Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/450

 428 HISTORY OF GREECE. the Kamarinaean Menes, himself one of the leachis, seemingly of the Kamarinsuan contingent in the army of Daphnreus. The concurrer.ee of Menes, carrying to the Agrigentines a full sanc- tion of their sentiments, wrought them up to such a pitch of fury, that the generals, when they came to defend themselves, found neither sympathy nor even common fairness of hearing. Four out of the five were stoned and put to death on the spot ; the fifth, Argeius, was spared only on the ground of his youth ; and even the Lacedaemonian Dexippus was severely censured. 1 How far, in regard to these proceedings, the generals were really guilty, or how far their defence, had it been fairly heard, would have been valid, is a point which our scanty information does not enable us to determine. But it is certain that the arrival of the victorious Syracusans at Agrigentum completely altered the relative position of affairs. Instead of farther assaulting the walls, Imilkon was attacked in his camp by Daphnaeus. The camp, however, was so fortified as to repel all attempts, and the siege from this time forward became only a blockade ; a contest of patience and privation between the city and the besiegers, lasting seven or eight months from the commencement of the siege. At first Daphnaeus, with his own force united to the Agrigentines, was strong enough to harass the Carthaginians and intercept their supph'es, so that the greatest distress began to prevail among their army. The Campanian mercenaries even broke out into mutiny, crowding, with clamorous demands for provision and with menace of deserting, around the tent of Imilkon ; who barely pacified them by pledging to them the gold and silver drinking-cups of the chief Carthaginians around him, 9 coupled with entreaties that they 1 Diodor. xiii, 87. The youth of Argeius, combined with the fact of his being in high com- mand, makes us rather imagine that he was of noble birth : compare Thu- cydid. vi, 38, the speech of Athenagoras. of the war of Timoleon against the Carthaginians, of the abundance of gold and silver drinking cups, and rich personal ornaments, carried by the native Carthaginians on military service (Diodor. xvi, 81 ; Plutarch, Tim- oleon, c. 28, 29). There was a select body of Carthaginians, a Sacred Band, mentioned iirthese later times, consisting of two thousand five hundred men of dis- tinguished bravery as well as of conspicuous position in the city (Diodoi xvi. 80; xx, 10).
 * Mention is again made, sixty-five years afterwards, in the description