Volume 5: The Hegemon of Southern Italy, Chapter 14: Kynogoratas Advice

“We’ll just wait and see.” Davos laughed easily, completely dismissing Lysias’ threat. “But I’ll warn you too—next time you come, the terms I offer won’t be as good as these. Also, I want to remind you: Croton’s enemies aren’t just us, the Daonians… Who knows what might happen if the war drags on?”

Lysias was visibly shaken by that.

...

By midday, the first supply train of pack animals arrived at the camp.

Davos breathed a sigh of relief. It also brought a letter from Kynogoratas, which mentioned: an envoy from Locri had reached Thurii and proposed to the Senate that “Locri and Daonia form an alliance against Croton.” The Senate had deferred a reply, citing the magistrate’s absence. The envoy, exhausted from the journey, had fallen ill with a high fever and was being treated in the hospital, unable to travel south to see Davos in the short term.

At the end of the letter, Kynogoratas offered his opinion: “Regardless of whether the Magistrate believes he can resolve Croton alone, please consider this: Locri’s city-state strength is second only to Croton’s, and it has strong support from Syracuse. If we destroy or severely weaken Croton, allowing Locri to swallow up Croton’s allies, that will only create a more powerful enemy for Daonia…”

Davos read it several times, then picked up another letter. This one was a secret missive from Aristelas, delivered through a special channel. It detailed certain events in Thurii over the past few days, naturally including the arrival of the Locrian envoy. It also mentioned happenings around Daonia: for instance, Tarentum’s magistrate Diomilas had captured Manduria with his army, then ordered Archytas to lead an attack on Brundisium, resulting in fierce ongoing battles with the Messapians; Potentia was gathering the surrounding tribes, seemingly preparing to march south against Grumentum…

The final piece of news drew Davos’s intense attention: Syracuse’s plenipotentiary general, Dionysius, had launched a campaign against Carthage with 80,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, and 400 warships… Adding in Daonia’s war with Croton, the start of this year saw the entire Greek world of the Western Mediterranean ablaze with conflict.

80,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, 400 warships?! Davos’s eyes widened as he carefully verified the numbers. Though he had known Syracuse was the premier Greek power in the Western Mediterranean, the sheer strength it now displayed still made his heart pound. After all, Syracuse sat on Sicily, but it was not far from Thurii—just two or three days by ship. And decades ago, when Hieron, brother of the tyrant Gelon who had created Syracuse’s golden age, succeeded as dictator, there had been precedents of interference in the internal affairs of other Magna Graecia city-states. Davos could not help but be on guard.

He picked up Kynogoratas’s letter again, reread it carefully, and then fell into deep thought…

After returning to Crimissa, Lysias naturally told Myron about his meeting with the Daonian magistrate Davos. Myron was furious that the Daonians dared to propose such harsh peace terms to Croton, and also felt deeply ashamed.

All morning, Myron observed the Daonian camp from the walls, pondering how to defeat the enemy. Whether on the south bank or the north, the Daonian soldiers continued building their camp, pushing their defensive lines forward, laying out ditches, abatis, traps… at intervals, as if they were the ones preparing to attack Crimissa, not the Crotonians.

Sometimes Myron marveled: how did the Daonian commander manage to make those fierce, opinionated citizen soldiers willingly keep doing such hard, dirty work? If these were Crotonian soldiers, they would have thrown down their tools and mutinied long ago.

By noon, the Croton fleet commander Ascamas arrived at the port of Crimissa. Myron finally grew excited, because Ascamas, one of Croton’s ten generals, was also Myron’s friend and a representative of the radical faction. Myron believed he would agree to his plan and lend a hand.

After seeing Ascamas off and receiving his affirmative reply, Myron could finally relax.

He had just lain down to rest when a guard reported: unusual activity from the enemy outside the north gate.

Earlier, the Daonian soldiers had been working several hundred meters from the north gate. Now they suddenly advanced to within a hundred meters, just outside the range of the Crotonian light infantry on the walls. There they leveled the ground, tamped it solid, and cleared a large, flat area. To either side, fully armed heavy and light infantry stood guard to prevent a sally from the garrison.

