magistrates contented themselves with only preventing it, by an order
which forbade, in general, too great a magnificence at weddings, and
limited the expense on those occasions. Hanno, seeing his stratagem
defeated, resolved to employ open force, and for that purpose armed all
the slaves. However, he was again discovered; and, to escape punishment,
retired, with twenty thousand armed slaves, to a castle that was very
strongly fortified, and there endeavoured, but without success, to engage
in his rebellion the Africans and the king of Mauritania. He afterwards
was taken prisoner, and carried to Carthage; where, after being whipped,
his eyes were put out, his arms and thighs broken; he was put to death in
presence of the people, and his body, all torn with stripes, was hung on a
gibbet. His children and all his relations, though they had not joined in
his guilt, shared in his punishment. They were all sentenced to die, in
order that not a single person of his family might be left, either to
imitate his crime, or revenge his death. Such was the temper of the
Carthaginians; ever severe and violent in their punishments, they carried
them to the extremes of rigour, and made them extend even to the innocent,
without showing the least regard to equity, moderation, or gratitude.

I come now to the wars sustained by the Carthaginians, in Africa itself as
well as in Sicily, against Agathocles, which exercised their arms during
several years.(639)

(M104) This Agathocles was a Sicilian, of obscure birth and low
fortune.(640) Supported at first by the forces of the Carthaginians, he
had invaded the sovereignty of Syracuse, and made himself tyrant over it.
In the infancy of his power, the Carthaginians kept him within bounds; and
Hamilcar, their chief, forced him to agree to a treaty, which restored
tranquillity to Sicily. But he soon infringed the articles of it, and
declared war against the Carthaginians themselves; who, under the conduct
of Hamilcar, obtained a signal victory over him,(641) and forced him to
shut himself up in Syracuse. The Carthaginians pursued him thither, and
laid siege to that important city, the capture of which would have given
them possession of all Sicily.

Agathocles, whose forces were greatly inferior to theirs, and who moreover
saw himself deserted by all his allies, from their detestation of his
horrid cruelties, meditated a design of so daring, and, to all appearance,
so impracticable a nature, t