Dionysius is engaged in eastern Sicily during 396-393 BCE, including an unsuccessful siege of Tauromenium (394 BCE), a Sicel city allied to Carthage.

Carthage, occupied in Africa dealing with a rebellion, responds to this attack on their allies by renewing the war.

Dionysius resettles the Siculi in about 392 BCE at Tauromenium (Taormina), which takes its name from Monte Tauro.

Eastern Sicily is Greek and the west Carthaginian.

The Greeks expelled from Naxos in 403 by Dionysius the Elder at last find refuge in 358 at Tauromenium with the Siculi, whom the Syracusan tyrant had resettled there in about 392 BCE.

It flourishes under the mild rule of Andromachus, father of the historian Timaeus, who lives from about 356 BCE to about 260 BCE.

Tauromenium, present Taormina, had undoubtedly continued to form a part of the kingdom of Syracuse until the death of Hieron, and only passes under the government of Rome when the whole island of Sicily is reduced to a Roman province.

However, we have scarcely any account of the part it took during the Second Punic War, though it would appear, from a hint in Appian, that it submitted to Marcellus on favorable terms; and it is probable that it is on this occasion it obtained the peculiarly favored position it is to enjoy under the Roman dominion.

We learn from Cicero that Tauromenium was one of the three cities in Sicily that enjoyed the privileges of a civitas foederata or allied city, thus retaining a nominal independence, and was not even subject, like Messana, to the obligation of furnishing ships of war when called upon.

Saracen-held Taormina falls to Roger Guiscard’s Normans in 1078.