Nothing can be more mortifying than to find ourselves without information as to the manner in which Timoleon and Kephalus dealt with this large influx. Such a state of things, as it produces many new embarrassments and conflicting interests, so it calls for a degree of resource and original judgment which furnishes good measure of the capacity of all persons concerned, rendering the juncture particularly interesting and instructive. Unfortunately we are not permitted to know the details. The land of Syracuse is said to have been distributed, and the houses to have been sold for one thousand talents—the large sum of 230,000l. A right of preëmption was allowed to the Syracusan exiles for repurchasing the houses formerly their own. As the houses were sold, and that too for a considerable price—so we may presume that the lands were sold also, and that the incoming settlers did not receive their lots gratuitously. But how they were sold, or how much of the territory was sold, we are left in ignorance. It is certain, however, that the effect of the new immigration was not only to renew the force and population of Syracuse, but also to furnish relief to the extreme poverty of the antecedent residents. A great deal of new money must thus have been brought in.[359]
Such important changes doubtless occupied a considerable time, though we are not enabled to arrange them in months or years. In the meantime Timoleon continued to act in such a manner as to retain, and even to strengthen, the confidence and attachment of the Syracusans. He employed his forces actively in putting down and expelling the remaining despots throughout the island. He first attacked Hiketas, his old enemy, at Leontini; and compelled him to capitulate, on condition of demolishing the fortified citadel, abdicating his rule, and living as a private citizen in the town. Leptines, despot of Apollonia and of several other neighboring townships, was also constrained to submit, and to embrace the offer of a transport to Corinth.[360]
It appears that the submission of Hiketas was merely a feint, to obtain time for strengthening himself by urging the Carthaginians to try another invasion of Sicily.[361] They were the more disposed to this step as Timoleon, anxious to relieve the Syracusans, sent his soldiers under the Corinthian Deinarchus to find pay and plunder for themselves in the Carthaginian possessions near the western corner of Sicily. This invasion, while it abundantly supplied the wants of the soldiers, encouraged Entella and several other towns to revolt from Carthage. The indignation among the Carthaginians had been violent, when Magon returned after suddenly abandoning the harbor of Syracuse to Timoleon. Unable to make his defence satisfactory, Magon only escaped a worse death by suicide, after which his dead body was crucified by public order. And the Carthaginians now resolved on a fresh effort, to repair their honor as well as to defend their territory.[362]
The effort was made on a vast scale, and with long previous preparations. An army said to consist of seventy thousand men, under Hasdrubal and Hamilkar, was disembarked at Lilybæum, on the western corner of the island; besides which there was a fleet of two hundred triremes, and one thousand attendant vessels carrying provisions, warlike stores, engines for sieges, war-chariots with four horses, etc.[363] But the most conspicuous proof of earnest effort, over and above numbers and expense, was furnished by the presence of no less than ten thousand native infantry from Carthage; men clothed with panoplies costly, complete, and far heavier than ordinary—carrying white shields and wearing elaborate breastplates besides. These men brought to the campaign ample private baggage; splendid goblets and other articles of gold and silver, such as beseemed the rich families of that rich city. The élite of the division—twenty-five hundred in number, or one-fourth part—formed what was called the Sacred Band of Carthage.[364] It has been already stated, that in general, the Carthaginians caused their military service to be performed by hired foreigners, with few of their own citizens. Hence this army stood particularly distinguished, and appeared the more formidable on their landing; carrying panic, by the mere report, all over Sicily not excepting even Syracuse. The Corinthian troops ravaging the Carthaginian province were obliged to retreat in haste, and sent to Timoleon for reinforcement.
