Timoleon

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.

Furthermore, the mercenaries were only four thousand in number; and of these, again, about a thousand played the coward on the march and went back to Syracuse, declaring that Timoleon was not in his right mind, but was more crazy than his years would lead one to expect, and was marching against seventy thousand of the enemy with five thousand foot and a thousand horse, and was taking his force a march of eight days away from Syracuse, so that those of them who fled from the field would find no safety, and those who fell upon it would have no burial.

As for these men, then, Timoleon counted it gain that they had shown what they were before the battle; the rest he encouraged and led them with all speed to the river Crimesus, where he heard that the Carthaginians also were concentrating.

As he was marching up a hill, from the crest of which they expected to look down upon the camp and the forces of the enemy, there met them by chance some mules laden with parsley;

and it occurred to the soldiers that the sign was a bad one, because we are generally accustomed to wreath the tombs of the dead with parsley; and this has given rise to a proverb, namely, that one who is dangerously sick needs only parsley.