Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Corinthians that they might have a supplement of other persons, as
well out of their city as the rest of Greece, to go with them as
joint-colonists; and so raising themselves to the number of ten
thousand, they sailed together to Syracuse. By this time great
multitudes, also, from Italy and Sicily, had flocked in to Timoleon,
so that, as Athanis reports, their entire body amounted now to sixty
thousand men. Among these he divided the whole territory, and sold
the houses for a thousand talents; by which method, he both left it
in the power of the old Syracusans to redeem their own, and made it a
means also for raising a stock for the community, which had been so
much impoverished of late, and was so unable to defray other
expenses, and especially those of a war, that they exposed their very
statues to sale, a regular process being observed, and sentence of
auction passed upon each of them by majority of votes, as if they had
been so many criminals taking their trial: in the course of which it
is said that while condemnation was pronounced upon all other
statues, that of the ancient usurper Gelo was exempted, out of
admiration and honor and for the sake of the victory he gained over
the Carthaginian forces at the river Himera.
Syracuse being thus happily revived, and replenished again by the
general concourse of inhabitants from all parts, Timoleon was
desirous now to rescue other cities from the like bondage, and wholly
and once for all to extirpate arbitrary government out of Sicily.
And for this purpose, marching into the territories of those that
used it, he compelled Hicetes first to renounce the Carthaginian
interest, and, demolishing the fortresses which were held by him, to
live henceforth among the Leontinians as a private person. Leptines,
also, the tyrant of Apollonia and divers other little towns, after
some resistance made, seeing the danger he was in of being taken by
force, surrendered himself; upon which Timoleon spared his life, and
sent him away to Corinth, counting it a glorious thing that the
mother city should expose to the view of other Greeks these Sicilian
tyrants, living now in an exiled and a low condition. After this he
returned to Syracuse, that he might have leisure to attend to the
establishment of the new constitution, and assist Cephalus and
Dionysius, who were sent from Corinth to make laws, in determining
the most important points of it. In the meanwhile, desirous that his
hired soldiers should not want action, but might rather enrich
themselves by some plunder from the enemy, he dispatched Dinarchus
and Demaretus with a portion of them into the part of the island
belonging to the Carthaginians, where they obliged several cities to
revolt from the barbarians, and not only lived in great abundance
themselves, but raised money from their spoil to carry on the war.
Meantime, the Carthaginians landed at the promontory of Lilybaeum,
bringing with them an army of seventy thousand men on board two
hundred galleys, besides a thousand other vessels laden with engines
of battery, chariots, corn, and other military stores, as if they did
not intend to manage the war by piecemeal and in parts as heretofore,
but to drive the Greeks altogether and at once out of all Sicily.
And indeed it was a force sufficient to overpower the Siceliots, even
though they had been at perfect union among themselves, and had never
been enfeebled by intestine quarrels. Hearing that part of their
subject territory was suffering devastation, they forthwith made
toward the Corinthians with great fury, having Asdrubal and Hamilcar
for their generals; the report of whose numbers and strength coming
suddenly to Syracuse, the citizens were so terrified, that hardly
three thousand, among so many myriads of them, had the courage to
take up arms and join Timoleon. The foreigners, serving for pay,
were not above four thousand in all, and about a thousand of these
grew fainthearted by the way, and forsook Timoleon in his march
towards the enemy, looking on him as frantic and distracted,
destitute of the sense which might have been expected from his time
of life, thus to venture out against an army of seventy thousand men,
with no more than five thousand foot and a thousand horse; and, when
he should have kept those forces to defend the city, choosing rather
to remove them eight days' journey from Syracuse, so that if they
were beaten from the field, they would have no retreat, nor any
burial if they fell upon it. Timoleon, however, reckoned it some
kind of advantage, that these had thus discovered themselves before
the battle, and, encouraging the rest, led them with all speed to the
river Crimesus, where it was told him the Carthaginians were drawn
together.
As he was marching up an ascent, from the top of which they expected
to have a view of the army and of the strength of the enemy, there
met him by chance a train of mules loaded with parsley; which his
soldiers conceived to be an ominous occurrence or ill-boding token,
because this is the herb with which we not unfrequently adorn the
sepulchres of the dead; and there is a proverb derived from the
custom, used of one who is dangerously sick, that he has need of
nothing but parsley. So, to ease their minds, and free them from
any superstitious thoughts or forebodings of evil, Timoleon halted,
and concluded an address, suitable to the occasion, by saying, that a
garland of triumph was here luckily brought them, and had fallen into
their hands of its own accord, as an anticipation of victory: the
same with which the Corinthians crown the victors in the Isthmian
games, accounting chaplets of parsley the sacred wreath proper to
their country; parsley being at that time still the emblem of victory
at the Isthmian, as it is now at the Nemean sports; and it is not so
very long ago that the pine first began to be used in its place.
