d
with it either perished neglected and deserted, or else drew with them
those who sat by them and attended them, by infecting them with the
same violence of disease. Daily funerals and death were before the
eye; and lamentations were heard from all sides, day and night. At
last, their feelings had become so completely brutalized by being
habituated to these miseries, that they not only did not follow their
dead with tears and decent lamentations, but they did not even carry
them out and bury them; so that the bodies of the dead lay strewed
about, exposed to the view of those who were awaiting a similar fate;
and thus the dead were the means of destroying the sick, and the sick
those who were in health, both by fear and by the filthy state and the
noisome stench of their bodies. Some preferring to die by the sword,
even rushed alone upon the outposts of the enemy. The violence of the
plague, however, was much greater in the Carthaginian than the Roman
army; for the latter, from having been a long time before Syracuse,
had become more habituated to the climate and the water. Of the army
of the enemy, the Sicilians, as soon as they perceived that diseases
had become very common from the unwholesomeness of the situation,
dispersed to their respective cities in the neighbourhood; but the
Carthaginians, who had no place to retire to, perished, together with
their generals, Hippocrates and Himilco, to a man. Marcellus, on
seeing the violence with which the disease was raging, had removed his
troops into the city, where their debilitated frames were recruited in
houses and shade. Many however, of the Roman army were cut off by this
pestilence.

27. The land forces of the Carthaginians being thus destroyed, the
Sicilians, who had served under Hippocrates retired to two towns of no
great size, but well secured by natural situation and fortifications;
one was three miles, the other fifteen, from Syracuse. Here they
collected a store of provisions from their own states, and sent for
reinforcements. Meanwhile, Bomilcar, who had gone a second time to
Carthage, by so stating the condition of their allies as to inspire a
hope that they might not only render them effectual aid, but also that
the Romans might in a manner be made prisoners in the city which they
had captured, induced the Carthaginians to send with him as many ships
of burden as possible, laden with every kind of provisions, and to
augment the number of his ships. Settin