Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At the Italian port of Rhegium he found Hicetas, the despot of a Sicilian city, who had invited him to Sicily, but was now allied with the Carthaginians. He had there twenty of the war-ships of Carthage, double the force of Timoleon.
But heedless of this discrepancy Timoleon hastened thither, and on arriving near the town perceived that the opposing army had outstripped him in speed. Hicetas, not aware of the approach of a foe, had encamped, and his men were disarmed and at their suppers.
For Magon, the Carthaginian admiral, had begun to doubt Hicetas. He doubted him the more when he saw the men of Timoleon and those of Hicetas engaged in fishing for eels together in the marshy grounds between the armies, and seemingly on very friendly terms. Thinking he was betrayed, he put all his troops on board ship and sailed away for Africa.
I need not carry the conversation on any farther to show that Cicero is ridiculing the whole thing. This Hicetas, the Syracusan, seems to have been nearer the mark than the others, according to the existing lights, which had not shone out as yet in Cicero's days. "But what was the meaning of it all? Who knows anything about it? How is a man to live by listening to such trash as this?"
Hicetas was master of all Syracuse except the stronghold of Ortygia, which was held by Dionysius, and which Hicetas had blockaded by sea and land. Timoleon had no means of capturing it, and as the enemy would not come out from behind its walls, he would soon have had to retire had not fortune again helped her favorite son, and this time in an extraordinary manner.
From all quarters colonists came, while ten thousand exiles and others sailed from Corinth. In the end no fewer than sixty thousand new citizens were added to Syracuse. Meanwhile Timoleon put down the other despots of Sicily and set the cities free. Hicetas, his old enemy, was forced to give up his control of Leontini, to which he had retired on the loss of Syracuse.
Forty miles inland lay the town of Adranum, sacred to the god Adranus, a deity worshipped throughout Sicily. There were two parties in Adranum, one of which invited Timoleon, the other Hicetas. The latter at once started thither, with a force of five thousand men, an army with which that of Timoleon seemed too small to cope.
Hicetas, now assisted by a Carthaginian force under Magon, attacked Ortygia, but was defeated by the Corinthian Neon, who acquired Achradina, and joined it by a wall to Ortygia. But Magon now distrusted Hicetas, and suddenly withdrew his army. Timoleon thus became master of Syracuse, and Hicetas was obliged to retire to Leontini.
In fact, the army of Hicetas, many of them Greeks, were largely in favor of Timoleon, while the talk of the eel catching soldiers in the marshes had won many more over. As a result, Timoleon took the great city of Syracuse, on which the Athenians had vainly sacrificed hundreds of ships and thousands of men, without the loss of a single man, killed or wounded.
Soon after Hicetas having left Syracuse for the purpose of cutting off Neon's source of provisions a sudden sally was made, the blockading army taken by surprise and driven back with loss, and another large section of the city was added to Timoleon's gains. This success was quickly followed by another. The reinforcement from Corinth had landed at Thurii, on the east coast of Italy.
Word Of The Day