remitting
the whole tenth to him. They were seized with a scruple on this point:
they made an open and public confession of their insincerity and
sacrilegious avarice; and, to expiate their guilt, they sent to Tyre a
great number of presents, and small shrines of their deities all of gold,
which amounted to a prodigious value.

Another violation of religion, which to their inhuman superstition seemed
as flagrant as the former, gave them no less uneasiness. Anciently,
children of the best families in Carthage used to be sacrificed to Saturn.
They now reproached themselves with having failed to pay to the god the
honours which they thought were due to him; and with having used fraud and
dishonest dealing towards him, by having substituted, in their sacrifices,
children of slaves or beggars, bought for that purpose, in the room of
those nobly born. To expiate the guilt of so horrid an impiety, a
sacrifice was made to this blood-thirsty god, of two hundred children of
the first rank; and upwards of three hundred persons, through a sense of
this terrible neglect, offered themselves voluntarily as victims, to
pacify, by the effusion of their blood, the wrath of the gods.

After these expiations, expresses were despatched to Hamilcar in Sicily,
with the news of what had happened in Africa, and, at the same time, to
request immediate succours. He commanded the deputies to observe the
strictest silence on the subject of the victory of Agathocles; and spread
a contrary report, that he had been entirely defeated, his forces all cut
off, and his whole fleet taken by the Carthaginians; and, in confirmation
of this report, he showed the irons of the vessels pretended to be taken,
which had been carefully sent to him. The truth of this report was not at
all doubted in Syracuse; the majority were for capitulating;(647) when a
galley of thirty oars, built in haste by Agathocles, arrived in the port;
and through great difficulties and dangers forced its way to the besieged.
The news of Agathocles's victory immediately flew through the city, and
restored alacrity and resolution to the inhabitants. Hamilcar made a last
effort to storm the city, but was beaten off with loss. He then raised the
siege, and sent five thousand men to the relief of his distressed country.
Some time after,(648) having resumed the siege, and hoping to surprise the
Syracusans by attacking them in the night, his design was discovered; and
falling alive into the ene