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Of the assassins, some proceeded to the forum to the populace, who were rejoiced at the recovery of their liberty; others to Syracuse to anticipate the measures of Andranodorus and the rest of the royal party.
These having satisfied themselves that his statement was not false by indubitable proofs, took the advice of the elder senators, and with their sanction, having placed a guard at the doors, slew Themistus and Andranodorus as soon as they had entered the senate-house.
Sopater was the person commissioned by the senate and his colleague to explain the affair. Treating them as if they stood upon their trial, he began with their past lives; and insisted that Andranodorus and Themistus were the authors of every act of iniquity and impiety which had been perpetrated since the death of Hiero. "For what," said he, "did the boy Hieronymus ever do of his own accord?
He said, "he commended them for the alacrity with which they had taken arms; but that he should commend them more if they should abstain from using them unless compelled by extreme necessity. At present he advised that ambassadors should be sent to Andranodorus, to charge him to submit to the direction of the senate and the people, to throw open the gates of the island, and withdraw the garrison.
This advice, suggested by a woman, Andranodorus neither entirely rejected nor immediately adopted, considering it the safer way to the attainment of power to temporize for the present. Accordingly he told the ambassadors to carry word back, that he should act subserviently to the senate and the people.
When the ambassadors came to Andranodorus, he was himself moved by the unanimous opinion of his countrymen, by their having possession of other parts of the city, and by the fact that the strongest part of the island was betrayed and placed in the hands of others; but his wife, Demarata, the daughter of Hiero, still swelling with the pride of royalty and female presumption, called him out from the presence of the ambassadors, and reminded him of the expression so often repeated by the tyrant Dionysius, "that a man ought only to relinquish sovereign power when dragged by the feet, and not while sitting on horseback.
Three of those persons to whom alone belonged a more familiar access to the palace, Andranodorus and Zoippus, sons-in-law of Hiero, and one Thraso, were not much attended to upon other subjects, but the two former exerting themselves in favour of the Carthaginians, while Thraso argued for the Roman alliance, they sometimes engaged the attention of the young king by their zeal and earnestness.
The crowds of persons disposed to hear and credit these insinuations which flowed into Syracuse from every quarter increased daily, and afforded hopes, not only to Epicydes but to Andranodorus also, of effecting a revolution.
That neither did she enjoy the same advantages as her sister while Hieronymus was alive, nor was her cause the same as hers now he was dead. What? Though her sister would have shared the throne with Andranodorus, had he succeeded in his designs, she must have been in servitude with the rest.
He was immediately seized, and delivered to Andranodorus to be subjected to torture, when, without hesitation, he confessed as to himself, but concealed his accomplices.
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