Timoleon

For no others were superior to these in birth or wealth or reputation, nor is it recorded that so many native Carthaginians ever perished in a single battle before, but they used Libyans for the most part and Iberians and Numidians for their battles, and thus sustained their defeats at the cost of other nations.

The rank of those who had fallen was made known to the Greeks from the spoils. For those who stripped the bodies made very little account of bronze and iron; so abundant was silver, so abundant gold. For they crossed the river and seized the camp with its baggage-trains.

As for the prisoners, most of them were stolen away and hidden by the soldiers, but as many as five thousand were delivered into the public stock; there were also captured two hundred of the four-horse chariots.

But the most glorious and magnificent sight was presented by the tent of Timoleon, which was heaped about with all sorts of spoils, among which a thousand breast-plates of superior workmanship and beauty and ten thousand shields were exposed to view.

And as there were but few to strip many, and the booty they came upon was great, it was the third day after the battle before they could erect their trophy.

Along with the report of his victory Timoleon sent to Corinth the most beautiful of the captured armour, wishing that his own native city should be envied of all men,

when in her alone of Greek cities they saw the most conspicuous temples, not adorned with Greek spoils, nor possessed of joyless memorials in the shape of votive offerings from the slaughter of kinsmen and fellow citizens, but decked with barbarian spoils which set forth in fairest inscriptions the justice as well as the valour of the victors, declaring that Corinthians and Timoleon their general set the Greeks dwelling in Sicily free from Carthaginians, and thus dedicated thank-offerings to the gods.

After this, he left his mercenaries in the enemy’s territory plundering the dominion of the Carthaginians, and went himself to Syracuse;

there he ordered out of Sicily the thousand mercenaries by whom he had been deserted before the battle, and compelled them to depart from Syracuse before the sun went down.

These, then, after crossing into Italy, were perfidiously slain by the Bruttians, thus receiving from the divine power a penalty for their treachery.

Mamercus, however, the tyrant of Catana, and Hicetas, whether through envy of the successes won by Timoleon, or because they feared him as one who distrusted tyrants and would make no peace with them, formed an alliance with the Carthaginians and urged them to send a general with an army if they did not wish to be cast out of Sicily altogether.