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Carthaginian fleet had conveyed itself away. However, Hicetes resolving to fight it out alone, and not quitting his hold of the city, but sticking close to the quarters he was in possession of, places that were well fortified and not easy to be attacked, Timoleon divided Capture of Syrahis forces into three parts, and himself attacked the side where the river Anapus runs, which was most difficult of access; and commanded others under Isias, a Corinthian captain, to make their assault from Achradina, while Dinarchus and Demaretus, who brought him the last supply from Corinth, were with a third division to attempt the quarter of Epipolæ. A considerable impression being made from every side at once, the soldiers of Hicetes were beaten off and put to flight; and this -that the city came to be taken by storm, and fell quickly into their hands, upon the defeat and rout of the enemy-we must in justice ascribe to the valour of the assailants, and the conduct of their general; but that not so much as a man of the Corinthians was either slain or wounded in the action, this the good fortune of Timoleon seems to challenge for her own work, though in a sort of rivalry with his own personal exertions she made it her aim to exceed and obscure his actions by her favours, that those who heard him commended for his noble deeds, might rather admire the happiness, than the merit of them. For the fame of what was done not only passed through all Sicily and Italy, but even Greece itself after a few days came to ring with the greatness of his exploit; insomuch that the people of Corinth, who had as yet no certainty that their auxiliaries were landed on the island, had tidings brought them at the same time that they were safe and

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were conquerors. In so prosperous a course did affairs run, and such was the speed and celerity of execution with which fortune, as with a new ornament, set off the native lustre of the performance.

Timoleon, now master of the citadel, avoided the error of which Dion had been guilty. He spared not the place for the beauty and sumptuousness of its fabric, and, keeping clear of those suspicions which occasioned first the unpopularity and afterwards the fall of Dion, made a public crier give notice, that all the Syracusans who were willing to have a hand in the work, should bring pick-axes and mattocks, and other instruments, and help him to demolish the fortifications of the tyrants. When they all came up with one accord, looking upon that order and that day as the surest foundation of their liberty, they not only pulled down the castle, but overturned the palaces and monuments adjoining, and whatever else might preserve any memory of the tyrants. Having soon levelled and cleared the place, he there erected courts for administration of justice, gratifying the citizens by this means, and building up popular government on the fall and ruin of tyranny. But since he had recovered a city destitute of inhabitants, some of them being dead in civil wars and seditions, and others in exile to escape tyrants, so that through solitude and want of people the great market-place of Syracuse was overgrown with such quantity of rank herbage that it became a pasture for their horses, the grooms lying along in the grass as they fed by them; while also other towns, very few excepted, were become full of stags and wild boars, so that those who had nothing else to do went hunting,

and found game in the suburbs and about the walls; and not one of those who had possessed themselves of castles, or made garrisons in the country, could be persuaded to quit their present abode, or would accept an invitation to return back into the city, so much did they all dread and abhor the very name of assemblies, and forms of government, and public speaking, that had produced the greater part of those usurpers, who had successively assumed a dominion over them,-Timoleon therefore with the Syracusans that remained, considering this vast desolation, and how little hope there was to have it otherwise supplied, thought good to write to the Corinthians, requesting that they would send a colony out of Greece to repeople Syracuse. For else the land about it would lie unimproved; and beside this they expected a greater war from Africa, having news that Mago had killed himself, and that the Carthaginians, out of rage for his ill conduct in the late expedition, had nailed his body on a cross, and that they were raising a mighty force, to make a descent upon Sicily next summer.

These letters from Timoleon being delivered at 23 Corinth, and the ambassadors of Syracuse beseeching them at the same time, that they would take upon them the care of their city, and once again become the founders of it, the Corinthians were not tempted by any feeling of cupidity to lay hold of the advantage; nor did they seize and appropriate the city to themselves, but going about first to the games that are kept as sacred in Greece, and to the most numerously attended religious assemblages, they made publication by heralds, that the Corinthians, having destroyed the usurpation

at Syracuse and driven out the tyrant, did hereby invite the Syracusan exiles, and any other Sicilian Greeks, to return and inhabit the city, with full enjoyment of freedom under their own laws, the land being divided among them in just and equal proportions. And after this, sending messengers into Asia and the several islands, where they understood that most of the scattered fugitives were then residing, they bid them all repair to Corinth, engaging that the Corinthians, at their own charges, would afford them vessels and commanders and a safe convoy to Syracuse. Such generous proposals being thus spread about gained them the just and honourable recompense of general praise and benediction, for delivering the country from oppressors, saving it from barbarians, and restoring it to the rightful owners of the place. These, when they were assembled at Corinth, and found how insufficient their company was, besought the 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 thou sand men. Among these he divided the whole of the land, but 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 a 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 other statues, that of the ancient usurper Gelo was exempted, out of admiration and honour for the sake of the victory he gained over the Carthaginian forces at the river Himera.

Syracuse being thus happily revived and replenished 24 again by the general concourse of inhabitants from all

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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

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