Timoleon

Plutarch

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

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.

Accordingly, Gisco set sail[*](In the spring of 338 B.C.) with a fleet of seventy ships, and added Greek mercenaries to his forces, although the Carthaginians had never before employed Greek soldiers; they did so at this time, however, because they had come to admire them as the best and most irresistible fighters in the world.