Dionysius caused the city of Rhegium to be destroyed[40] or dismantled. Probably he made over the lands to Lokri, like those of Kaulonia and Hipponium. The free Rhegine citizens had all been transported to Syracuse for sale; and those who were fortunate enough to save their liberty by providing the stipulated ransom, would not be allowed to come back to their native soil. If Dionysius was so zealous in enriching the Lokrians, as to transfer to them two other neighboring town-domains, against the inhabitants of which he had no peculiar hatred—much more would he be disposed to make the like transfer of the Rhegine territory, whereby he would gratify at once his antipathy to the one state and his partiality to the other. It is true that Rhegium did not permanently continue incorporated with Lokri; but neither did Kaulonia nor Hipponium. The maintenance of all the three transfers depended on the ascendency of Dionysius and his dynasty; but for the time immediately succeeding the capture of Rhegium, the Lokrians became masters of the Rhegine territory as well as of the two other townships, and thus possessed all the Calabrian peninsula south of the Gulf of Squillace. To the Italiot Greeks generally, these victories of Dionysius were fatally ruinous, because the political union formed among them, for the purpose of resisting the pressure of the Lucanians from the interior, was overthrown, leaving each city to its own weakness and isolation.[41] [40] Strabo, vi. p. 258 ἐπιφανῆ δ᾽ οὖν πόλιν οὖσαν ... κατασκάψαι Διονύσιον, etc. [41] Polybius, ii. 39, 67. The year 387, in which Rhegium surrendered, was also distinguished for two other memorable events; the general peace in Central Greece under the dictation of Persia and Sparta, commonly called the peace of Antalkidas; and the capture of Rome by the Gauls.[42] [42] Polybius, i. 6. The two great ascendant powers in the Grecian world were now, Sparta in Peloponnesus, and Dionysius in Sicily; each respectively fortified by alliance with the other. I have already in a former chapter[43] described the position of Sparta after the peace of Antalkidas; how greatly she gained by making herself the champion of that Persian rescript—and how she purchased, by surrendering the Asiatic Greeks to Artaxerxes, an empire on land equal to that which she had enjoyed before the defeat of Knidus, though without recovering the maritime empire fortified by that defeat. [43] Chap. LXXVI. Vol. X.