The two legions in Sicily, however, were considered to be insufficient for the gravity of the situation there, and another six specially strengthened legions were enrolled. In the spring both consuls set out for Sicily with their huge armies, and when they landed at Messana, they proclaimed favorable terms for any Sicilian city that would abandon Syracuse. At this all of the dependencies of Syracuse, all her friends and allies on the island, fell away.
In early summer the forty-thousand-strong Roman army arrived at Syracuse itself and laid siege to the city, ringing it about by land with a bank, ditch, and wall of earth and timber. Greek engineers from the subject cities of Tarentum and Croton constructed siege machineswheeled towers with ladders, grapples, and catapults mounted in them, and the thick-roofed, open-floored wheeled carts called tortoises, which protected massive battering rams. In the middle of the summer the besiegers tried to take Syracuse by storm.
They failed utterly. Over the previous summer, Hieron had been calling upon Syracusan allies for supplies- grain to feed the citizens during a siege, wood and iron and hair to shape weapons for her defenses- and Egypt and Rhodes, Corinth and Cyrene had responded. The new season had found the city more impregnable than ever. Extra ditches had been dug about the walls, inside the range of the defending catapults, so that the attackers had to wheel their cumbersome siege machines down steep slopes, then up, then down again, all the while suffering the bombardment of the Syracusan catapults. And that bombardment was of a strength such as the Romans' Italiot engineers had never imagined. Immense stones smashed the tortoises and toppled the siege towers. Men who tried to right them fell under a rain of bolts, and incendiaries smashed into the damaged machines and set them ablaze. The rams never got anywhere near the walls, but were crushed like beetles on the slopes of the Epipolae, and abandoned when the attackers fled. Hundreds of Romans injured or trapped in the wreck of the machines were taken prisoner by the Syracusans; hundreds more were killed.
Manius Valerius Maximus, the senior Roman consul, conferring with his colleague and his senior advisers after the assault, had one of the Syracusan catapult stones rolled into his tent for their consideration. It weighed over two hundred pounds. The Romans regarded it with horrified wonder.
"I'd heard," said the Tarentine chief engineer in awe, "that Archimedes of Syracuse, King Hieron's engineer, could build three-talenters. I thought the stories were exaggerating."
"It seems they fell short of the mark," said Valerius Maximus. "Like our own assault."
The Tarentine had no ideas for countering Syracusan artillery, and was, in fact, fearful that a man who could build three-talenters might have worse things in store for any siege engine that did succeed in getting close to the walls. The Romans considered the possibility of blockading the city and concluded that it was pointless even to try: they had no fleet apart from the few Italiot vessels and the transports which had brought them across the straits, while the Syracusans possessed eighty decked warships to defend their shipping. The number was certain: the Syracusans had proudly displayed the fleet to their Roman prisoners the summer before.
Even more worrying, from the Roman point of view, was the news that General Hanno, the Carthaginian commander in Sicily, had been recalled to Africa, tried by the Carthaginian Senate, and sentenced to death by crucifixion for his inaction. There were rumors that Carthage was now recruiting mercenaries and intended to press the war in earnest.
"We must have peace with Hieron of Syracuse," concluded Maximus. "Carthage is the main enemy, but we cannot fight the Carthaginians with Syracuse hostile at our backs. And it seems that we can't subdue Syracuse by force. Carthage has given Syracuse no support since the war began. Perhaps Hieron will be willing to abandon his alliance."
No one had any objection to this change of policy. The rumors of Syracusan atrocities no longer found wide acceptance: the Roman prisoners released the previous year had had nothing but praise for King Hieron.
The following morning, Maximus sent a herald to Syracuse to ask King Hieron for a parley. The king at once agreed, and Roman consul and Greek monarch met on the plain below the fort of the Euryalus. Maximus was surprised to find Hieron so pleasant and reasonable a man; Appius Claudius had led him to expect a cunning and belligerent monster.
The negotiations went on for three days. Once she had entered a struggle, Rome was not in the habit of accepting anything short of her enemy's total surrender, and however generous she might otherwise be to the defeated, she always required that her new "ally" supply troops to fight for Rome. This was precisely the condition Hieron rejected most emphatically. If Syracusans were to fight and die, they would do it on behalf of their own city, not for foreigners. Syracuse would remain sovereign and independent, or she would remain at war. She could not hope to win, but, on the other hand, the Romans couldn't hope to reduce her and couldn't afford to ignore her. Rome at last, reluctantly, yielded and concluded a treaty such as she had never made before.
Rome not only recognized the independence of Syracuse but also granted the city the right to govern eastern Sicily from Tauromenium, just south of Messana, as far as Helorus on the southern point of the island- in fact, to keep all the territory she had held before the war began, including all the cities which had recently yielded to Rome. All this land was guaranteed exempt from war- which included immunity from attacks by Rome's deplorable allies, the Mamertini. Syracuse, for her part, agreed to provide the Romans with supplies for a campaign against the Carthaginians in Sicily, and to pay a war indemnity of a hundred talents of silver, the payments to be spread over twenty-five years. The latest batch of Roman prisoners were returned without ransom.
The treaty was formally concluded with an exchange of oaths and sacrifices offered to the gods. And its conclusion was celebrated on both sides, with feasting and heartfelt relief. Rome could now concentrate on Carthage, and Syracuse had steered her way through the channel to peace.
When the Romans were dismantling their siege works in preparation for their return to Messana, two men of the second legion went to their tribune and asked permission to go into the city to pay a debt. Since one of them was a centurion of the legion and the other his second-in-command, permission was granted. So Quintus Fabius and Gaius Valerius walked slowly up the long road to the city they had left by night the year before.
It was an August morning, and around them the land baked in the summer sun. The open fields were loud with cicadas, the road white with dust. Fabius tapped his centurion's vine-stem stick unhappily against his thigh as he walked: he had not wanted to come, but Gaius needed an interpreter. He was obliged to Gaius, in an ill-defined, guilty sort of way. He had caused Gaius grief. Fabius' promotions had come rapidly over the past year, and he had taken advantage of them to haul Gaius up through the ranks after him, out of the same obscure sense of obligation.
They reached the Epipolae gate of the fort of the Euryalus, where the Syracusan guardsmen eyed them with suspicion. Fabius explained their errand in his clumsy Greek, and they were allowed to pass, though they were required to leave their arms at the gate. One of the guards escorted them into the city: the peace was still very new, and they were not trusted, least of all at the house to which they were bound.
They crossed the limestone scrubland of the plateau, passed the huts of the Tyche quarter, and descended from the heights into the marble grace of the New Town. They both glanced at the cliff which towered over the theater to their left, the edge of the plateau where the quarries were situated. But their escort led them through the New Town and into the citadel of the Ortygia.