Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/245

 SICILIAN AFFAIRS. — GELO AND HIS DYNASTY. 221 became possessed of the town. Terillus applied for aid to Car- thage, backed by his son-in-law Anaxilaus, who espoused the quarrel so warmly, as even to tender his own children as hostages to Hamilkar the Carthaginian suffes, or general, the personal friend or guest of Terillus. The application was favorably enter- tained, and Hamilkar, arriving at Panormus in the eventful year 480 B.C., with a fleet of three thousand ships of war and a still larger number of storeships, disembarked a land-force of three hundred thousand men : which would even have been larger, had not the vessels carrying the cavalry and the chariots happened to be dispersed by storms.^ These numbers we can only repeat as we find them, without trusting them any farther than as proof that the armament was on the most extensive scale. But the different nations of whom Herodotus reports the land-force to have consisted are trustworthy and curious : it included Pheni- cians, Libyans, Iberians, Ligyes, Helisyki, Sardinians, and Cor- sicans.2 This is the first example known to us of those numer- ous mercenary armies, which it was the policy of Carthage to compose of nations different in race and language,^ in order to obviate conspiracy or mutiny against the general. Having landed at Panonnus, Hamilkar marched to Himera, dragged his vessels on shore under the shelter of a rampart, and then laid siege to the town : while the Himeroeans, reinforced by Thero and the army of Agrigentum, determined on an obstinate defence, and even bricked up the gates. Pressing messages were despatched to solicit aid from Gelo, who collected his whole force, said to have amounted to fifty thousand foot, and five thousand horse, and marched to Himera. His arrival restored the courage of the inhabitants, and after some partial fighting, which turned out to the advantage of the Greeks, a general battle ensued. It was obstinate and bloody, lasting from sunrise until late in the after- ' Herodotus (vii, 165) and Diodorus (xi, 20) both give the number of the land-force : the latter alone gives that of the fleet. ^ Herodot. vii, 165. The Ligyes came from the southern junction of Italy and France ; the gulfs of Lyons and Genoa. The Helisyki cannot be satisfactorily verified : Niebuhr considers them to have been the Vdsci : an ingenious conjecture. ' Polyb. i, 67. His description of the mutiny of the Carthaginian mer- cenaries, after the conclusion of the first Punic war, is highly instractive.