Timoleon

Plutarch

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

Timoleon, therefore, wishing to decide their order by lot, took a seal-ring from each of the leaders, and after casting all the rings into his own cloak and mixing them up, he showed the first that came out, and it had by chance as the device of its seal a trophy of victory.

When the young men saw it, they cried aloud for joy and would no longer wait for the rest of the lot, but all dashed through the river as fast as they could and closed with the enemy.

These could not withstand the violence of their onset, but fled, all alike losing their arms, and a thousand being left dead on the field.

Not long afterwards Timoleon made an expedition into the territory of Leontini and captured Hicetas alive, together with his son Eupolemus and his master of horse Euthymus, who were bound and brought to Timoleon by his soldiers.

Hicetas, then, and his young son, were punished as tyrants and traitors and put to death, and Euthymus, though a brave man in action and of surpassing boldness, found no pity because of a certain insult to the Corinthians which was alleged against him.

It is said, namely, that when the Corinthians had taken the field against them, Euthymus told the men of Leontini in a public harangue that it was nothing fearful or dreadful if

  1. Corinthian women came forth from their homes.
[*](An adaptation of Euripides, Medeia, 215 (Kirchhoff), where Medea speaks to the chorus in the first person.)