Timoleon, therefore, having thus bespoke his soldiers, took part of
the parsley, and with it made himself a chaplet first, his captains
and their companies all following the example of their leader. The
soothsayers then, observing also two eagles on the wing towards them,
one of which bore a snake struck through with her talons, and the
other, as she flew, uttered a loud cry indicating boldness and
assurance, at once showed them to the soldiers, who with one consent
fell to supplicate the gods, and call them in to their assistance.
It was now about the beginning of summer, and conclusion of the month
called Thargelion, not far from the solstice; and the river sending
up a thick mist, all the adjacent plain was at first darkened with
the fog, so that for a while they could discern nothing from the
enemy's camp; only a confused buzz and undistinguished mixture of
voices came up to the hill from the distant motions and clamors of so
vast a multitude. When the Corinthians had mounted, and stood on the
top, and had laid down their bucklers to take breath and repose
themselves, the sun coming round and drawing up the vapors from
below, the gross foggy air that was now gathered and condensed above
formed in a cloud upon the mountains; and, all the under places being
clear and open, the river Crimesus appeared to them again, and they
could descry the enemies passing over it, first with their formidable
four horse chariots of war, and then ten thousand footmen bearing
white shields, whom they guessed to be all Carthaginians, from the
splendor of their arms, and the slowness and order of their march. And
when now the troops of various other nations, flowing in behind them,
began to throng for passage in a tumultuous and unruly manner,
Timoleon, perceiving that the river gave them opportunity to single
off whatever number of their enemies they had a mind to engage at
once, and bidding his soldiers observe how their forces were divided
into two separate bodies by the intervention of the stream, some
being already over, and others still to ford it, gave Demaretus
command to fall in upon the Carthaginians with his horse, and disturb
their ranks before they should be drawn up into form of battle; and
coming down into the plain himself, forming his right and left wing
of other Sicilians, intermingling only a few strangers in each, he
placed the natives of Syracuse in the middle, with the stoutest
mercenaries he had about his own person; and, waiting a little to
observe the action of his horse, when he saw they were not only
hindered from grappling with the Carthaginians by the armed chariots
that ran to and fro before the army, but forced continually to wheel
about to escape having their ranks broken, and so to repeat their
charges anew, he took his buckler in his hand, and crying out to the
foot that they should follow him with courage and confidence, he
seemed to speak with a more than human accent, and a voice stronger
than ordinary; whether it were that he naturally raised it so high in
the vehemence and ardor of his mind to assault the enemy, or else, as
many then thought, some god or other spoke with him. When his
soldiers quickly gave an echo to it, all besought him to lead them on
without any further delay, he made a sign to the horse, that they
should draw off from the front where the chariots were, and pass
sidewards to attack their enemies in the flank; then, making his
vanguard firm by joining man to man and buckler to buckler, he caused
the trumpet to sound, and so bore in upon the Carthaginians.
They, for their part, stoutly received and sustained his first onset;
and having their bodies armed with breastplates of iron, and helmets
of brass on their heads, besides great bucklers to cover and secure
them, they could easily repel the charge of the Greek spears. But
when the business came to a decision by the sword, where mastery
depends no less upon art than strength, all on a sudden from the
mountain tops violent peals of thunder and vivid dashes of lightning
broke out; following upon which the darkness, that had been hovering
about the higher grounds and the crests of the hills, descending to
the place of battle and bringing a tempest of rain and of wind and
hail along with it, was driven upon the Greeks behind, and fell only
at their backs, but discharged itself in the very faces of the
barbarians, the rain beating on them, and the lightning dazzling them
without cessation; annoyances that in many ways distressed at any
rate the inexperienced, who had not been used to such hardships, and,
in particular, the claps of thunder, and the noise of the rain and
hail beating on their arms, kept them from hearing the commands of
their officers. Besides which, the very mud also was a great
hindrance to the Carthaginians, who were not lightly equipped, but,
as I said before, loaded with heavy armor; and then their shirts
underneath getting drenched, the foldings about the bosom filled with
water, grew unwieldy and cumbersome to them as they fought, and made
it easy for the Greeks to throw them down, and, when they were once
down, impossible for them, under that weight, to disengage themselves
and rise again with weapons in their hand. The river Crimesus, too,
swollen partly by the rain, and partly by the stoppage of its course
with the numbers that were passing through, overflowed its banks; and
the level ground by the side of it, being so situated as to have a
number of small ravines and hollows of the hill-side descending upon
it, was now filled with rivulets and currents that had no certain
channel, in which the Carthaginians stumbled and rolled about, and
found themselves in great difficulty. So that, in fine, the storm
bearing still upon them, and the Greeks having cut in pieces four
hundred men of their first ranks, the whole body of their army began
to fly. Great numbers were overtaken in the plain, and put to the