Timoleon

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.

So natural is it for most men to be more galled by bitter words than hostile acts; since insolence is harder for them to bear than injury. Besides, defensive acts are tolerated in an enemy as a necessary right, but insults are thought to spring from an excess of hatred or baseness.

After Timoleon had returned, the Syracusans brought the wives and daughters of Hicetas and his friends to public trial, and then put them to death.

And this would seem to have been the most displeasing thing in Timoleon’s career; for if he had opposed it, the women would not have been thus put to death.

But apparently he neglected them and abandoned them to the wrath of the citizens, who were bent on taking vengeance in behalf of Dion, who drove out Dionysius.

For Hicetas was the man who took Arete the wife of Dion, and Aristomache his sister, and his son, who was still a boy, and threw them into the sea alive, concerning which things I have written in my Life of Dion.[*](Chapter lviii. 4.)