Scipio, not thinking it was wise that his ally Massinissa should have in his household a Carthaginian wife, sent him a message that he should send her away to her own country; but rather than lose her, Massinissa presented the unfortunate girl with a cup of poison, and ordered her to drink it.
Remarking placidly that it seemed an inappropriate end for the bride of two kings, but that anything was better than life itself, poor Sophonisba gladly swallowed the poison, and died in agony.
Elissa, while sailing along the coast of Sicily, reflected sadly on this tragedy.
“Such,” she thought, “is the fate of humanity, and the ruling of the gods cannot be foretold. Therefore, as in the very hour of greatest prosperity sudden and great reverses may be awaiting us, it behoveth us all never to neglect the service of those omnipotent rulers of our being.”
Thus reflected Elissa when she looked back upon her own sudden fall from a position of almost regal rank to the state of a mere prisoner of war being deported to a foreign land.
At this time the war in Sicily centred round the enormous and powerful city of Syracuse, which had, with all its surrounding territory, remained, under King Hiero, an independent kingdom for no less than fifty years past. In the previous Punic war, when every other city in Sicily fell, first to one power then to another, neither Roman nor Carthaginian had ever been able to set foot within its walls. And this was chiefly owing to the wisdom of King Hiero himself, who, after various sieges and conflicts with each power in turn, concluded an alliance with Rome, which he maintained throughout his long reign of fifty years’ duration. But Hiero being dead, and succeeded by his grandson Hieronymus, all this was soon changed.
The young king was a debauched youth with an overweening idea of his own importance, and he openly insulted the ambassadors who came to him from Rome to seek a renewal of the old alliance. Insolently asking them, “What account the Romans had been able to give of themselves at Cannæ?” he declared for Carthage.
The city of Syracuse being full of intrigue, some wishing to remain faithful to Rome, others to attach themselves to Carthage, while all alike were disgusted with the cruelties and debauchery of the young king; the latter was soon assassinated, as were also all the princesses of the royal family, including Hiero’s daughter Demarata, and his grand-daughter Harmonia, and their respective husbands Andranodorus and Themistius.
Heraclea, the youngest daughter of Hiero, and her two beautiful daughters were murdered with the greatest brutality, after a terrible struggle; but no sooner were they dead than a messenger arrived from the magistrates who had ordered their murder, but had now relented, to stay the execution, for the very people themselves, who had been thirsting for all the royal blood a short time before, had now turned round upon the magistrates who had ordered the crime and ousted them, calling for the election of new pretors in place of the massacred Andranodorus and Themistius.
And thus it came to pass that two young generals, brothers, named Hippocrates and Epicydes, who were envoys from Hannibal to the Syracusans, came to be elected into power. These two young men were Syracusans themselves on the father’s side, but their mother was a Carthaginian, and they had been brought up in Carthage, where Cleandra had known them well while living there with her husband. They had already been at the bottom of the plotting and the counter-plotting against Rome, and although there were still various parties in the city, upon their election, after various vicissitudes and some fighting within the walls, they contrived to completely embroil the whole of the inhabitants with Rome. This was done by Hippocrates openly attacking, with Syracusan soldiers, a body of troops belong to the Roman consul, Appius Claudius, which the latter had sent to protect his allies in the neighbouring city of Leontini. Epicydes also repaired to Leontini, and by specious arguments persuaded the inhabitants of Leontini to rise against Rome.