The miscellaneous body of immigrants recently domiciliated at Syracuse, employed in the cares inseparable from new settlement, had not come prepared to face so terrible a foe. Though Timoleon used every effort to stimulate their courage, and though his exhortations met with full apparent response, yet such was the panic prevailing, that comparatively few would follow him to the field. He could assemble no greater total than twelve thousand men; including about three thousand Syracusan citizens—the paid force which he had round him at Syracuse—that other paid force under Deinarchus, who had been just compelled by the invaders to evacuate the Carthaginian province—and finally such allies as would join.[365] His cavalry was about one thousand in number. Nevertheless, in spite of so great an inferiority, Timoleon determined to advance and meet the enemy in their own province, before they should have carried ravage over the territory of Syracuse and her allies. But when he approached near to the border, within the territory of Agrigentum, the alarm and mistrust of his army threatened to arrest his farther progress. An officer among his mercenaries, named Thrasius, took advantage of the prevailing feeling to raise a mutiny against him, persuading the soldiers that Timoleon was madly hurrying them on to certain ruin, against an enemy six times superior in number, and in a hostile country eight days’ march from Syracuse; so that there would be neither salvation for them in case of reverse, nor interment if they were slain. Their pay being considerably in arrear Thrasius urged them to return to Syracuse for the purpose of extorting the money, instead of following a commander, who could not or would not requite them, upon such desperate service. Such was the success and plausibility of these recommendations, under the actual discouragement, that they could hardly be counterworked by all the efforts of Timoleon. Nor was there ever any conjuncture in which his influence, derived as well from unbounded personal esteem as from belief in his favor with the gods, was so near failing. As it was, though he succeeded in heartening up and retaining the large body of his army, yet Thrasius, with one thousand of the mercenaries, insisted upon returning, and actually did return, to Syracuse. Moreover Timoleon was obliged to send an order along with them to the authorities at home, that these men must immediately, and at all cost, receive their arrears of pay. The wonder is, that he succeeded in his efforts to retain the rest, after insuring to the mutineers a lot which seemed so much safer and more enviable. Thrasius, a brave man, having engaged in the service of the Phokians Philomêlus and Onomarchus, had been concerned in the pillage of the Delphian temple, which drew upon him the aversion of the Grecian world.[366] How many of the one thousand seceding soldiers, who now followed him to Syracuse, had been partners in the same sacrilegious act, we cannot tell. But it is certain that they were men who had taken service with Timoleon in hopes of a period, not merely of fighting, but also of lucrative license, such as his generous regard for the settled inhabitants would not permit.
Having succeeded in keeping up the spirits of his remaining army, and affecting to treat the departure of so many cowards as a positive advantage, Timoleon marched on westward into the Carthaginian province, until he approached within a short distance of the river Krimêsus, a stream which rises in the mountainous region south of Panormus (Palermo), runs nearly southward, and falls into the sea near Selinus. Some mules, carrying loads of parsley, met him on the road; a fact which called forth again the half-suppressed alarm of the soldiers, since parsley was habitually employed for the wreaths deposited on tombstones. But Timoleon, taking a handful of it and weaving a wreath for his own head, exclaimed, “This is our Corinthian symbol of victory: it is the sacred herb with which we decorate our victors at the Isthmian festival. It comes to us here spontaneously, as an earnest of our approaching success.” Insisting emphatically on this theme, and crowning himself as well as his officers with the parsley, he rekindled the spirits of the army, and conducted them forward to the top of the eminence, immediately above the course of the Krimêsus.[367]
It was just at that moment that the Carthaginian army were passing the river, on their march to meet him. The confused noise and clatter of their approach were plainly heard; though the mist of a May morning,[368] overhanging the valley, still concealed from the eye the army crossing. Presently the mist ascended from the lower ground to the hill tops around, leaving the river and the Carthaginians beneath in conspicuous view. Formidable was the aspect which they presented. The war-chariots-and-four,[369] which formed their front, had already crossed the river, and appear to have been halting a little way in advance. Next to them followed the native Carthaginians, ten thousand chosen hoplites with white shields, who had also in part crossed and were still crossing; while the main body of the host, the foreign mercenaries, were pressing behind in a disorderly mass to get to the bank, which appears to have been in part rugged. Seeing how favorable was the moment for attacking them, while thus disarrayed and bisected by the river, Timoleon, after a short exhortation, gave orders immediately to charge down the hill.[370] His Sicilian allies, with some mercenaries intermingled, were on the two wings; while he himself, with the Syracusans and the best of the mercenaries, occupied the centre. Demaretus with his cavalry was ordered to assail the Carthaginians first, before they could form regularly. But the chariots in their front, protecting the greater part of the line, left him only the power of getting at them partially through the vacant intervals. Timoleon, soon perceiving that his cavalry accomplished little, recalled them and ordered them to charge on the flanks, while he himself, with all the force of his infantry, undertook to attack in front. Accordingly, seizing his shield from the attendant, he marched forward in advance, calling aloud to the infantry around to be of good cheer and follow. Never had his voice been heard so predominant and heart-stirring; the effect of it was powerfully felt on the spirits of all around, who even believed that they heard a god speaking along with him.[371] Reëchoing his shout emphatically, they marched forward to the charge with the utmost alacrity—in compact order, and under the sound of trumpets.
