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While these events were taking place, in Sicily Dionysius, the tyrant of the Syracusans, resolved to plant cities on the Adriatic Sea. His idea in doing this was to get control of the Ionian Sea,1 in order that he might make the route to Epeirus safe and have there his own cities which could give haven to ships. For it was his intent to descend unexpectedly with great armaments upon the regions about Epeirus and to sack the temple at Delphi, which was filled with great wealth. [2] Consequently he made an alliance with the Illyrians with the help of Alcetas the Molossian, who was at the time an exile and spending his days in Syracuse. Since the Illyrians were at war, he dispatched to them an allied force of two thousand soldiers and five hundred suits of Greek armour. The Illyrians distributed the suits of armour among their choicest warriors and incorporated the soldiers among their own troops. [3] Now that they had gathered a large army, they invaded Epeirus and would have restored Alcetas to the kingship over the Molossians. But when no one paid any attention to them, they first ravaged the country, and after that, when the Molossians drew up against them, there followed a sharp battle in which the Illyrians were victorious and slew more than fifteen thousand Molossians. After such a disaster befell the inhabitants of Epeirus, the Lacedaemonians, as soon as they had learned the facts, sent a force to give aid to the Molossians, by means of which they curbed the barbarians' great audacity. [4]

While these events were taking place, the Parians, in accordance with an oracle, sent out a colony to the Adriatic, founding it on the island of Pharos, as it is called, with the co-operation of the tyrant Dionysius. He had already dispatched a colony to the Adriatic not many years previously and had founded the city known as Lissus. [5] From this as his base Dionysius . . .2 Since he had the leisure, he built dockyards with a capacity for two hundred triremes and threw about the city a wall of such size that its circuit was the greatest possessed by any Greek city. He also constructed large gymnasia along the Anapus River,3 and likewise temples of the gods and whatever else would contribute to the growth and renown of the city.

1 The Greek reads "the Ionian passage-way, as it is called," since, being the lower part of the Adriatic Sea, it was the direct route between Greece and Italy.

2 There is a lacuna here that must be of some length, since the following statements apply, not to Lissus, but to Syracuse.

3 This flowed into the Great Harbour of Syracuse.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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