Timoleon

so that they were unwieldy and ineffective in their fighting, and easily upset by the Greeks, and when they had once fallen it was impossible for them to rise again from the mud with their weapons.

For the Crimesus, having been already greatly swollen by the rains, was forced over its banks by those who were crossing it, and the adjacent plain, into which many glens and ravines opened from the hills, was filled with streams that hurried along no fixed channels, and in these the Carthaginians wallowed about and were hard beset.

Finally, the storm still assailing them, and the Greeks having overthrown their first rank of four hundred men, the main body was put to flight.

Many were overtaken in the plain and cut to pieces, and many the river dashed upon and carried away to destruction as they encountered those who were still trying to cross, but most of them the light-armed Greeks ran upon and despatched as they were making for the hills.

At any rate, it is said that among ten thousand dead bodies, three thousand were those of Carthaginians—a great affliction for the city.

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.