Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
sword there; and many of them, as they were making their way back
through the river, falling foul upon others that were yet coming
over, were borne away and overwhelmed by the waters; but the major
part, attempting to get up the hills and so make their escape, were
intercepted and destroyed by the light-armed troops. It is said,
that of ten thousand who lay dead after the fight, three thousand, at
least, were Carthaginian citizens; a heavy loss and great grief to
their countrymen; those that fell being men inferior to none among
them as to birth, wealth, or reputation. Nor do their records
mention that so many native Carthaginians were ever cut off before in
any one battle; as they usually employed Africans, Spaniards, and
Numidians in their wars, so that if they chanced to be defeated, it
was still at the cost and damage of other nations.
The Greeks easily discovered of what condition and account the slain
were, by the richness of their spoils; for when they came to collect
the booty, there was little reckoning made either of brass or iron,
so abundant were better metals, and so common were silver and gold
Passing over the river, they became masters of their camp and
carriages. As for captives, a great many of them were stolen away,
and sold privately by the soldiers, but about five thousand were
brought in and delivered up for the benefit of the public; two
hundred of their chariots of war were also taken. The tent of
Timoleon then presented a most glorious and magnificent appearance,
being heaped up and hung round with every variety of spoils and
military ornaments, among which there were a thousand breastplates of
rare workmanship and beauty, and bucklers to the number of ten
thousand. The victors being but few to strip so many that were
vanquished, and having such valuable booty to occupy them, it was the
third day after the fight before they could erect and finish the
trophy of their conquest. Timoleon sent tidings of his victory to
Corinth, with the best and goodliest arms he had taken as a proof of
it; that he thus might render his country an object of emulation to
the whole world, when, of all the cities of Greece, men should there
alone behold the chief temples adorned, not with Grecian spoils, nor
offerings obtained by the bloodshed and plunder of their own
countrymen and kindred, and attended, therefore, with sad and unhappy
remembrances, but with such as had been stripped from barbarians and
enemies to their nation, with the noblest titles inscribed upon them,
titles telling of the justice as well as fortitude of the conquerors;
namely, that the people of Corinth, and Timoleon their general,
having redeemed the Greeks of Sicily from Carthaginian bondage, made
oblation of these to the gods, in grateful acknowledgment of their
favor.
Having done this, he left his hired soldiers in the enemy's country,
to drive and carry away all they could throughout the
subject-territory of Carthage, and so marched with the rest of his
army to Syracuse, where he issued an edict for banishing the thousand
mercenaries who had basely deserted him before the battle, and
obliged them to quit the city before sunset. They, sailing into
Italy, lost their lives there by the hands of the Bruttians, in spite
of a public assurance of safety previously given them; thus
receiving, from the divine power, a just reward of their own
treachery. Mamercus, however, the tyrant of Catana, and Hicetes,
after all, either envying Timoleon the glory of his exploits, or
fearing him as one that would keep no agreement, nor have any peace
with tyrants, made a league with the Carthaginians, and pressed them
much to send a new army and commander into Sicily, unless they would
be content to hazard all, and to be wholly ejected out of that
island. And in consequence of this, Gisco was dispatched with a navy
of seventy sail. He took numerous Greek mercenaries also into pay,
that being the first time they had ever been enlisted for the
Carthaginian service; but then it seems the Carthaginians began to
admire them, as the most irresistible soldiers of all mankind.
Uniting their forces in the territory of Messena, they cut off four
hundred of Timoleon's paid soldiers, and within the dependencies of
Carthage, at a place called Hierae, destroyed, by an ambuscade, the
whole body of mercenaries that served under Euthymus the Leucadian;
which accidents, however, made the good fortune of Timoleon accounted
all the more remarkable, as these were the men that, with Philomelus
of Phocis and Onomarchus, had forcibly broken into the temple of
Apollo at Delphi, and were partakers with them in the sacrilege; so
that, being hated and shunned by all, as persons under a curse, they
were constrained to wander about in Peloponnesus; when, for want of
others, Timoleon was glad to take them into service in his expedition
for Sicily, where they were successful in whatever enterprise they
attempted under his conduct. But now, when all the important dangers
were past, on his sending them out for the relief and defense of his
party in several places, they perished and were destroyed at a
distance from him, not all together, but in small parties; and the
vengeance which was destined for them, so accommodating itself to the
good fortune which guarded Timoleon as not to allow any harm or
prejudice for good men to arise from the punishment of the wicked,
the benevolence and kindness which the gods had for Timoleon was thus
as distinctly recognized in his disasters as in his successes.
What most annoyed the Syracusans was their being insulted and mocked
by the tyrants; as, for example, by Mamercus, who valued himself much
upon his gift for writing poems and tragedies, and took occasion,
when coming to present the gods with the bucklers of the hired
soldiers whom he had killed, to make a boast of his victory in an
insulting elegiac inscription:
These shields, with purple, gold, and ivory wrought,
Were won by us that but with poor ones fought.
