Timoleon

Meanwhile the Carthaginians came with a large armament to Sicily and were watching their opportunity, and the Sicilian Greeks, in their fright, wished to send an embassy to Greece and ask for assistance from the Corinthians,

not only because they trusted them on account of their kinship[*](Syracuse was founded by Corinthians in 735 B.C.) and in consequence of the many benefits they had already received from them, but also in general because they saw that the city was always a lover of freedom and a hater of tyrants, and had waged the most and greatest of her wars, not for supremacy and aggrandizement, but for the liberty of the Greeks.

Hicetas, however, since he had made a tyranny for himself, and not the freedom of Syracuse, his sole object in taking the field, had already held secret conferences with the Carthaginians; yet openly he commended the plan of the Syracusans and joined them in sending the embassy to Peloponnesus,

not because he wished that an allied force should come from there, but because he hoped that if, as was likely, the Corinthians should refuse their assistance because the disturbed condition of Greece kept them busy at home, he might more easily turn the control of affairs into the hands of the Carthaginians and use these invaders as allies and helpers in a struggle against the Syracusans or against Dionysius. This, then, was fully proved a little later.

But when the embassy arrived, the Corinthians, since they were wont to be ever solicitous for their colonial cities and for Syracuse in particular, and since by good fortune there was nothing in Greece at that time to disturb them, but they were enjoying peace and leisure, voted readily to give the assistance desired.

And while they were seeking for a commander, and the magistrates were writing down the names of those in the city who were eager for the honour and proposing them for election, one of the common people rose to his feet and nominated Timoleon the son of Timodemus, although he no longer took part in public business, and had no expectation or purpose of doing so; but some god, as it would seem, put it into the man’s mind to nominate him,