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 thousand 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

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

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.

CARTHAGINIAN INVASION.

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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