Such are the painful gaps in Grecian history as it is transmitted to us, that we hear scarcely anything about Dionysius for thirteen years after the peace of 383-382 B. C. It seems that the Carthaginians (in 379 B. C.) sent an armament to the southern portion of Italy for the purpose of reëstablishing the town of Hipponium and its inhabitants.[87] But their attention appears to have been withdrawn from this enterprise by the recurrence of previous misfortunes—fearful pestilence, and revolt of their Libyan dependencies, which seriously threatened the safety of their city. Again, Dionysius also, during one of these years, undertook some operations, of which a faint echo reaches us, in this same Italian peninsula (now Calabria Ultra). He projected a line of wall across the narrowest portion or isthmus of the peninsula, from the Gulf of Skylletium to that of Hipponium, so as to separate the territory of Lokri from the northern portion of Italy, and secure it completely to his own control. Professedly the wall was destined to repel the incursions of the Lucanians; but in reality (we are told) Dionysius wished to cut off the connection between Lokri and the other Greeks in the Tarentine Gulf. These latter are said to have interposed from without, and prevented the execution of the scheme; but its natural difficulties would be in themselves no small impediment, nor are we sure that the wall was even begun.[88] [87] Diodor. xv. 24. [88] Strabo, vi. p. 261; Pliny, H. N. iii. 10. The latter calls the isthmus twenty miles broad, and says that Dionysius wished (intercisam) to cut it through: Strabo says that he proposed to wall it across (διατειχίζειν), which is more probable.