Hiero I., king of Syracuse, succeeded his brother Gelon in 478 B.C. The most important event of his reign was the naval victory gained by his fleet and that of the Cumani over the Etruscans in 474, which deprived the latter of their supremacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Though violent and rapacious, he was a lover of poetry, and the patron of Simonides, Æschylus, Bacchylides, and Pindar. Hiero died at Catana in 467 B.C.
Hiero I.
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 5: Friday to Humanitarians, p. 705
Source scan(s): p. 0720