Carthaginians sailed away. The city remained firm-perched. Timoleon
prospered, brought back liberty to Syracuse, ruled wisely and nobly, and
gave to Sicily those twenty years of peace which were the flower of her
Greek annals. Then, we must believe, rose the little temple on our
headland, the Greek theatre where the tongue of Athens lived, the
gymnasium where the youths grew fair and strong. Then Taormina struck
her coins: Apollo with the laurel, with the lyre, with the grape;
Dionysus with the ivy, and Zeus with the olive; for the gods and temples
of the Naxians had become ours, and were religiously cherished; and with
the rest was struck a coin with the Minotaur, our symbol. But of
Andromachus, the founder of the well-built and fairly adorned Greek city
that then rose, we hear no more--a hero, I think, one of the true breed
of the founders of states. But alas for liberty! A new tyrant,
Agathocles, was soon on the Syracusan throne, and he won this city by
friendly professions, only to empty it by treachery and murder; and he
drove into exile Timaeus, the son of Andromachus. Timaeus? He,
evidently, of my Casa Timeo. I know him now, the once famed historian
whom Cicero praises as the most erudite in history of all writers up to
his time, most copious in facts and various in comment, not unpolished
in style, eloquent, and distinguished by terse and charming expression.
Ninety years he lived in the Greek world, devoted himself to history,
and produced many works, now lost. The ancient writers read him, and
from their criticism it is clear that he was marked by a talent for
invective, was given to sharp censure, and loved the bitter part of
truth. He introduced precision and detail into his art, and is credited
with being the first to realize the importance of chronology and to seek
exactness in it. He never saw again his lovely birthplace, and I easily
forgive to the exile and the son of Andromachus the vigour with which he
depicted the crimes of Agathocles and others of the tyrants. In our
city, meanwhile, the Greek genius waning to its extinction, Tyndarion