It does not appear that Timæus really called in question the historical reality of the bull of Phalaris, though he has been erroneously supposed to have done so. Timæus affirmed that the bull which was shown in his own time at Agrigentum was not the identical machine: which was correct, for it must have been _then_ at Carthage, from whence it was not restored to Agrigentum until after 146 B. C. See a note of Boeckh on the Scholia ad Pindar. Pyth. i, 185. It was about the period of the death of Phalaris that the Syracusans reconquered their revolted colony of Kamarina (in the southeast of the island between Syracuse and Gela), expelled or dispossessed the inhabitants, and resumed the territory.[418] With the exception of this accidental circumstance, we are without information about the Sicilian cities until a time rather before 500 B. C., just when the war between Kroton and Sybaris had extinguished the power of the latter, and when the despotism of the Peisistratids at Athens had been exchanged for the democratical constitution of Kleisthenês. The first forms of government among the Sicilian Greeks, as among the cities of Greece Proper in the early historical age, appear to have been all oligarchical: we do not know under what particular modifications, but probably all more or less resembling that of Syracuse, where the Gamori—or wealthy proprietors descended from the original colonizing chiefs—possessing large landed properties titled by a numerous Sikel serf population called Kyllyrii, formed the qualified citizens, out of whom, as well as by whom, magistrates and generals were chosen; while the Demos, or non-privileged freemen, comprised the small proprietary cultivators who maintained themselves, by manual labor and without slaves, from their own lands or gardens, together with the artisans and tradesmen. In the course of two or three generations, many individuals of the privileged class would have fallen into poverty and would find themselves more nearly on a par with the non-privileged; while such members of the latter as might rise to opulence were not for that reason admitted into the privileged body. Here were ample materials for discontent: ambitious leaders, often themselves members of the privileged body, put themselves at the head of the popular opposition, overthrew the oligarchy, and made themselves despots; democracy being at that time hardly known anywhere in Greece. The general fact of this change, preceded by occasional violent dissensions among the privileged class themselves,[419] is all that we are permitted to know, without those modifying circumstances by which it must have been accompanied in every separate city. Towards or near the year 500 B. C., we find Anaxilaus despot at Rhegium, Skythês at Zanklê, Têrillus at Himera, Peithagoras at Selinus, Kleander at Gela, and Panætius at Leontini.[420] It was about the year 509 B. C. that the Spartan