, took the advice of the elder
senators, and with their sanction, having placed a guard at the doors,
slew Themistus and Andranodorus as soon as they had entered the
senate-house. A disturbance arising in consequence of this act, which,
as none but the praetors knew the cause of it, wore an appearance of
atrocity, the praetors, having at length procured silence, introduced
the informer into the senate-house; and after he had in a regular
manner detailed to the senate every particular, showing that the
conspiracy owed its origin to the marriage of Harmonia, the daughter
of Gelon, with Themistus; that the African and Spanish auxiliaries had
been prepared to murder the praetors and others of the nobility; that
it had been given out that their goods were to be the booty of the
assassins; that already a band of mercenaries accustomed to obey the
command of Andranodorus had been procured for the reoccupation of the
island; and having then distinctly represented to them the several
parts which the persons implicated in the transaction were performing,
and having brought under their view the entire plot prepared for
execution with men and arms; it seemed to the senate that they had
fallen as justly as Hieronymus had. A shout was raised before the
senate-house by a crowd of people variously disposed and uncertain of
the facts; but as they were conducting themselves in a furious and
menacing manner, the bodies of the conspirators in the vestibule of
the senate-house restrained them with such alarm, that they silently
followed the more discreet part of the commons to an assembly. Sopater
was the person commissioned by the senate and his colleague to explain
the affair.

25. Treating them as if they stood upon their trial, he began with
their past lives; and insisted that Andranodorus and Themistus were
the authors of every act of iniquity and impiety which had been
perpetrated since the death of Hiero. "For what," said he, "did the
boy Hieronymus ever do of his own accord? What could he do who had
scarce as yet arrived at puberty? His tutors and guardians had ruled,
while the odium rested on another. Therefore they ought to have been
put to death either before Hieronymus or with him. Nevertheless those
men, deservedly marked out for death, had attempted fresh crimes after
the decease of the tyrant; first openly, when, closing the gates of
the island, Andranodorus declared himself heir to the throne, and kept
that as proprietor wh