Timoleon

Moreover, their good fortune in the present crisis raised their hopes for the future also, and they anticipated that men would revere and protect Timoleon, looking upon him as a sacred personage, and one who had come under divine guidance to avenge the wrongs of Sicily.[*](The Greek of this sentence is obscure, and has thus far defied emendation.)

But when Hicetas had failed in this attempt and saw that many were now thronging to the support of Timoleon, he found fault with himself because, when so large a force of the Carthaginians was at hand, he was using it in small detachments and secretly, as though he were ashamed of it, bringing in his allied troops like a thief and by stealth; he therefore called in Mago their general together with his whole armament.

Thus Mago, with a formidable fleet of a hundred and fifty ships, sailed in and occupied the harbour, disembarking also sixty thousand of his infantry and encamping them in the city of Syracuse, so that all men thought that the barbarization of Sicily, long talked of and expected, had come upon her.

For never before in all their countless wars in Sicily had the Carthaginians succeeded in taking Syracuse; but now Hicetas admitted them and handed over to them the city, and men saw that it was a barbarian camp.

But those of the Corinthians who held the acropolis were beset with difficulty and danger; for they no longer had sufficient food, but suffered lack because the harbours were blockaded; and they were forever dividing up their forces in skirmishes and battles around the walls, and in repelling all sorts of engines and every species of siege warfare.

However, Timoleon came to their aid by sending them grain from Catana in small fishing boats and light skiffs; these would make their way in, especially in stormy weather, by stealing along through the barbarian triremes, which lay at wide intervals from one another because of the roughness of the sea.

This soon came to the notice of Mago and Hicetas, who therefore determined to take Catana, from which provisions came in by sea to the besieged; so taking with them the best of their fighting men, they sailed forth from Syracuse.