Timoleon

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. VI. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1918.

Seeing the city thus beginning to revive and fill itself with people, since its citizens were streaming into it from all sides, Timoleon determined to set the other cities also free, and utterly to root out all tyrannies from Sicily. He therefore made an expedition into their territories and compelled Hicetas to forsake the cause of Carthage, and to agree to demolish his citadels and live as a private person in Leontini.

And as for Leptines, who lorded it over Apollonia and numerous other strongholds, when he was in danger of being taken by main force, he surrendered himself; and Timoleon spared his life and sent him off to Corinth, considering it a fine thing to have the tyrants of Sicily in the mother city where the Greeks could observe them living the lowly life of exiles.

Moreover, he wished that his mercenaries might get booty from the enemy’s country and not remain idle. Accordingly, while he himself returned to Syracuse in order to apply himself to the establishment of the civil polity and to assist the lawgivers who had come from Corinth, Cephalus and Dionysius, in arranging its most important details in the most attractive way,

he sent forth the troops under Deinarchus and Demaretus[*](Cf. chapter xxii. 3. ) into that part of the island which the Carthaginians controlled, where they brought many cities to revolt from the Barbarians, and not only lived in plenty themselves, but actually raised moneys for the war from the spoils they made.

Meanwhile the Carthaginians put in at Lilybaeum with an army of seventy thousand men, two hundred triremes, and a thousand transports carrying engines of war, four-horse chariots, grain in abundance, and other requisite equipment. Their purpose was, not to carry on the war by piece-meal any more, but at one time to drive the invading Greeks out of all Sicily;

for their force would have been sufficient to capture the native Greeks, even though they had not been politically weak and utterly ruined by one another.

And on learning that the territory which they controlled was being ravaged by the Corinthians, they were furious, and straightway marched against them under the command of Hasdrubal and Hamilcar.

Tidings of this coming quickly to Syracuse, the Syracusans were so terrified at the magnitude of the enemy’s forces that only three thousand out of so many tens of thousands could with difficulty be brought to pluck up courage, take their arms, and go forth with Timoleon.