(M675) Dionysius departed from Syracuse, B.C. 389, with a powerful force, to subdue the Italiot Greeks, and laid siege to Caulonia. He defeated their army, and slew their general. The victor treated the defeated Greeks with lenity, and then laid siege to Rhegium, to which he granted peace on severe terms. Caulonia and Hipponeum, two cities whose territory occupied the breadth of the Calabrian peninsula, fell into his hands. Rhegium surrendered after a desperate defense, and Phyton, who commanded the town, was treated with brutal inhumanity. The town was dismantled, and all the territory of Southern Calabria was united to Locri. It was at this time that the peace of Antalcidas took place, which put an end to the Spartan wars in Asia Minor. The ascendant powers of Greece were now Sparta and Syracuse, each fortified by alliance with the other. (M676) Croton, the largest city in Magna Grecia, was now conquered by Dionysius, who plundered the temple of Ilere, near Cape Lacinium, and among its treasure was a splendid robe, decorated in the most costly manner, which the conqueror sold to the Carthaginians, which long remained one of the ornaments of their city. The value and beauty of the robe may be estimated at the price paid for it—one hundred and twenty talents, more than one hundred thousand dollars. (M677) He now undertook a maritime expedition along the coast of Latium and Etruria, and pillaged the rich temple at Agylla, stripping it of gold and ornaments to the value of one thousand talents. So great was the celebrity he acquired, that the Gauls of Northern Italy, who had recently sacked Rome, proffered their alliance and aid. Master of Sicily and Southern Italy, he inspired, by his unscrupulous plundering of temples, the greatest terror and dislike throughout Central Greece. He then entered as competitor at the festivals of Greece for the prize of tragic poetry. But so contemptible were his poems, they were disgracefully hissed and ridiculed. Especially those poems which were recited at Olympeia—where he sent legations decked in the richest garments, furnished with gold and silver, and provided with splendid tents—were received with a storm of hisses, which plunged him in an agony of shame and grief, and drove him nearly mad, and made him conscious of the deep hatred which everywhere existed toward him. All his rich displays, which surpassed every thing that had ever before been seen in that holy plain, were worse than a failure—because they came from him. Not all his grandeur in Syracuse could save him from the disgrace and insults which he had received in Olympeia.