Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/198

 172 HISTORY OF GREECE. particularly distinguished, and appeared the more fen/ridable OR I heir landing; carrying panic, by the mere report, all over Sicily not excepting even Syracuse. The Corinthian troops ravaging the Carthaginian province were obliged to retreat in haste, and sent to Timoleon for reinforcement. The miscellaneous body of immigrants recently domiciliated at Syracuse, employed in the cares inseparable from new settlement, had not come prepared to face so terrible a foe. Though Timo- leon used every effort to stimulate their courage, and though his exhortations met with full apparent response, yet such was the panic prevailing, that comparatively few would follow him to the field. He could assemble no greater total than twelve thousand men ; including about three thousand Syracusan citizens the paid force which he had round him at Syracuse that other paid force under Deinarchus, who had been just compelled by the in- vaders to evacuate the Carthaginian province and finally such allies as would join. 1 His cavalry was about one thousand in number. Nevertheless, in spite of so great an inferiority, Timo- leon determined to advance and meet the enemy in their own province, before they should have carried ravage over the territo- ry of Syracuse and her allies. But when he approached near to the border, within the territory of Agrigentum, the alarm and mistrust of his army threatened to arrest his farther progress. An officer among his mercenaries, named Thrasius, took advantage of the prevailing feeling to raise a mutiny against him, persuading the soldiers that Timoleon was madly hurrying them on to certain ruin, against an enemy six times superior in number, and in a hostile country eight days' march from Syracuse ; so that there would be neither salvation for them in case of reverse, nor inter- 1 Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 25; Diodor. xvi. 78. Diodorus gives the total of Timoleon's force at twelve thousand men ; Plutarch at only six thousand. The larger total appears to me most probable, under the circumstances. Plutarch seems to have taken account only of the paid force who were with Timoleon at Syracuse, and not to have enumerated that other division, which, having been sent to ravage the Carthaginian province, had been compelled to retire and rejoin Timoleon when the great Carthaginian host landed. Diodorus and Plutarch follow in the main the same authorities respect ug tliis campaign.