statue saying, look, I'm here. I'm at Delphi now because I participated. I helped in the fight against the Persians. And the Western Greeks are doing this with dedications in these pan-Hellenic sanctuaries

that help drive this new narrative of the Battle of Himera. Because as we talked about before, you know, the real root of this is in western greek political networking it's a battle between a couple of greek tyrants who have a carthaginian friend and some greek tyrants who ostensibly are friends of democracy at chimera it's not this grand ideological battle between eastern despotism and hellenic freedom and liberty i mean it certainly goes back to that harkens back to that greek versus barbarian idea which of course we have already

dismissed through the fighting of greeks on the other side hamera really is an interesting piece of a much larger puzzle in the western greek world because it's difficult to talk about it without also talking about the Battle of Kumai, won by Galon's brother, Huron, a few years later in the 470s, that is celebrated in much the same way and may have been the impetus for a lot of the dedications in the Aegean. But that's a good topic for another podcast, I think. Absolutely. I mean, it sounds like from what you were saying there that Hymera is the great celebrated land victory but Kumai is the great celebrated naval victory. Indeed it is and in some ways you can maybe look at them as kind of a chronologically

reversed Plataea and Salamis as I think the Sicilian Greeks would love to know that we do or did because obviously that was their objective in a lot of their propaganda. Absolutely. Joshua, that was a brilliant chat. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks again.