Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/506

 484 HISTORY OF GREECE. cities, whose number and importance had since fearfully aug. mented. These subject-cities, from Kamarina on one side of the island to Selinus and Himera on the other, though there were a certain number of Carthaginian residents established there, had no effec- tive standing force to occupy or defend them on the part of Car- thage ; whose habit it was to levy large mercenary hosts for the special occasion and then to disband them afterwards. Accordingly, as soon as Dionysius with his powerful army passed the Syracusan border, and entered upon his march westward along the southern coast of the island, proclaiming himself as liberator the most intense an ti- Carthaginian manifestations burst forth at once, at Kamarina, Gela, Agrigentum, Selinus, and Himera. These Greeks did not merely copy the Syracusans in plundering the property of all Carthaginians found among them, but also seized their persons, and put them to death with every species of indignity and torture. A frightful retaliation now took place for the cruelties recently committed by the Carthaginian armies, in the sacking of Selinus, Agrigentum, and the other conquered cities. 1 The Hellenic war- practice, in itself sufficiently rigorous, was aggravated into a mer- ciless and studied barbarity, analogous to that which had disfigured the late proceedings of Carthage and her western mercenaries. These " Sicilian vespers," which burst out throughout all the south of Sicily against the Carthaginian residents, surpassed even the memorable massacre known under that name in the thirteenth cen- tury, wherein the Angevine knights and soldiers were indeed assassinated, but not tortured. Diodorus tells us that the Cartha- ginians learnt from the retaliation thus suffered, a lesson of for- bearance. It will not appear however, from their future conduct, that the lesson was much laid to heart ; while it is unhappily cer- Avrol 6s, epev irpoTepov deijdevrof /3ap/3aptKOv arparov avvEirdipaadai,, 5re IJLOI irpbe Kapxrjftoviovf vsiKOf avvfjTrro i> TTOTEI vovrof TS rd lp* iro pia avvEhevdepovv, etc. 1 Diodor. xiv, 46. Ov /J.OVQV yap avruv ruf ovaia? dLTjp^aaav,  varepov Xpwov, vare Toiif Kapxjj6oviovf fitda'x&Tjvai [ITJKETL irapavoftslv sif -rovf VKOTTg' OOVTdC.