ely
beaten. Muttines was not induced to deviate from his course; he
maintained himself in the interior of the country, occupied several
small towns, and was enabled by the not inconsiderable reinforcements
which joined him from Carthage gradually to extend his operations.
His successes were so brilliant, that at length the commander-in-
chief, who could not otherwise prevent the cavalry officer from
eclipsing him, deprived him summarily of the command of the light
cavalry, and entrusted it to his own son. The Numidian, who had
now for two years preserved the island for his Phoenician masters,
had the measure of his patience exhausted by this treatment. He and
his horsemen who refused to follow the younger Hanno entered into
negotiations with the Roman general Marcus Valerius Laevinus and
delivered to him Agrigentum. Hanno escaped in a boat, and went to
Carthage to report to his superiors the disgraceful high treason of
Hannibal's officer; the Phoenician garrison in the town was put to
death by the Romans, and the citizens were sold into slavery (544).
To secure the island from such surprises as the landing of 540, the
city received a new body of inhabitants selected from Sicilians well
disposed towards Rome; the old glorious Akragas was no more. After
the whole of Sicily was thus subdued, the Romans exerted themselves to
restore some sort of tranquillity and order to the distracted island.
The pack of banditti that haunted the interior were driven together
en masse and conveyed to Italy, that from their head-quarters at
Rhegium they might burn and destroy in the territories of Hannibal's
allies. The government did its utmost to promote the restoration
of agriculture which had been totally neglected in the island.
The Carthaginian council more than once talked of sending a fleet
to Sicily and renewing the war there; but the project went no further.

Philip of Macedonia and His Delay

Macedonia might have exercised an influence over the course of
events more decisive than that of Syracuse. From the Eastern powers
neither furtherance nor hindrance was for the moment to be expected.
Antiochus the Great, the natural ally of Philip, had, after the
decisive victory of the Egyptians at Raphia in 537, to deem himself
fortunate in obtaining peace from the indolent Philopator on the basis
of the -status quo ante-. The rivalry of the Lagidae and the constant
apprehension of a renewed outbreak of the war on the one hand, a