After this, while Timoleon marched to Calauria, Hicetes made an
inroad into the borders of Syracuse, where he met with considerable
booty, and having done much mischief and havoc, returned back by
Calauria itself, in contempt of Timoleon, and the slender force he
had then with him. He, suffering Hicetes to pass forward, pursued
him with his horsemen and light infantry, which Hicetes perceiving,
crossed the river Damyrias, and then stood in a posture to receive
him; the difficulty of the passage, and the height and steepness of
the bank on each side, giving advantage enough to make him confident.
A strange contention and dispute, meantime, among the officers of
Timoleon, a little retarded the conflict; no one of them was willing
to let another pass over before him to engage the enemy; each man
claiming it as a right, to venture first and begin the onset; so that
their fording was likely to be tumultuous and without order, a mere
general struggle which should be the foremost. Timoleon, therefore,
desiring to decide the quarrel by lot, took a ring from each of the
pretenders, which he cast into his own cloak, and, after he had
shaken all together, the first he drew out had, by good fortune, the
figure of a trophy engraved as a seal upon it; at the sight of which
the young captains all shouted for joy, and, without waiting any
longer to see how chance would determine it for the rest, took every
man his way through the river with all the speed they could make, and
fell to blows with the enemies, who were not able to bear up against
the violence of their attack, but fled in haste and left their arms
behind them all alike, and a thousand dead upon the place.
Not long after, Timoleon, marching up to the city of the Leontines,
took Hicetes alive, and his son Eupolemus, and Euthymus, the
commander of his horse, who were bound and brought to him by their
own soldiers. Hicetes and the stripling his son were then executed
as tyrants and traitors; and Euthymus, though a brave man, and one of
singular courage, could obtain no mercy, because he was charged with
contemptuous language in disparagement of the Corinthians when they
first sent their forces into Sicily: it is said that he told the
Leontini in a speech, that the news did not sound terrible, nor was
any great danger to be feared because of
Corinthian women coming out of doors.
So true is it that men are usually more stung and galled by
reproachful words than hostile actions; and they bear an affront with
less patience than an injury: to do harm and mischief by deeds is
counted pardonable from enemies, as nothing less can be expected in a
state of war whereas virulent and contumelious words appear to be the
expression of needless hatred, and to proceed from an excess of
rancor.
When Timoleon came back to Syracuse, the citizens brought the wives
and daughters of Hicetes and his son to a public trial, and condemned
and put them to death. This seems to be the least pleasing action of
Timoleon's life; since if he had interposed, the unhappy women would
have been spared. He would appear to have disregarded the thing, and
to have given them up to the citizens, who were eager to take
vengeance for the wrongs done to Dion, who expelled Dionysius; since
it was this very Hicetes, who took Arete the wife, and Aristomache
the sister of Dion, with a son that had not yet passed his childhood,
and threw them all together into the sea alive, as related in the
life of Dion.
After this, he moved towards Catana against Mamercus, who gave him
battle near the river Abolus, and was overthrown and put to flight,
losing above two thousand men, a considerable part of whom were the
Phoenician troops sent by Gisco to his assistance. After this
defeat, the Carthaginians sued for peace; which was granted on the
conditions that they should confine themselves to the country within
the river Lycus,@ that those of the inhabitants who wished to remove
to the Syracusan territories should be allowed to depart with their
whole families and fortunes, and, lastly, that Carthage should
renounce all engagements to the tyrants. Mamercus, now forsaken and
despairing of success, took ship for Italy with the design of
bringing in the Lucanians against Timoleon and the people of
Syracuse; but the men in his galleys turning back and landing again
and delivering up Catana to Timoleon, thus obliged him to fly for his
own safety to Messena, where Hippo was tyrant. Timoleon, however,
coming up against them, and besieging the city both by sea and land,
Hippo, fearful of the event, endeavored to slip away in a vessel;
which the people of Messena surprised as it was putting off, and
seizing on his person, and bringing all their children from school
into the theater, to witness the glorious spectacle of a tyrant
punished, they first publicly scourged and then put him to death.
Mamercus made surrender of himself to Timoleon, with the proviso,
that he should be tried at Syracuse, and Timoleon should take no part
in his accusation. Thither he was brought accordingly, and
presenting himself to plead before the people, he essayed to
pronounce an oration he had long before composed in his own defense;
but finding himself interrupted by noise and clamors, and observing
from their aspect and demeanor that the assembly was inexorable, he
threw off his upper garment, and running across the theater as hard
as he could, dashed his head against one of the stones under the
seats with intention to have killed himself; but he had not the
fortune to perish, as he designed, but was taken up alive, and
suffered the death of a robber.
Thus did Timoleon cut the nerves of tyranny, and put a period to
their wars; and, whereas, at his first entering upon Sicily, the