All this prodigious outfit, under the superintendence of Thearides,
brother of Dionysius, was exhibited with dazzling effect before
the Olympic crowd. No name stood so prominently and ostentatiously
before them as that of the despot of Syracuse. Every man, even from
the most distant regions of Greece, was stimulated to inquire into
his past exploits and character. There were probably many persons
present, peculiarly forward in answering such inquiries—the numerous
sufferers, from Italian and Sicilian Greece, whom his conquests had
thrown into exile; and their answers would be of a nature to raise
the strongest antipathy against Dionysius. Besides the numerous
depopulations and mutations of inhabitants which he had occasioned
in Sicily, we have already seen that he had, within the last three
years, extinguished three free Grecian communities—Rhegium, Kaulonia,
Hipponium; transporting all the inhabitants of the two latter to
Syracuse. In the case of Kaulonia, an accidental circumstance
occurred to impress its recent extinction vividly upon the
spectators. The runner who gained the great prize in the stadium, in
384 B. C., was Dikon, a native of Kaulonia. He was a man preëminently
swift of foot, celebrated as having gained previous victories in
the stadium, and always proclaimed (pursuant to custom) along with
the title of his native city—“Dikon the Kauloniate.” To hear this
well-known runner now proclaimed as “Dikon the Syracusan,”[57] gave
painful publicity to the fact, that the free community of Kaulonia no
longer existed,—and to the absorptions of Grecian freedom effected by
Dionysius.
[57] Diodor. xv. 14. Παρὰ δ᾽ Ἠλείοις Ὀλυμπιὰς ἤχθη ἐννενηκοστὴ
ἐννάτη (B. C. 384), καθ᾽ ἣν ἐνίκα στάδιον Δίκων Συρακούσιος.
Pausanias, vi. 3, 5. Δίκων δὲ ὁ Καλλιμβρότου πέντε μὲν Πυθοῖ
δρόμου νίκας, τρεῖς δὲ ἀνείλετο Ἰσθμίων, τέσσαρας δὲ ἐν Νεμέᾳ,
καὶ Ὀλυμπιακὰς μίαν μὲν ἐν παισὶ, δύο δὲ ἄλλας ἀνδρῶν· καὶ οἱ καὶ
ἀνδριάντες ἴσοι ταῖς νίκαις εἰσὶν ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ· παιδὶ μὲν δὴ ὄντι
αὐτῷ ~Καυλωνιάτῃ, καθάπερ γε καὶ ἦν, ὑπῆρξεν ἀναγορευθῆναι~· τὸ
δὲ ἀπὸ τούτου ~Συρακούσιον αὑτὸν ἀνηγόρευσεν ἐπὶ χρήμασι~.
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