Hiero I of Syracuse

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Hiero I was the brother of Gelo and tyrant of Syracuse from 478 to 467 BC.

During his reign he greatly increased the power of Syracuse. He removed the inhabitants of Naxos and Catana to Leontini, peopled Catana (which he renamed Aetna) with Dorians, concluded an alliance with Acragas (Agrigentum) and espoused the cause of the Locrians against Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium.

His most important achievement was the defeat of the Etruscans at the Battle of Cumae (474 BC), by which he saved the Greeks of Campania from Etruscan domination. A bronze helmet (now in the British Museum), with an inscription commemorating the event, was dedicated at Olympia. Though despotic in his rule Hiero was a liberal patron of literature and culture, and is known from the works of Pindar to have won a chariot race at the Theban Iolaia, and he was also praised (along with his horse, Pherenicos) by Bacchylides in that poet's 5th ode. He was enthusiastically pederastic, and sought the companionship of other pederastic intellectuals which he invited to his court.^[1] One of his eromenoi was named Daelochus. He died at Catana in 467

In The Prince (IV), Machiavelli cites Hiero as an exceptionally virtuous man and a rare example of someone who rose to princehood from private station.

See Diod. Sic. xi. 38-67; Xenophon, Hiero, 6. 2; E. Lübbert, Syrakus zur Zeit des Gelon und Hieron (1875);

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.