at its defeats or at most
with nailing the defeated generals to the cross. Hamilcar resolved to
take the matter into his own hands. He knew well that his mercenaries
were as indifferent to Carthage as to Rome, and that he had to expect
from his government not Phoenician or Libyan conscripts, but at the
best a permission to save his country with his troops in his own way,
provided it cost nothing. But he knew himself also, and he knew men.
His mercenaries cared nothing for Carthage; but a true general is able
to substitute his own person for his country in the affections of his
soldiers; and such an one was this young commander. After he had
accustomed his men to face the legionaries in the warfare of outposts
before Drepana and Lilybaeum, he established himself with his force on
Mount Ercte (Monte Pellegrino near Palermo), which commands like a
fortress the neighbouring country; and making them settle there with
their wives and children, levied contributions from the plains, while
Phoenician privateers plundered the Italian coast as far as Cumae. He
thus provided his people with copious supplies without asking money
from the Carthaginians, and, keeping up the communication with Drepana
by sea, he threatened to surprise the important town of Panormus in
his immediate vicinity. Not only were the Romans unable to expel
him from his stronghold, but after the struggle had lasted awhile at
Ercte, Hamilcar formed for himself another similar position at Eryx.
This mountain, which bore half-way up the town of the same name and
on its summit the temple of Aphrodite, had been hitherto in the hands
of the Romans, who made it a basis for annoying Drepana. Hamilcar
deprived them of the town and besieged the temple, while the Romans
in turn blockaded him from the plain. The Celtic deserters from the
Carthaginian army who were stationed by the Romans at the forlorn post
of the temple--a reckless pack of marauders, who in the course of this
siege plundered the temple and perpetrated every sort of outrage
--defended the summit of the rock with desperate courage; but Hamilcar
did not allow himself to be again dislodged from the town, and kept
his communications constantly open by sea with the fleet and the
garrison of Drepana. The war in Sicily seemed to be assuming a turn
more and more unfavourable for the Romans. The Roman state was losing
in that warfare its money and its soldiers, and the Roman generals
their repute; it was