Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/455

 MEASURES OF ANTANDEIl AT SYRACUSE. 423 they had fuller certainty. This resolution Antander adopted. At the same time, mistrusting those citizens of Syracuse who ■were relatives or friends of the exiles without, he ordered them all to leave the city immediately, with their wives and families. No less than 8000 persons were expelled under this mandate. They were consigned to the mercy of Hamilkar, and his army without ; who not only suffered them to pass, but treated them Avith kindness. Syracuse was now a scene of aggravated wretchedness and despondency ; not less from this late calami- tous expulsion, than from the grief of those who believed that their relatives in Africa had perished with Agathokles. Hamil- kar had brought up his battering-engines, and was preparing to assault the town, when Nearchus, the messenger from Agath- okles, arrived from Africa after a voyage of five days, having under favor of darkness escaped, though only just escaped, the blockading squadron. From him the Syracusan government fearnt the real truth, and the victorious position of Agathokles. There was no farther talk of capitulation ; Hamilkar — having tried a partial assault, which was vigorously repulsed, — with- drew his army, and detached from it a reinforcement of 5000 men to the aid of his countrymen in Africa.^ During some months, he seems to have employed himself in partial operations for extending the Carthaginian dominion throughout Sicily. But at length he concerted measures with the Syracusan exile Deinokrates, who was at the head of a nu- merous body of his exiled countrymen, for a renewed attack upon Syracuse. His fleet already blockaded the harbor, and he now with his army, stated as 120,000 men, destroyed the neighbor- ing lands, hoping to starve out the inhabitants. Approaching close to the walls of the city, he occupied the Olympieion, or temple of Zeus Olympius, near the river Anapus and the inte- rior coast of the Great Harbor. From hence — px'obably under the conduct of Deinokrates and the other exiles, well-acquainted with the ground — he undertook by a night-march to ascend the circuitous and difficult mountain track, for the purpose of sur- prising the fort called Euryalus, at the highest point of Epipolae, >■ Diodor. xx. 15, 16.