Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

New

the

25

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 at Leontini 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 offer 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 mean while, desirous that his hired soldiers should not want action, but might rather enrich themselves by some plunder from the enemy, he despatched 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 promonExpedi- tory of Lilybæum, bringing with them seventy thousand tion of men and two hundred galleys, besides a thousand other Cartha 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

ginians.

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 Amilcar 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 faint-hearted by the way, and forsook Timoleon in his march toward 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 26 which they expected to have a view of the army and of the strength of the enemy, there met him by chance a

27 Battle of the

train of mules loaded with parsley, which his soldiers took for an ominous occurrence, 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 addressed his soldiers, took part of the parsley, and with it made himself a chaplet first, his captains and their companies all following the example. 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, 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 Thargelion, not far from the

The pine, sacred to Neptune, was the original Isthmian garland; then came parsley in its place; and then, not long before Plutarch's time, as he himself tells us, the pine came in again.

sus,

B.C. 340

solstice; and the river sending up a thick mist, all the Crimeadjacent plain was at first darkened with the fog, so June, that for a while they could discern nothing in the direc- or 339 tion of the enemy; only a confused buzz and undistinguished mixture of voices came up the hill, from the distant motions of so vast a multitude. When the Corinthians had mounted, and stood on the top, and had laid down their shields to take breath and repose themselves, the sun coming round and drawing up the vapours 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 becoming clear and open, the Crimesus appeared in sight, and they saw 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 splendour 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 would portion off for them whatever number of the enemies they should choose to engage with 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, he 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; 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 before their army, but forced continually to wheel about to escape having their ranks broken, and so to repeat their charges anew, he took his shield*, and crying out to the foot to follow and fear nothing, he seemed to speak with a more than human accent, and a voice stronger than ordinary; whether it were that he naturally raised it in the vehemence and ardour of his mind, or, as his soldiers thought, some god spoke with him. When they quickly gave an echo to

[graphic]

The Aspis, or Clipeus, or round Grecian shield. (From fictile vases.)

it, and besought him to lead them on without delay, he made a sign to the horse to draw off from the front where the chariots were and pass sidewards to attack on the flank; then making his line compact, man to man, and shield to shield, he caused the trumpet to sound, and bore in upon the Carthaginians.

The heavy shield would be carried for the general by an attendant. The Crimésus, or Crimessus, is south of Palermo.

« AnteriorContinuar »