In this era, stone-throwing machines did not yet exist, and with the moat and walls in the way at such a distance, they posed no threat to Crimissa. So the Crotonian soldiers watched curiously from the walls, not particularly tense.

Myron watched too, already tired but wanting to understand what the Daonians intended.

The Daonian soldiers began carrying tree trunks four or five meters long, placing them along the edges of the flat ground. They drove the trunks into the earth at intervals, tied them together with ropes, and soon built a wooden frame about thirty meters long and five meters wide.

“Are the Daonians trying to build a house here? Aren’t they afraid we’ll burn it down?” one Crotonian soldier joked, drawing laughter.

But then the Daonian soldiers, each carrying heavy sacks, began stacking them neatly inside the wooden frame, filling the edges…

“Hahaha… I think the Daonians aren’t just building a house—they want to bake bread too!” another soldier quipped, provoking more laughter.

With thousands of soldiers working, a wall of sacks rose quickly, soon matching the height of Crimissa’s walls, and kept rising…

At this sight, Myron’s face changed dramatically. His adjutant shouted, “Trouble! They’re building a high wall to attack us!”

The Crotonian soldiers, who had been enjoying the show, now understood and panic began to spread. The Daonian light infantry included many skilled slingers with long ranges. Now, by using this clever method to rapidly build a platform nearly two meters higher than Crimissa’s four-meter walls, their light infantry could climb onto that high wall and use arrows and stones to strike the soldiers on Crimissa’s walls.

Once the enemy attacked, their slingers and archers could stand on the high platform, targeting the defending soldiers on the walls, forcing them to dodge and lose focus on defending the battlements… Myron was now drenched in cold sweat: they had to destroy that platform!

But he also knew the enemy would guard it heavily. So he decided to launch a surprise attack at dusk.

Soon, he saw the Daonians digging ditches around the high platform and using the excavated earth to fill the gaps inside the platform…

Myron was exasperated: these Daonians were like rats, always thinking of digging holes to save their lives!

By dusk, the Daonians had built a small camp around the high wall.

Myron finally gave up on the idea of a raid. He didn’t want to waste his soldiers’ lives on such a slim hope. In his heart, a thought of leaving had already taken root.

The next morning, the bugles of the Daonian northern camp rang out long. The soldiers of the Second Army Corps’ companies shouldered scaling ladders, formed into small phalanxes, and arrayed themselves in a fish-scale formation a hundred meters from the wall.

Davos climbed the earth ramp and stood on the high platform for the first time. He instinctively stomped hard twice, feeling it was fairly sturdy.

The moment he had first seen Crimissa, he had thought of building a high platform. The three-meter-high walls were indeed too short. But building an earth mound higher than the wall was not easy—it could collapse easily. Fortunately, the engineers had devised a good method: using tree trunks and ropes to make a frame, sacks filled with earth for support, then filling the interior with soil… quick and solid.

From his commanding height, Davos could see the entire northern wall of Crimissa. Seeing the enemy soldiers packed on the opposite battlements, he said to Epithenis beside him, “Can our archers reach them?”

“Absolutely, Commander!” Epithenis said confidently.

Davos nodded. “Then start the attack.”

“Release arrows!” At Epithenis’s command, the archers on the high platform loosed their first volley. The slingers, positioned behind and adjacent to the archers, began to whirl their slings.

Finally, the assault on the city had begun! Myron, standing on the north gate battlement, felt his fighting spirit rekindle. Facing the incoming arrows and stones, he bellowed, “Defend!”

On that section of the wall facing the high platform, he had specifically stationed heavy infantry. They raised their round shields, covering their heads…

On the south bank of the Crati River in the Sybaris Plain, near the sea, there was a newly built village. Agyras was its chief—the lowest level of official in the current Daonian administrative system. According to newly enacted laws, the village chief was elected by the village’s citizens for a one-year term.

But becoming a village chief was no easy task. Candidates had to meet several essential conditions: first, they must be full Daonian citizens; second, they must pay taxes on time and have no major record of violating laws; additionally, preference was given to those who had served in the military, earned battle merits, or made special contributions to the Daonia Alliance.