Dioclès (Syracuse)

The speaker

The historian Diodore of Sicily presents it like a speaker enjoying already a great credibility, when he proposes at the following day victory over the Athenians, in -411, a punishment of greatest severity against overcome: execution of the Athenian generals, judgment with the careers of the Athenian combatants, and put on sale like slaves of the allied combatants of Athens. Reinforced by the intervention of the Spartan Gylippe, which does not fail to recall that such a cruel fate was intended for Syracusains in the event of Athenian victory, the proposal is adopted against the opinion of the partisans of leniency carried out by the strategist Hermocrate.

The democratic legislator

After the victory of 411, the people syracusain which took an active part in the defense of the east city able to require democratic reforms, following the example favor whose the democracy in Athens with the Bataille could enjoy consecutively Salamine that gained a mainly made up Athenian navy common peoples.

Dioclès first of all makes accept two measurements:

; Drawing lot magistrates: This mode of nomination, already practiced in Athens, is for Aristote a characteristic of the democracies.

; The nomination of an group of expert charged to write laws

Then, having been named in this group of expert, Dioclès takes a paramount role there, so that the laws which are written there bear its name. The accuracy of its system of sorrows and rewards is worth admiration of its fellow-citizens to him, and beyond near many Greek cities of Sicily which adopt and preserve its laws until the Roman domination.

The strategist in failure

In -409, Dioclès is named with the head of an army of 4000 men charged to go to the help of Himère besieged by the Carthaginian Hannibal de Giscon which had unloaded in Sicily with Spanish troops and had gained a first victory with Sélinonte. But it is a failure: after the first engagements it must turn back of fear of a Carthaginian attack against Syracuse. Himère falls then is shaven by Hannibal, leaving to the Greeks the only consolation have made a success of the evacuation towards Messine of the women and the children.

The exile

Hermocrate had been banished of Syracuse in -411, after the victory over Athens, while it ordered a fleet syracusaine energy to carry help to Sparte. In -409, of return in Sicily, it had raised the walls of Sélinonte shaven by the Carthaginian and had carried out victorious counter-offensives against the Carthaginians. Extremely of these successes it is able to ask in -408 its back in favor, using as currency of negotiation the bones of the syracusains which it collected in the ruins of Himère. It is in this context that Dioclès, savagely opposed to the return of Hermocrate itself is banished for impiété because being opposed to the burial due to deaths. Nevertheless Hermocrate will not be réadmis in Syracuse.

One is unaware of the real duration of his banishment and the circumstances of his later return to Syracuse. One is unaware of which was the procedure used, in particular if the Pétalisme a time in force in Syracuse and at the origin of one five years duration banishments were already repealed.

Account and date of its death

The account of died of Dioclès transmitted by Diodore puts in scene the image of rigor which the legislator in the collective memory left:

One of its laws, for example, carried that it was necessary to punish of dead that which would come in the public assembly with a sword, or another weapon, nevertheless it would plead the ignorance of the law or some other pretext that it could be. However, one day it rose a noise which the enemies appeared near the city: it left at once its house with its sword. But same noise having excited tumult in the great place; it entered there while passing and without thinking of its sword. A private individual who realized says him that it destroyed his own law. On the contrary, he answered, I claims to strengthen it more. And at once, it plunged itself its sword in the heart . .

In addition to its incredible character, this account is weakened by the fact that Diodore allots it to dead Charondas mentioning whereas “some historians” make an identical account of that of Dioclès.

One must go back his death before the end from the reign to Denys Old the (-367), since Diodore reports to us that Denys made destroy the temple built in its honor after its death to re-use the stones in the construction of a Forteresse.

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