shed to be utterly
driven out of Sicily, must send a competent force and a general. Gisco
the son of Hanno sailed thither with seventy ships, and also with a
force of Greek mercenary soldiers, whom the Carthaginians had never used
before; but now they were full of admiration for the Greeks, as being
the most warlike and invincible of men. Having effected a junction of
their forces in the territory of Messina, they cut to pieces a body of
four hundred foreign soldiers whom Timoleon sent against them; and in
the Carthaginian dominion they laid an ambush near the place called
Hietae, and cut off the hired troops of Euthymus the Leukadian. Both
these circumstances made the good fortune of Timoleon more renowned. For
these were some of the men who under Philomelus of Phokis and Onomarchus
sacrilegiously took Delphi, and shared in the plunder of the temple. As
all men loathed them and shrank from them as from men under a curse,
they wandered about Peloponnesus until Timoleon, being unable to get any
other soldiers, enlisted them in his service. When they reached Sicily,
they were victorious in every battle which they fought where he was
present. After the most important struggles of the war were over, they
were sent to reinforce others, and so perished and came to nought; and
not all at once, but piecemeal, as if their avenging fate had given way
to Timoleon's good fortune for a season, lest the good should suffer
from the punishment of the wicked. Thus the kindness of the gods towards
Timoleon was no less seen and wondered at in his failures than in his
successes.

XXXI. The people of Syracuse were much nettled by the insulting jests
passed upon them by the despots. Mamercus, who plumed himself on his
poems and tragedies, gave himself great airs after conquering the
mercenaries, and when he hung up their shields as offerings to the gods,
he inscribed this insolent elegiac couplet upon them.

"These, with purple wrought, and ivory, gold, and amber,
We with our simple shields conquered and laid in the dust."

After these events, while Timoleon was on a campaign in the direction of
Kalauria, Hiketes invaded the Syracusan territory, did much damage and
insult, and retired loaded with spoil, past the very walls of Kalauria,
despising Timoleon, who had but a small force with him. He, however, let
him pass, but then pursued with his cavalry and light troops. Hiketes,
perceiving this, halted after crossing the river Damyri