Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/427

 ARMAMENT OF HANNIBAL. 405 <fie neutrality which they had professed so recently before ; for the contest seemed to be aggressive on the part of Selinus, so that Syra- cuse had little interest in helping her to conquer Egesta. Neither Syracusans nor Selinuntines were prepared for the immense prepa- rations, and energetic rapidity of movement by which Hannibal at once altered the character, and enlarged the purposes, of the war. He employed all the ensuing autumn and winter in collecting a numerous host of mercenary troops from Africa, Spain, and Cam- pania, with various Greeks who were willing to take service. 1 In the spring of the memorable year 409 B. c., through the exuberant wealth of Carthage, he was in a condition to leave Africa with a great fleet of sixty triremes, and fifteen hundred transports or vessels of burthen; 2 conveying an army, which, according to the comparatively low estimate of Timseus, amounted to more than one hundred thousand men ; while Ephorus extended the number to two hundred thousand infantry, and four thousand cavalry, together with muniments of war and battering machines for siege. With these he steered directly for the western Cape of Sicily, Lilybseum ; taking care, however, to land his troops and to keep his fleet on the northern side of that cape, in the bay near Motye, and not to approach the southern shore, lest he should alarm the Syracusans with the idea that he was about to prose- cute his voyage farther eastward along the southern coast towards their city. By this precaution, he took the best means for pro- longing the period of Syracusan inaction. The Selinuntines, panic- struck at the advent of an enemy so much more overwhelming than they had expected, sent pressing messengers to Syracuse to accelerate the promised help. They had made no provision for standing on the defensive against a really formidable aggressor. Their walls, though strong enough to hold out against Sicilian neighbors, had been neglected during the long-continued absence of any foreign besieger, and were now in many places out of 1 Diodor. xiii, 54-58. oi rotf KapxTjdovioic "EA/l^vef fiy^ua^owref, etc. It cannot therefore be exact, that which Plutarch affirms, Timoleon, c. JO, that the Carthaginians had never employed Greeks in their service, tt the time of the battle of the Krimesus, B. c. 340. Sov'^Tj'dsvTSf xpvabv -yap ml upytiooi. -"kflarov KiKTyvTit, o&ev o re 7ro/le tof not Ta(,a sinropel.
 * Thucyd. vi. 34. ,dvva.Toi 6i tiai (the Carthaginians) fiuhiGTa TUV vvv,