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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 3203137, member: 76194&quot;]To say Agathocles&#039; life was colorful is an understatement. He was the son of a poor Sicilian potter.&nbsp; Historians claim his first career was as a male prostitute in a men&#039;s only brothel, and when he reached puberty he used his beauty to switch over to a career as a male gigolo with a female clientele, and moonlighted as a highway thief. Eventually, Agathocles found honest employ under a wealthy patron, but when his patron&#039;s death threatened to leave Agathocles unemployed,&nbsp; Agathocles used his well honed gigolo skills to seduce the now wealthy widow of his former patron and married her. He then used her money to buy himself band of soldiers, and proved so successful as a military commander that Syracuse&#039;s oligarchs bannished him. So he built himself a larger army and conquered Syracuse, killing or banishing over 10,000 of his fellow citizens in turn.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]829464[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>Agathocles of Syracuse</b></p><p>Bronze litra,</p><p>weight 8.501g, maximum diameter 26.1mm, die axis 315o, 305 - 295 B.C.; obverse ΣYPAKOΣIΩN, head of young Herakles left, wearing taenia, star (control symbol) behind neck; reverse lion walking right, right foreleg raised, club right above, arrow right (control symbol) in exergue; Calciati II p. 287, 150 Ds 14 Rs 63; BMC Sicily p. 196, 391; SNG ANS 740; SNG Cop 767; HGC 2 1465 var. (R1, 4th Democracy, different controls)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>THE PRINCE</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>[ATTACH=full]829466[/ATTACH] </b></p><p><b>Niccolo Machiavelli</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>None other than Niccolo Machiavelli said of Agathocles of Syracuse in his famous book, The Prince, that ....&quot;It cannot be called prowess to kill fellow-citizens, to betray friends, to be treacherous, pitiless, irreligious.&quot; According to Machiavelli, Agathocles was a criminal&nbsp; at every stage of his career. When Machiavelli himself gives your life such high praise, you know you had a heck of a career.</p><p><br /></p><p>So what did Agathocles do to earn such praise? Well, after murdering 10,000 of his fellow citizens, he got involved in a war with Carthage. He promised an African king that if he used his army to help him defeat the Carthagenian, he&#039;d give him any lands they conquered in Africa. The king decided to ally himself to Agathocles and both armies camped next to each other. Agathocles then did a surprise raid on his new ally&#039;s camp and killed his ally, them conscripted his leaderless army as his own army. It ain&#039;t treachery if you can get away with it. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie11" alt=":rolleyes:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]829467[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Eventually things went sour for Agathocles in Africa, but through bribery and more criminal activity he secured himself as the King of Sicily. There were a few more uprisings against him, and at one point he was sieged at Syracuse, but even in old age Agathocles had an uncanny ability to grease the right pockets, betray his friends and allies at the most opportune times, and knew just when to carry out a good old fashioned mass murder spree to quiet the opposition.</p><p><br /></p><p>Because of these talents, Agathocles has gone down as one of the greatest Greek tyrants of all antiquity, and earned further immortality as an example of a criminal prince in Machiavelli&#039;s The Prince. Even Machiavelli had to admit that although Agathocles was a criminal who should not be immitated, his talents for knowing when to bribe, betray, rob, extort, and kill, made Agathocles a very successful tyrant despite his abhorrent criminal behavior. Can you think of any higher praise if you were a tyrant? Nope! <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie6" alt=":cool:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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