consent demanded it, and when he
hesitated and delayed, threatened him furiously, and seemed as though
they would not further delay violent extremities then the praefect
gave the signal agreed upon with his gown and the soldiers, who had
been long anxiously waiting the signal, and in readiness, raising a
shout, ran down, some of them from the higher ground, upon the rear of
the assembly while others blocked up the passages leading out of the
crowded theatre. The people of Enna thus shut up in the pit were put
to the sword, being heaped one upon another not only in consequence of
the slaughter, but also from their own efforts to escape, for some
scrambling over the heads of others, and those that were unhurt
falling upon the wounded, and the living upon the dead, they were
accumulated together. Thence they ran in every direction throughout
the city, when nothing was any where to be seen but flight and
bloodshed, as though the city had been captured, for the rage of the
soldiery was not less excited in putting to the sword an unarmed
rabble, than it would have been had the heat of battle and an equality
of danger stimulated it. Thus possession of Enna was retained, by an
act which was either atrocious or unavoidable. Marcellus did not
disapprove of the deed, and gave up the plunder of the place to the
soldiery, concluding that the Sicilians, deterred by this example,
would refrain from betraying their garrisons. As this city was
situated in the heart of Sicily, and was distinguished both on account
of the remarkable strength of its natural situation, and because every
part of it was rendered sacred by the traces it contained of the rape
of Proserpine of old, the news of its disaster spread though the whole
of Sicily in nearly one day, and as people considered that by this
horrid massacre violence had been done not only to the habitations of
men, but even of the gods, then indeed those who even before this
event were in doubt which side they should take, revolted to the
Carthaginians Hippocrates and Himilco, who had in vain brought up
their troops to Enna at the invitation of the traitors, retired
thence, the former to Murgantia, the latter to Agrigentum. Marcellus
retrograded into the territory of Leontium, and after collecting a
quantity of corn and other provisions in his camp there, left a small
body of troops to protect it, and then went to carry on the siege of
Syracuse. Appius Claudius having been allowed to go from