[26] See the description of this mountainous region between the Tarentine Gulf and the Tyrrhenian Sea, in an interesting work by a French General employed in Calabria in 1809—Calabria during a military residence of Three Years, Letters, 17, 18, 19 (translated and published by Effingham Wilson. London, 1832). [27] Diodor. xiv. 101. βουλόμενοι Λᾶον, πόλιν εὐδαίμονα, πολιορκῆσαι. This appears the true reading: it is an acute conjecture proposed by Niebuhr (Römisch. Geschicht. i. p. 96) in place of the words—βουλόμενοι λαὸν καὶ πόλιν εὐδαίμονα, πολιορκῆσαι. [28] Diodor. xiv. 102. This act of Hellenic sympathy restored three or four thousand citizens on ransom to Thurii, instead of leaving them to be massacred or sold by the barbarous Lucanians, and procured the warmest esteem for Leptines personally among the Thurians and other Italiot Greeks. But it incurred the strong displeasure of Dionysius, who now proclaimed openly his project of subjugating these Greeks, and was anxious to encourage the Lucanians as indispensable allies. Accordingly he dismissed Leptines, and named as admiral his other brother Thearides. He then proceeded to conduct a fresh expedition; no longer intended against Rhegium alone, but against all the Italiot Greeks. He departed from Syracuse with a powerful force—twenty thousand foot and three thousand horse, with which, he marched by land in five days to Messênê; his fleet under Thearides accompanying him—forty ships of war, and three hundred transports with provisions. Having first successfully surprised and captured near the Lipari isles a Rhegian squadron of ten ships, the crews of which he constituted prisoners at Messênê, he transported his army across the strait into Italy, and laid siege to Kaulonia—on the eastern coast of the peninsula, and conterminous with the northern border of his allies the Lokrians. He attacked this place vigorously, with the best siege machines which his arsenal furnished.