Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/530

 008 HISTORY OF GREECE. to Dionysius from his mercenary troops, on whose arms his do- minion rested ; and what Ave are here told is enough merely tc raise curiosity without satisfying it. These men are said to have been mutinous and disaffected ; a fact, which explains, if it does not extenuate, the grcss perfidy of deliberately inveigling them to destruction, while he still professed to keep them under his command. In the actual state of the Carthaginian army, Dionysius could afford to make them a present of this obnoxious division. His own attack, first upon the fort of Polichne, next upon that near the naval station at Daskon, was conducted with spirit and success. While the defenders, thinned and enfeebled by the pestilence, were striving to repel him on the land-side, the Syracusan fleet came forth from its docks in excellent spirits and order to attack the ships at the station. These Carthaginian ships, though afloat and moored, were very imperfectly manned. Before the crews could get aboard to put them on their defence, the Syracusan tri- remes and quinqueremes, ably rowed and with their brazen beaks well directed, drove against them on the quarter or midships, and broke through the line of their timbers. The crash of such impact was heard afar off, and the best ships were thus speedily disabled. 1 Following up their success, the Syracusans jumped aboard, over- powered the crews, or forced them to seek safety as they could in flight. The distracted Carthaginians being thus pressed at the same time by sea and by land, the soldiers of Dionysius from the land-side forced their way through the entrenchment to the shore, where forty pentekonters were hauled up, while immediately near them were moored both merchantmen and triremes. The assail- ants set fire to the pentekonters ; upon which the flames, rapidly spreading under a strong wind, communicated presently to all the merchantmen and triremes adjacent. Unable to arrest this terrific conflagration, the crews were obliged to leap overboard ; while the vessels, severed from their moorings by the burning of the cables, drifted against each other under the wind, until the naval station at Dascon became one scene of ruin. Such a volume of flame, though destroying the naval resources jevyeiv, nal rovf /nia-&o(f>6povf y/cara/U7reu> uv TcoiqauvTuv rb irpoaraxde ct-Tot [lev uitavTEf KareKOTrrjcav. ' Diodor. xiv, 72. Tlavrr/ 6e TUV ^O^UTUTUV veuv &pavo[j.h>uv, ol fjiev .a.Ki.Ai>c teaictav tiroiniiv-rr. lm<bnv, etc