Syracuse
City in ItalyWikipedia
290
MENTIONS
97
EPISODES
76
PODCASTS
Search complete. 290 mentions across 97 episodes found for "Syracuse".
Nov 4, 2026
Keith SalasNARRATOR
In the course of a century or two several of them appear to have rivalled, and even to have surpassed, their mother cities.
Keith SalasNARRATOR
Syracuse and Agrigentum in Sicily, Tarentum and Locri in Italy, Ephesus and Miletus in Lesser Asia, appear by all accounts to have been at least equal to any of the cities of ancient Greece.
Keith SalasNARRATOR
Though posterior in their establishment, yet all the arts of refinement, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence seem to have been cultivated as early, and to have been improved as highly in them as in any part of the mother country.
Keith SalasNARRATOR
The schools of the two oldest Greek philosophers, those of Thales and Pythagoras, were established, it is remarkable, not in ancient Greece, but the one in an Asiatic, the other in an Italian colony.
Betsy BushNARRATOR
Columcille, rising in the assembly, declared the Albanians forever free from the yoke, and this, adds an old historian, turned out to be the fact.
Betsy BushNARRATOR
From the whole controversy we may conclude that Scotland never paid political tribute to Ireland, that their relation was that rather of allies than of sovereign and vassal, that it resembled more the homage Carthage paid to Tyre and Syracuse to Corinth than any modern form of colonial dependence, that a federal connection existed by which, in time of war, the Scots of Argyll and those of Hibernia were mutually bound to aid, assist, and defend each other.
Betsy BushNARRATOR
And this natural and only connection, founded in the blood of both nations, sanctioned by their early saints, confirmed by frequent intermarriage, by a common language and literature, and by hostility to common enemies, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, grew into a political bond of unusual strength, and was cherished with affection by both nations, long after the magnates assembled at Drumketh had disappeared in the tombs of their fathers.
Betsy BushNARRATOR
The only unsettled question which remained after the assembly at Drumketh related to the prince of Ossory.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The island contained many important cities, most of which were of Greek origin.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Among these were Syracuse, Arigentum, Messana, Catana, Camarina, Gela, Selinus, Egesta or Segesta, Panormus, Leontini, and Ina.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
There are many mountains, the chief of which is Etna.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Sardinia is nearly as large as Sicily.
1 HR 19 MINS LATER
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Many Italian nations now joined Pyrrhus, and hostilities were renewed.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The armies again met in 279 on the plain of Asculum in Apulia, but though the Romans were defeated, it was only another of those Pyrrhic victories which were almost as disastrous as defeat.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The same year Pyrrhus retired to Sicily to defend Syracuse against the Carthaginians, who were allied to the Romans.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
He remained on the island three years.
John BatchelorHOST
But they did practice democracy.
John BatchelorHOST
The only other Greek city that came close was Syracuse, sometimes called Syracuse, over in Sicily.
John BatchelorHOST
However, they also practiced exiling people, which was their form of voting.
John BatchelorHOST
You got a piece of pottery and you wrote a name on it and you put all the pottery together.
John BatchelorHOST
That's democracy.
John BatchelorHOST
That's all there is.
John BatchelorHOST
That word over 2,500 years since it was a favorite of the Athenians and Syracuse hasn't changed.
John BatchelorHOST
But it's...
John BatchelorHOST
from the Greek colony of...
John BatchelorHOST
We say Syracuse.
John BatchelorHOST
They pronounced it differently.
John BatchelorHOST
I'm aware of that.
John BatchelorHOST
This is the same Syracuse that would bedevil Rome in the future.
John BatchelorHOST
Reading Toby's book, you're anticipating Rome, but it's not ready yet.
John BatchelorHOST
And we're going to make a moment here to talk about the wars of this time, because we've presented, the professor presents the Ptolemies as intellectual giants who oversaw a land of milk and honey.
