Roma şi Agathokles în sudul Italiei (304-291 a. Chr.)
Rome and Agathocles in Southern Italy (304-291 B. C.)

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the fourth century B.C., the need of finding some necessary refreshing resources and another action field, outside of Sicily, urged Agathocles to look towards the Italic coasts. Diodorus signales his presence in the Italic area in 304 B.C., when he plundered the Lipare islands. The first military action in the southern part of Italy, presented by Diodorus, was performed around 300 B. C., while the second one brought the tyrant back in the peninsula, in the year 295 B. C. One first target of these military actions carried out by Agathocles in Italy could have been Cleonymus, who came in 303 B.C. wishing to create a personal domain in the regions occupied by Greeks in the West. The second Italic military campaign of the tyrant, from 295 B.C., led to the occupation of Croton and Hipponion. Scared by the ample expedition and taken by surprise, the Bruttian League chosed to conclude a peace. This expedition rounds the politic coherent vision of Agathocles, concerning the South of Italy. At first, the leader from Syracuse opposed to the aggressive plans of Cleonymus, and then, after 300 B.C., he tried to rebuild the traditional area of influence of Syracuse in Bruttium. His military interventions in the South of the peninsula represented a mixture in a region where Tarentum also had important interests. But after the Lacinian treaty, signed with Rome in 302 B.C. and the beginning of the Third Samnite War, Tarentum was also in search for some allies who could help it in the case of the conflict spread towards the South of Italy. Agathocles must have been seen, at the beginning of the third century B. C., as an important factor able to stopp the Roman progress towards South. The tyrant seemed to have been responsive to the requests of the Dorian colony. Concerning the year 295 B.C., Diodorus mentions that he concluded alliances with Peucetes and Iapygi, involving himself in a region where Rome also had interests. The interpretation of these treaties as a proof for the anti-Roman policy of the tyrant must be made cautiously. Agathocles wished the revenge against Carthage and dreamed to play an important role in the political scene of the Hellenistic world. A war with Rome, or the protection of the Greeks from Italy against its expansion, did not represent a priority of the tyrant at the beginning of the third century B.C.. His alliances from South-East of the peninsula can be considered someway anti-Roman and in the advantage of the Tarentine interests. Very likely, they did not involved precise terms against the Roman Republic, but their conclusion signaled his presence in the Apulian region and could transform them into a warning for the leaders of Rome.

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