The infantry were probably able to evade or break through the bulwark of interposed chariots with greater ease than the cavalry, though Plutarch does not tell us how this was done. Timoleon and his soldiers then came into close and furious contest with the chosen Carthaginian infantry, who resisted with a courage worthy of their reputation. Their vast shields, iron breastplates, and brazen helmets (forming altogether armor heavier than was worn usually even by Grecian hoplites), enabled them to repel the spear-thrusts of the Grecian assailants, who were compelled to take to their swords, and thus to procure themselves admission within the line of Carthaginian spears, so as to break their ranks. Such use of swords is what we rarely read of in a Grecian battle. Though the contest was bravely maintained by the Carthaginians, yet they were too much loaded with armor to admit of anything but fighting in a dense mass. They were already losing their front rank warriors, the picked men of the whole, and beginning to fight at a disadvantage—when the gods, yet farther befriending Timoleon, set the seal to their discomfiture by an intervention manifest and terrific.[372] A storm of the most violent character began. The hill-tops were shrouded in complete darkness; the wind blew a hurricane; rain and hail poured abundantly, with all the awful accompaniments of thunder and lightning. To the Greeks, this storm was of little inconvenience, because it came in their backs. But to the Carthaginians, pelting as it did directly in their faces, it occasioned both great suffering, and soul-subduing alarm. The rain and hail beat, and the lightning flashed, in their faces, so that they could not see to deal with hostile combatants: the noise of the wind, and of hail rattling against their armor, prevented the orders of their officers from being heard: the folds of their voluminous military tunics were surcharged with rain-water, so as to embarrass their movements: the ground presently became so muddy that they could not keep their footing; and when they once slipped, the weight of their equipment forbade all recovery. The Greeks, comparatively free from inconvenience, and encouraged by the evident disablement of their enemies, pressed them with redoubled energy. At length, when the four hundred front rank men of the Carthaginians had perished by a brave death in their places, the rest of the White-shields turned their backs and sought relief in flight. But flight, too, was all but impossible. They encountered their own troops in the rear advancing up, and trying to cross the Krimêsus; which river itself was becoming every minute fuller and more turbid, through the violent rain. The attempt to recross was one of such unspeakable confusion, that numbers perished in the torrent. Dispersing in total rout, the whole Carthaginian army thought only of escape, leaving their camp and baggage a prey to the victors, who pursued them across the river and over the hills on the other side, inflicting prodigious slaughter. In this pursuit the cavalry of Timoleon, not very effective during the battle, rendered excellent service; pressing the fugitive Carthaginians one over another in mass, and driving them, overloaded with their armor, into mud and water, from whence they could not get clear.[373]
No victory in Grecian history was ever more complete than that of Timoleon at the Krimêsus. Ten thousand Carthaginians are said to have been slain, and fifteen thousand made prisoners. Upon these numbers no stress is to be laid; but it is certain that the total of both must have been very great. Of the war-chariots, many were broken during the action, and all that remained, two hundred in number, fell into the hands of the victors. But that which rendered the loss most serious, and most painfully felt at Carthage, was, that it fell chiefly upon the native Carthaginian troops, and much less upon the foreign mercenaries. It is even said that the Sacred Battalion of Carthage, comprising twenty-five hundred soldiers belonging to the most considerable families in Carthage, were all slain to a man; a statement, doubtless, exaggerated, yet implying a fearful real destruction. Many of these soldiers purchased safe escape by throwing away their ornamented shields and costly breastplates, which the victors picked up in great numbers—one thousand breastplates, and not less than ten thousand shields. Altogether, the spoil collected was immense—in arms, in baggage, and in gold and silver from the plundered camp; occupying the Greeks so long in the work of pursuit and capture, that they did not find time to erect their trophy until the third day after the battle. Timoleon left the chief part of the plunder,[374] as well as most part of the prisoners, in the hands of the individual captors, who enriched themselves amply by the day’s work. Yet there still remained a large total for the public Syracusan chest; five thousand prisoners, and a miscellaneous spoil of armor and precious articles, piled up in imposing magnificence around the general’s tent.
The Carthaginian fugitives did not rest until they reached Lilybæum. And even there, such was their discouragement—so profound their conviction that the wrath of the gods was upon them—that they could scarcely be induced to go on shipboard for the purpose of returning to Carthage; persuaded as they were that if once caught out at sea, the gods in their present displeasure would never let them reach land.[375] At Carthage itself also, the sorrow and depression was unparalleled: sorrow private as well as public, from the loss of so great a number of principal citizens. It was even feared that the victorious Timoleon would instantly cross the sea and attack Carthage on her own soil. Immediate efforts were however made to furnish a fresh army for Sicily, composed of foreign mercenaries with few or no native citizens. Giskon, the son of Hanno, who passed for their most energetic citizen, was recalled from exile, and directed to get together this new armament.