Dion was about seven miles from the gates when these last cries of distress reached him. Immediately hurrying forward his soldiers, whose ardor was not inferior to his own, at a running pace, he reached speedily the gates called Hexapyla, in the northern wall of Epipolæ. When once within these gates, he halted in an interior area called the Hekatompedon.[233] His light-armed were sent forward at once to arrest the destroying enemy, while he kept back the hoplites until he could form them into separate columns under proper captains, along with the citizens who crowded round him with demonstrations of great reverence. He distributed them so as to enter the interior portion of Syracuse, and attack the troops of Nypsius, on several points at once.[234] Being now within the exterior fortification formed by the wall of Epipolæ, there lay before him the tripartite interior city—Tycha, Neapolis, Achradina. Each of these parts had its separate fortification; between Tycha and Neapolis lay an unfortified space, but each of them joined on to Achradina, the western wall of which formed their eastern wall. It is probable that these interior fortifications had been partially neglected since the construction of the outer walls along Epipolæ, which comprised them all within, and formed the principal defence against a foreign enemy. Moreover the troops of Nypsius, having been masters of the three towns, and roving as destroyers around them, for several hours, had doubtless broken down the gates and in other ways weakened the defences. The scene was frightful, and the ways everywhere impeded by flame and smoke, by falling houses and fragments, and by the numbers who lay massacred around. It was amidst such horrors that Dion and his soldiers found themselves—while penetrating in different divisions at once into Neapolis, Tycha, and Achradina. [233] Diodor. xvi. 20. διανύσας ὀξέως τὴν εἰς Συρακούσσας ὁδὸν, ἧκε πρὸς τὰ Ἑξάπυλα, etc. Plutarch, Dion, c. 45. εἰσέβαλε διὰ τῶν πυλῶν εἰς τὴν Ἑκατόμπεδον λεγομένην, etc. [234] Plutarch, Dion, c. 45. ὀρθίους λόχους ποιῶν καὶ διαιρῶν τὰς ἡγεμονίας, ὅπως πολλαχόθεν ἅμα προσφέροιτο φοβερώτερον.