Thomas HallidayGUEST
And because there's the amount of water that pours in through rivers and rain is less than just evaporates naturally, eventually that sea dried out into this kilometers deep basin.
Thomas HallidayGUEST
but you get an earthquake right at the end of the Miocene which allows the Atlantic to sluice back in with this enormous weir and that fills up the western half but Italy and Sicily and Malta is a high area of seabed in the Mediterranean today and was sort of a saddle of land across which this enormous waterfall cascaded and we have evidence of this just a off the coast of Syracuse in Sicily, of canyons at the bottom of the Mediterranean which were formed by the water that fell from this extraordinary height.
John BatchelorHOST
Yes, you've said it's a spectacular image.
John BatchelorHOST
I mean, it's otherworldly, which is, of course, the point of your storytelling.
John BatchelorHOST
In between is this island of Sicily.
John BatchelorHOST
And on Sicily was a Greek, a very successful Greek outpost, Syracuse, and other cities.
John BatchelorHOST
Now, Syracuse wanders in and out of Plato, but right now we're going to see Syracuse as a agreed-upon prize.
John BatchelorHOST
Professor, the breakdown between Rome and Carthage, it's mysterious because they started out with a working relationship.
John BatchelorHOST
Is that correct?
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And, of course, when you just look at a map, it's, as you say, absolutely... no question why that was going to happen.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
You have the Romans right at the very tip of the boot of Italy, and you have Carthage at the lippery, the Aeolian Islands, as we call them, just off the north coast of Sicily as well.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And these two powers really began to, are drawn into a fight because of some mercenary soldiers who were left over from an earlier battle with relating to the city of Syracuse.
John BatchelorHOST
How this came about, however, is critical to understand the next years of the battle between Carthage and Rome.
John BatchelorHOST
Carthaginians, having lost Sicily to the battlements of Rome and Syracuse combining their forces, moved quite correctly to new fields in the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal.
John BatchelorHOST
There's lots of riches there, and they're weak cities, and they roll up in front of the city and conquer it and make that part of the Carthaginian Empire.
John BatchelorHOST
Well, the Romans show up.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
But more people than you would believe from these cemeteries connected to the Carthaginians are actually from the Aegean, from the Greek Aegean DNA background.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
So what does that tell us? It tells us that we are not our genes and we know this is true, right? People from all different backgrounds could be Carthaginian or people from all different backgrounds could be from Syracuse in Sicily.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And it's about these ancient cities that were new colonial foundations.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
citizenship was often a choice.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
Now, this is all part of a poem called the Aeneid, but the version of Aeneas and Dido probably existed before Virgil wrote that poem, the best known version of it.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And it's really interesting because it's about the Western Mediterranean as a colonial foundation in some ways.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And I think we have to think about this story more universally that connects Carthage, but it connects Rome, it connects with Syracuse, it connects with other cities in the Western Mediterranean.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
where the facts around their origins and the epic stories that were told about the age from before the Trojan Wars, the Bronze Age, all these things get sort of woven together into myth and into historical legends and into foundation myths.
MacHOST
And then it's further, Socrates is putting words in the mouth of Diatima, who he says is his instructor, but is... clearly like more of a figure of either the Platonic or Socratic imagination.
MacHOST
And then the final thing there is that at the end of the dialogue, Alcibiades, the famous Athenian general who led the disastrous expedition to Syracuse and then betrayed the Athenians to fight for the Spartans and then betrayed the Spartans to fight for the Persians.
MacHOST
A much hated figure, especially by the time at which Plato was writing these dialogues.
MacHOST
has just he comes in drunk and given the dramatic dating possibly coming in from this thing called like the profanation or the mutilation of the Herms, which are these sacred statues to Hermes and Athens.
MacHOST
And it's this mutilation of them that's like blamed for the failure of the expedition to Syracuse.
MacHOST
And that is part of what makes Alcibiades like such an infamous figure.
MacHOST
So Alcibiades comes in and he starts talking about his love for Socrates.
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