Syracuse serves in the book as more than a geographical setting: it is a recurring political laboratory in which different routes to power and different methods of preserving it are set against one another. The city appears in the examples of Agathocles and Hiero, whose careers demonstrate that the acquisition of rule may depend on violence, merit, opportunity, or military organization, while the city’s wider history also illustrates the vulnerability of a state when its governing arrangements and armed forces are not firmly controlled by its ruler.

Political Setting and Comparative Use

Syracuse is introduced as a city whose government can be seized and defended amid external war. In the account of Agathocles, the city is both a civic community, represented by its people and senate, and a strategic base exposed to Carthaginian pressure. This combination allows the text to connect internal political change with the demands of war: a ruler who captures the state must also possess the means to defend it against foreign enemies.

The city is also used comparatively in the discussion of states acquired by conquerors. The example of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia establishes that the difficulty of retaining a dominion depends on the structure of the conquered state rather than simply on the conqueror’s personal merit. Syracuse, by contrast, appears through the careers of its own rulers, especially Agathocles and Hiero, as a place where military command and political sovereignty can be joined through deliberate action.

Agathocles and the Violent Seizure of Power

Agathocles rises from an exceptionally low social position. He is identified as the son of a potter who passes through the ranks of military service and becomes Praetor of Syracuse. His ascent is therefore not presented as a gift of fortune or inherited authority. He acquires the position through the regular stages of soldiering, at the cost of repeated hardships and dangers, and then uses the office entrusted to him as the platform for a planned seizure of power.

His coup is organized with calculated duplicity. While Hamilcar and the Carthaginian armies are waging war in Sicily, Agathocles informs Hamilcar of his design, assembles the people and senate of Syracuse under the pretext of discussing public business, and gives a prearranged signal to his soldiers. The soldiers kill all the senators and the wealthiest members of the commons. Once these potential opponents have been removed, Agathocles assumes the sovereignty and encounters no effective popular opposition.

The seizure does not end with the massacre. Agathocles is twice defeated by the Carthaginians and later faces a siege, yet he continues to defend Syracuse. He leaves part of his forces to protect the city and takes the remainder to Africa. This counteroffensive raises the siege in a short time, drives the Carthaginians into extreme difficulty, and compels them to make terms. They abandon Sicily to Agathocles and confine themselves to Africa, making Syracuse the secure base from which his power becomes externally effective.

The account sharply separates political effectiveness from moral merit. Agathocles displays exceptional vigor of mind and body, military constancy, and the ability to confront and overcome adverse fortune. Yet the slaughter of fellow citizens, betrayal of friends, and absence of honor, pity, and religion are expressly denied the status of virtues. Syracuse thus demonstrates that audacity and competence may produce power without producing glory.

Hiero and the Construction of Durable Rule

Hiero presents a markedly different path to sovereignty. He begins as a private citizen and is chosen by the Syracusans to be their Captain because the city is oppressed. His performance in that office earns him recognition as king. The emphasis falls on merit already visible before the crown: the judgment attributed to his biographer is that Hiero lacked nothing a king should possess except the kingdom itself.

His rule is secured through institutional and military reorganization. Hiero abolishes the old army and creates a new one, abandons existing alliances, and assumes new allies. By establishing forces and partnerships of his own, he gains the foundation on which he can build whatever political structure he chooses. The contrast with Agathocles is not simply ethical; it is also administrative. Hiero’s authority rests on the deliberate creation of independent instruments of rule rather than solely on the destruction of rivals.

The same principle appears when Hiero confronts Syracuse’s mercenary soldiers. He recognizes that the force supplied by commanders resembling the Italian condottieri is not useful to him. Because he will not retain the mercenaries and cannot simply disband them, he has them all put to death, after which he wages war with native soldiers alone and without outside assistance. The episode makes Syracuse the clearest example of the argument that a ruler’s reputation and security increase when everyone understands that he is master of his own forces.

Military Independence and Political Reputation

Syracuse is repeatedly linked to the distinction between foreign aid, mercenary troops, and forces directly controlled by the ruler. Cesare Borgia’s experience provides the parallel: he first enters Romagna with French auxiliaries, then employs the Orsini and Vitelli as mercenaries, and finally turns to troops of his own raising after discovering that both forms of external support are unreliable. His reputation rises as dependence on foreign commanders diminishes. Hiero’s earlier conduct at Syracuse supplies the corresponding historical precedent.

The comparison gives the city a precise political significance. Military independence is not treated merely as a battlefield convenience. It determines whether the ruler can act without being constrained by allied officers, hired troops, or forces whose loyalty belongs elsewhere. Syracuse therefore functions as evidence for a broader rule: a victory obtained through another power’s arms is insecure, whereas a force recruited and controlled by the state’s own ruler provides the basis for lasting authority.

The city’s example also clarifies why political organization matters after victory. A ruler may acquire power through opportunity or violence, but preservation requires foundations that remain available when fortune changes. Hiero’s native army and self-chosen alliances give him such foundations; Agathocles’s extraordinary military energy allows him to survive reversals and sieges, but his rise remains morally compromised by the means through which he eliminated Syracuse’s political leadership.

Narrative and Political Significance

Syracuse gathers together several of the book’s central contrasts: private station and kingship, popular appointment and violent usurpation, native forces and foreign assistance, acquisition and preservation, and military valor and moral legitimacy. The city is not presented through a continuous civic history. Instead, it reappears through sharply selected case studies, each placed where it can illuminate a general proposition about rule.

Its most important function is comparative. Hiero shows that opportunity can be converted into durable power through merit, reorganization, and control of native arms. Agathocles shows that a man may reach sovereignty through crime and nevertheless display extraordinary strategic ability. Together they prevent political success from being equated with virtue. Syracuse becomes the place where the book’s analysis is most severe: power can be won by massacre, defended by courage, and preserved only when the ruler creates institutions and forces that depend on him rather than on Fortune or foreign masters.