e following year Imilcon being appointed one of the Suffetes, returned
to Sicily with a far greater army than before.(623) He landed at
Palermo,(624) recovered Motya by force, and took several other cities.
Animated by these successes, he advanced towards Syracuse, with design to
besiege it; marching his infantry by land, whilst his fleet, under the
command of Mago, sailed along the coast.

The arrival of Imilcon threw the Syracusans into great consternation.
Above two hundred ships laden with the spoils of the enemy, and advancing
in good order, entered in a kind of triumph the great harbour, being
followed by five hundred barks. At the same time, the land army,
consisting, according to some authors, of three hundred thousand
foot,(625) and three thousand horse, was seen marching forward on the
other side of the city. Imilcon pitched his tent in the very temple of
Jupiter; and the rest of the army encamped at twelve furlongs, or about a
mile and a half from the city. Marching up to it, Imilcon offered battle
to the inhabitants, who did not care to accept the challenge. Imilcon,
satisfied at his having extorted from the Syracusans this confession of
their own weakness and his superiority, returned to his camp; not doubting
but he should soon be master of the city, considering it already as a
certain prey which could not possibly escape him. For thirty days
together, he laid waste the neighbourhood about Syracuse, and ruined the
whole country. He possessed himself of the suburb of Acradina, and
plundered the temples of Ceres and Proserpine. To fortify his camp, he
beat down the tombs which stood round the city; and, among others, that of
Gelon and his wife Demarata, which was prodigiously magnificent.

But these successes were not lasting. All the splendour of this
anticipated triumph vanished in a moment, and taught mankind, says the
historian,(626) that the proudest mortal, blasted sooner or later by a
superior power, shall be forced to confess his own weakness. Whilst
Imilcon, now master of almost all the cities of Sicily, expected to crown
his conquests by the reduction of Syracuse, a contagious distemper seized
his army, and made dreadful havoc in it. It was now the midst of summer,
and the heat that year was excessive. The infection began among the
Africans, multitudes of whom died, without any possibility of their being
relieved. At first, care was taken to inter the dead; but the number
increasing daily, and the