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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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Then, having offered a sacrifice, he told his soldiers that he had made a vow if his vessels escaped the enemy to make torches of them for the principal goddesses of Sicily, Demeter and Core, and taking a brand from the altar he set fire to his fleet. The soldiers, losing all hope of return, had no other resource than victory. This act of temerity, which has become proverbial, was perhaps necessary. Agathocles had too few soldiers to employ some in protecting the fleet; it would have been taken by the Carthaginians, who were masters of the sea. They seized a pleasure town which Diodorus calls the Great Town and the White Tunis. Agathocles had not sufficient soldiers to leave garrisons; he razed it to the ground and encamped under the walls of Carthage.
The Carthaginians, seeing their country pillaged, thought that their army in Sicily had been destroyed. They had no time to collect mercenaries; they armed to the number of forty thousand and placed Hanno and Bomilcar at their head. These chiefs belonged to two rival families. The Carthaginians often took this precaution as a guarantee against usurpation. But this multitude of new and badly disciplined soldiers could not resist Agathocles’ little army. Hanno was killed, and Bomilcar, who aspired to the tyranny, led the troops back to the town. The terrified Carthaginians attributed their misfortune to the anger of the gods. For a long time they had sacrificed to Moloch only children whom they bought; they thought that he demanded more precious victims, and offered him two hundred children from the most wealthy families. Three hundred citizens offered themselves to complete the sacrifice. They were placed on the hands of the bronze statue, and a large fire was lighted; the victims fell into the burning flames. Diodorus believes that these human sacrifices, customary among Phœnician nations, possibly gave rise to the fable of Cronos devouring his children, for the Greeks identified their Cronos with the Phœnician Moloch.
The Carthaginians ordered Hamilcar to send them some of his troops; but not wishing to abandon Sicily, they announced the complete ruin of Agathocles and, as a proof, sent to Syracuse the beaks of his burnt vessels. Antander, Agathocles’ brother, wished to surrender; the Ætolian Eurymedon persuaded him not to despair, and a short time later they received news of the success of the Greeks. The courage of the besieged was renewed; Hamilcar wished to attempt an assault; he was taken, his head was cut off and sent to Agathocles, who threw it into the Carthaginian camp. His success won him the alliance of the Libyan and Numidian nations. He wrote to Ophellas, governor of Cyrene, who had fought under Alexander, entreating him to invade the Carthaginian territory, which should be shared after the victory; he would leave Africa to Ophellas, and would be content to keep Sicily. This plan tempted Ophellas; he was in communication with the Athenians, because he had married a descendant of Miltiades. He raised mercenaries in Greece and set out to cross the desert with a numerous army, carrying along with it women and children, for they hoped to found colonies. The army suffered much from the heat, from thirst, and from the bites of serpents. Agathocles received his allies warmly, gave them food, then murdered Ophellas and incorporated his soldiers in his own army; the women and children were sent to Sicily and perished in a tempest. Cyrene became part of the dominions of Ptolemy.
Greek Candle Stick
About the same time, the Carthaginians put Bomilcar to death for attempting to seize the tyranny. Agathocles might have profited by the confusion which this event caused in Carthage, but he had received alarming news. The Agrigentines had endeavoured to profit by Hamilcar’s death to free Sicily from both Carthaginian and Syracusan rule. Agathocles, leaving the command of his army to Archagathus, his eldest son, embarked on open boats which had been hastily built. On landing at Selinuntium, he was told that his officers had just defeated the Agrigentine army. He reduced to submission Heraclea, Thermæ, Centuripæ, Cephalœdium, and Apollonia. It was about this time that, following the example of the successors of Alexander, he took the title of king, and had it put on his coins (307). However, he wore no crown, and instead of imitating the mistrust of Dionysius the Elder, he went to the assembly without a guard. When he gave banquets, he was often served in an earthen bowl, and willingly recalled the time when he had begun life as a working potter. He was easy tempered and gay, so as to encourage his guests to talk freely, but he took note of all that he heard, and when, by this means, he had discovered which men were not to be trusted, he invited them separately and put them to death.
In Africa, his son Archagathus was at first successful; but he found his army weakened by desertions, in need of the necessities of life, and inclined to revolt. The soldiers complained of not being paid. He risked a battle and was defeated. Then he resolved to leave the army, as Bonaparte did in later times in Egypt. The soldiers, furious at finding themselves abandoned by their general, murdered his two sons and surrendered to the Carthaginians, who enrolled them in their army.
[307-300 B.C.]
On his return to Sicily, Agathocles first of all gave vent to his anger against Segesta, which had refused him subsidies. This expedition was marked, according to Diodorus, by atrocious cruelty: men were burned alive, pregnant women made to miscarry, young girls and children sold to the Bruttians, and the town of Segesta, peopled by new inhabitants, received the name of Dicæopolis—city of vengeance. At the same time Agathocles commanded his brother Antander to slay the parents, wives, and children of the soldiers of the African army, to revenge the murder of his sons. Diodorus adds that these savage executions produced such horror that Agathocles, despairing of keeping the power, proposed to Dinocrates, the general of the exiles, to re-establish the republic at Syracuse. But Dinocrates had no desire to do so; in the twenty years during which he had been leader of armed bands, he had acquired a taste for this kind of regal dignity. Unsuccessful in forming this alliance, Agathocles purchased Carthaginian help by yielding up certain towns to them, and beat Dinocrates whose troops surrendered. He had them massacred but spared Dinocrates, and as they were worthy of each other, he made him his lieutenant.
Nymph
(From a statue)
He undertook, following Dionysius’ example, the conquest of southern Italy. He began by seizing the Æolian Isles, in order to obtain the treasure consecrated to Core and to Hephæstus in the prytaneum of Lipara; then he prepared to cross into Italy. His preparations excited the fears of the Tarentines, who were already menaced in another direction by the native populations. They applied to the Spartans, whose king, Cleonymus, enrolled mercenaries at Cape Tænarum. He formed a considerable army by uniting with them the forces of Tarentum and the Messapians, with whom he made an alliance immediately on his arrival. The Lucanians in alarm made peace with Tarentum, and Cleonymus, not wishing to have come in vain, turned against Metapontum, which town, however, he had entered as an ally. He imposed on the town a tribute of six hundred talents, and took two hundred young girls as hostages, which caused him to be looked on with suspicion, for, although he was a Spartan, he had the reputation of a man of dissolute character; however, he was punished later on by the wicked behaviour of his wife Chelidonis. Then, instead of delivering Sicily from the tyranny of Agathocles, as he had announced the intention of doing, he attacked Corcyra, which appeared to him a convenient post for watching Greek affairs, raised a tribute, and established a garrison. Then, returning to Italy, without troubling either about the Tarentines who had summoned him, or about the Messapians whose alliance he had demanded, he began to fight and pillage indiscriminately, under pretext of punishing those whom he called rebels. He carried on this piratical war to the remotest part of the Adriatic Sea. The Italians killed some of his troops, a tempest destroyed part of his fleet, but he escaped and wound up his series of adventures by calling Pyrrhus against his country to avenge his matrimonial troubles.