Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/433

 CARTHAGINIAN I^^FLUENCE AT SYRACUSE. 401 All this train of artifice had been concerted by Agathoklea with Hamilkar, for the purpose of enabling the former to seize the supreme power. As general of the city, Agathokles had the direction of the military force. Under the pretence of marching against some refractory exiles at Erbita in the interior, he go] together 3000 soldiers strenuously devoted to him — mercenaries and citizens of desperate character — to which Hamilkar added a reinforcement of Africans. As if about to march forth, he mustered his troops at daybreak in the Timoleonteon (chapel or precinct consecrated to Timoleon), while Peisarchus and Dekles, two chiefs of the senate already assembled, were invited with forty others to transact with him some closing business. Having these men in his power, Agathokles suddenly turned upon them, and denounced them to the soldiers as guilty of conspiring his death. Then, receiving from the soldiers a response full of ardor, he ordered them immediately to proceed to a general massacre of the senate and their leading partisans, with full per- mission of licentious plunder in the houses of these victims, the richest men in Syracuse. The soldiers rushed into the street with ferocious joy to execute this order. They slew not only the senators, but many others also, unarmed and unprepared ; each man selecting victims personally obnoxious to him. They broke open the doors of the rich, or climbed over the roofs, mas- sacred the proprietors within, and ravished the females. They chased the unsuspecting fugitives through the streets, not sparing even those who took refuge in the temples. Many of these un- fortunate suiferers rushed for safety to the gates, but found them closed and guarded by special order of Agathokles ; so that they were obliged to let themselves down from the walls, in which Tuv Tio?.iTuiv, oiuoffE fiTiSev ivavTiu-&7jCi£(jdat rij (hi/xoKparia — " Tunc Hamil- cariexpositis ignibiis Cerciis tactisque in oljsequiaroenorum jurat." " Jurare in obscquia Poenorum " can hardly be taken to mean that Syracuse was to become subject to Carthage; there was nothing antecedent to justify such a proceeding, nor does anything follow in the sequel which implies it. Compare also the speech which Justin puts into the mouth of Bomilkai when executed for treason by the Carthaginians — " objectans illis (Carlha giniensibus) in Ilamilcarem patruum suum tacita suflVagia, quod Agatho clem sociam illis facere, qttam hostem, vialuerit '' (xxii. 7). This points to pre vious collusion between Hamilkar and Agathokles. u*