"The Romans knew not, and could not know, how deeply the greatness of their own posterity, and the fate of the whole Western world, were involved in the destruction of the fleet of Athens in the harbour of Syracuse. Had that great expedition proved victorious, the energies of Greece during the next eventful century would have found their field in the West no less than in the East; Greece, and not Rome, might have conquered Carthage; Greek instead of Latin might have been at this day the principal element of the language of Spain, of France, and of Italy; and the laws of Athens, rather than of Rome, might be the foundation of the law of the civilized world."--Arnold. "The great expedition to Sicily, one of the most decisive events in the history of the world."--Niebuhr.
Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient
and mediaeval times, than has the city of Syracuse. Athenian, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Saracen, and Norman, have in turns beleaguered her walls; and the resistance which she successfully opposed to some of her early assailants was of the deepest importance, not only to the fortunes of the generations then in being, but to all the subsequent current of human events. To adopt the eloquent expressions of Arnold respecting the check which she gave to the Carthaginian arms, "Syracuse was a breakwater, which God's providence raised up to protect the yet immature strength of Rome." And her triumphant repulse of the great Athenian expedition against her was of even more wide- spread and enduring importance. It forms a decisive epoch in the strife for universal empire, in which all the great states of antiquity successively engaged and failed.
The present city of Syracuse is a place of little or no military
strength, as the fire of artillery from the neighbouring heights
would almost completely command it. But in ancient warfare its
position, and the care bestowed on its walls, rendered it
formidably strong against the means of offence which then were
employed by besieging armies.
The ancient city, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was
chiefly built on the knob of land which projects into the sea on
the eastern coast of Sicily, between two bays; one of which, to
the north, was called the bay of Thapsus, while the southern one
formed the great harbour of the city of Syracuse itself. A small
island, or peninsula (for such it soon was rendered), lies at the
south-eastern extremity of this knob of land, stretching almost
entirely across the mouth of the great harbour, and rendering it
nearly land-locked. This island comprised the original
settlement of the first Greek colonists from Corinth, who founded
Syracuse two thousand five hundred years ago; and the modern city
has shrunk again into these primary limits. But, in the fifth
century before our era, the growing wealth and population of the
Syracusans had led them to occupy and include within their city
walls portion after portion of the mainland lying next to the
little isle; so that at the time of the Athenian expedition the
seaward part of the land between the two bays already spoken of
was built over, and fortified from bay to bay; constituting the
larger part of Syracuse.
The landward wall, therefore, of the city traversed this knob of
land, which continues to slope upwards from the sea, and which to
the west of the old fortifications (that is, towards the interior
of Sicily) rises rapidly for a mile or two, but diminishes in
width, and finally terminates in a long narrow ridge, between
which and Mount Hybla a succession of chasms and uneven low
ground extend. On each flank of this ridge the descent is steep
and precipitous from its summits to the strips of level land that
lie immediately below it, both to the south-west and north-west.