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17. ¶ Hanno had been sent to the Romans by Hamilcar, as was pretended, in behalf of peace, but in reality for the sake of delay. Dio the Roman, who wrote a history about the Empire and the Republic of Rome and describes the far-famed Carthaginian war, says that when Regulus, By his command the Romans slew the reptile and having flayed it sent its skin, a great prodigy, to the Roman senate.
Hamilcar surprised them by a new maneuver and defeated them. He marched in three lines: elephants, cavalry and light infantry, then heavily armed phalanxes. At the approach of the mercenaries who were marching vigorously towards him the two lines formed by the elephants, the cavalry and light infantry, turned about and moved quickly to place themselves on the flanks of the third line.
"Ah! you did not know that the two entrenchments are sixty cubits from each other and that your Matho, in the excess of his pride, has posted himself just in front of Hamilcar. Your father is there behind you; and could I climb the path which leads to the platform, I should cry to him: 'Come and see your daughter in the Barbarian's arms!
As to implore terms from the conqueror, by what means could they do so? They did not even know where Hamilcar was. The wind was blowing from the direction of the ravine. It made the sand flow perpetually in cascades over the portcullis; and the cloaks and hair of the Barbarians were being covered with it as though the earth were rising upon them and desirous of burying them.
But the Carthaginians, who were posted in the centre of the syntagmata, and had suffered less, stamped their feet with longing for the vengeance which was flying from them; and they were already darting forward in pursuit of the Mercenaries when Hamilcar appeared. He held in his spotted and sweat-covered horse with silver reins.
Hamilcar was reckoning with the balls; they rang beneath his fingers. "Enough! What have you paid?" The food for the crews, amounting to twenty minae a month for each trireme " "I know! How many lost?" "Here is the account on these sheets of lead," said the Steward.
Hamilcar Jones dragged up a saw buck and laid the deacon's timber leg across it.... The deacon saw and comprehended, and lifted up his voice. Another five minutes were consumed in returning him to quiescence. And then the saw did its work, while the deacon breathed threats of blood and torture, and regretted that his religion prevented him from using language better suited to his purpose.
Then Hamilcar planted crosses for those who should speak of surrender, and even the women were brigaded. The people lay in the streets and waited full of distress. All rose and ran to the rampart. A forest of lances, pikes, and swords bristled at its base. It leaped against the wall, the ladders grappled them; and Barbarians' heads appeared in the intervals of the battlements.
If the refusal took place with the former view, it was presumably mistaken; compared with the gain of Sicily every other concession was of little moment, and looking to the determination and the inventive genius of Hamilcar, it was very rash to stake the securing of the principal gain on the attainment of secondary objects.
The rocks, which were somewhat narrow at the base, had been easily cast down; and, while all were running, his army had raised shouts, as of distress, on the horizon. Hamilcar, it is true, might have lost his velites, only half of whom remained, but he would have sacrificed twenty times as many for the success of such an enterprise.
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