The Tyrants of Syracuse and the Wars with Carthage

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the fourth century drew to a close, Rome wasn't the only rising power in the central Mediterranean; Syracuse and Carthage were battling for dominance in Sicily and beyond, fighting devastating wars of ever-increasing scale that led directly to the eventual conflicts we know as the Punic Wars.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad-free right now.
0:04.6	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:13.7	The stone hit the oxhide covering the wood and bronze shield with a resounding thunk.
0:22.6	If it had hit his head, the soldier thought, it would have knocked him out cold despite his helmet.
0:27.6	If it had struck his unarmored skull, it would have cracked like an egg.
0:31.6	Dozens of rocks whistled through the air, thrown down from the fortified camp above with shocking force.
0:36.6	They were big things,
0:38.5	the size of a man's fist, not the little slingstones the soldier had seen many times during
0:43.0	his years, hefting a spear. These slingers were from some islands to the west, he'd heard,
0:48.0	and now they were here, trying to kill him in Sicily. The oddity of the situation struck him
0:53.4	for a moment. The soldier had originally come
0:56.1	from the city of Argos in Greece, but he'd left home when he was barely older than a boy for
1:00.3	the wars in the east. He'd seen King Alexander on his great black horseworts a few years before he
1:05.7	died, while he was stuck in some mud-brick Soogdian village whose name he couldn't pronounce.
1:11.2	Then there were the wars afterward.
1:13.0	Egypt, Cyrene, a long march west, and the tyrant of Syracuse.
1:18.0	The Argyve didn't care much who he fought for.
1:20.7	War was war, in his experience, whether the pay was coming from a Macedonian general,
1:24.5	a Persian satrap, or now the tyrant of Syracuse. As he was thinking
1:28.8	about it, he realized that he couldn't even remember the name of the man who had marched them
1:32.3	across Libya to Carthage a few years before. Oaf something? That sounded right, but it didn't matter.
1:39.9	Another stone slammed into his shield. The phalanx had stopped moving forward. Men were falling
	...

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