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Updated: June 6, 2025
On the first expedition to Nepheris, when the passage of the river had taken place in opposition to his advice and had almost occasioned the destruction of the army, by a bold attack in flank he relieved the pressure on the retreating troops, and by his devoted and heroic courage rescued a division which had been given up as lost While the other officers, and the consul in particular, by their perfidy deterred the towns and party-leaders that were inclined to negotiate, Scipio succeeded in inducing one of the ablest of the latter, Himilco Phameas, to pass over to the Romans with 2200 cavalry.
In the meanwhile Carthage, which hitherto had only supported the Syracusans with her fleets, on receiving news of their renewed rising in arms against the Romans had despatched a strong land army under Himilco to Sicily, which landed without interruption at Heraclea Minoa and immediately occupied the important town of Agrigentum.
As this city was situated in the heart of Sicily, and was distinguished both on account of the remarkable strength of its natural situation, and because every part of it was rendered sacred by the traces it contained of the rape of Proserpine of old, the news of its disaster spread though the whole of Sicily in nearly one day, and as people considered that by this horrid massacre violence had been done not only to the habitations of men, but even of the gods, then indeed those who even before this event were in doubt which side they should take, revolted to the Carthaginians Hippocrates and Himilco, who had in vain brought up their troops to Enna at the invitation of the traitors, retired thence, the former to Murgantia, the latter to Agrigentum.
According to the account of Festus, the voyage of Himilco lasted four months, or rather he sailed for the space of four months, towards the north, and arrived at the isles Ostrymnides and the coast of Albion.
Now fate turned the special defence of the city into the means of its destruction; while the army of Marcellus quartered in the suburbs suffered but little, fevers desolated the Phoenician and Syracusan bivouacs. Hippocrates died; Himilco and most of the Africans died also; the survivors of the two armies, mostly native Siceli, dispersed into the neighbouring cities.
And that I may not be the only person perplexed, I could wish that either Himilco or Mago would answer me, for it is just and fair that I also should put a question, since I have answered Himilco. Since the battle at Cannae annihilated the Roman power, and it is a fact that all Italy is in a state of revolt; in the first place, has any one people of the Latin confederacy come over to us?
When the siege of the city thus began to assume a turn favourable to the Romans, the two armies under Himilco and Hippocrates advanced to its relief, and attempted a simultaneous attack on the Roman positions, combined with an attempt at landing on the part of the Carthaginian fleet and a sally of the Syracusan garrison; but the attack was repulsed on all sides, and the two relieving armies were obliged to content themselves with encamping before the city, in the low marshy grounds along the Anapus, which in the height of summer and autumn engender pestilences fatal to those that tarry in them.
To the number of ships which he had received from his brother, equipped and ready for action, Hasdrubal added ten. The fleet of forty ships he delivered to Himilco: and thus setting out from Carthage, kept his ships near the land, while he led his army along the shore, ready to engage with whichever part of his forces the enemy might fall in with.
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