I told you that Xerxes for the safety of his fleet had made an alliance with Carthage before making his great attack on Greece. It was something more than a mere arrangement that his ships should not be meddled with as they went to and fro. It was an agreement for some more active help than this. Carthage was to attack the Greek colonial power in Sicily at the same time as Xerxes fell upon the mainland of Greece from the east. The two attacks were so well timed that it is said that the battle which decided the result of the Phœnician expedition against Sicily was fought on the very same day as the battle of Salamis which decided the fate of the Persian attack on Greece. And the result of the one battle was the same as that of the other. Gelo completely vanquished the Phœnicians; so completely that Sicily had rest from their troubling nearly {150} all through what remained of that century--that is to say, for ninety years or so. During that period the arts and civilisation made great advance in the cities of Sicily. Again, as before, it was really the jealousy and fighting of the Greek cities among themselves that brought them under fresh attack by what they called the barbarian power. Again the Carthaginians came upon them. They were disunited, fighting among themselves. The Athenian navy had come to Sicily to take its part in the fighting, as is told in the splendid history of Thucydides. It was fighting which all grew out of that Peloponnesian War which was fought between Athens, as the leading state in the main part of Greece, on the one side, and Sparta, as the great power of the Peloponnese, on the other. The Syracusans, of Sicily, were originally a Corinthian colony, from Corinth, on the Isthmus between the greater part of Greece and the Peloponnese. The Athenian navy came to Sicily in the year 415 B.C., and if it had made a vigorous attack on Syracuse at its first coming it is probable that the city would have fallen. The Athenian admiral, however, delayed; he allowed the Syracusans time to improve their defences, and he had to sit down to blockade the city both by land and sea. A small Spartan force came to the help of the besieged, they put all their own naval power into the struggle, and in the spring of 413 B.C. fought and defeated the Athenian fleet. They were just in time, for the very next day strong reinforcements arrived from Athens. With this new force the besiegers tried to recover their lost positions, but were defeated. The Syracusans then blocked the mouth of the harbour in which the Athenian ships lay, and after a final struggle both by land and {151} sea, the Athenians were hopelessly beaten; those who survived had a wretched fate as captives.