Serra di Falco (Antichità di Sicilia, vol. iv. p. 107) thinks that Dionysius constructed only the northern wall up the cliff of Epipolæ, not the southern. This latter (in his opinion) was not constructed until the time of Hiero II. I dissent from him on this point. The passage here referred to in Diodorus affords to my mind sufficient evidence that the elder Dionysius constructed both the southern wall of Epipolæ and the fortification of Neapolis. The same conclusion moreover appears to result from what we read of the proceedings of Dion and Timoleon afterwards. Besides these extensive fortifications, Dionysius also enlarged the docks and arsenals so as to provide accommodation for two hundred men of war. He constructed spacious gymnasia on the banks of the river Anapus, without the city walls; and he further decorated the city with various new temples in honor of different gods.[80] [80] Diodor. xv. 13. Such costly novelties added grandeur as well as security to Syracuse, and conferred imposing celebrity on the despot himself. They were dictated by the same aspirations as had prompted his ostentatious legation to Olympia in 384 B. C.; a legation of which the result had been so untoward and intolerable to his feelings. They were intended to console, and doubtless did in part console, the Syracusan people for the loss of their freedom. And they were further designed to serve as fuller preparations for the war against Carthage, which he was now bent upon renewing. He was obliged to look about for a pretext, since the Carthaginians had given him no just cause. But this, though an aggression, was a Pan-hellenic aggression,[81] calculated to win for him the sympathies of all Greeks, philosophers as well as the multitude. And as the war was begun in the year immediately succeeding the insult cast upon him at Olympia, we may ascribe it in part to a wish to perform exploits such as might rescue his name from the like opprobrium in future. [81] See Plato, Epist. vii. p. 333, 336—also some striking lines, addressed by the poet Theokritus to Hiero II. despot at Syracuse in the succeeding century: Theokrit. xvi. 75-85. Dionysius—ἐζήτει λαβεῖν πρόφασιν εὔλογον τοῦ πολέμου, etc.