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Zamua-2 Directory 01
Page 07
On September 10th--that was the seventh day of our involuntary fast--we had another dreary march, again without a morsel of food. My men were so downhearted that I really thought they would not last much longer. Hunger was playing on them in a curious way. They said that they could hear voices all round them and people firing rifles. I could hear nothing at all. I well knew that their minds were beginning to go, and that it was a pure hallucination. Benedicto and Filippe, who originally were both atheists of an advanced type, had now become extremely religious, and were muttering fervent prayers all the time. They made a vow that if we escaped alive they would each give L5 sterling out of their pay to have a big mass celebrated in the first church they saw.
Hiero, so long the faithful ally of Rome, died shortly after the battle of Cannae (B.C. 216), and was succeeded by his grandson Hieronymus, a vain youth, who abandoned the alliance of Rome for that of Carthage. But he was assassinated after a reign of fifteen months, and a republican form of government was established in Syracuse. A contest ensued between the Roman and Carthaginian parties in Syracuse, but the former ultimately prevailed, and Epicydes and Hippocrates, two brothers whom Hannibal had sent to Syracuse to espouse his interests, had to quit the city, and took refuge at Leontini. Such was the state of affairs when the Consul Marcellus arrived in Sicily (B.C. 214). He forthwith marched against Leontini, which Epicydes and Hippocrates defended with a considerable force. He took the city by storm, and, though he spared the inhabitants, executed in cold blood 2000 Roman deserters whom he found among the troops that had formed the garrison. This sanguinary act at once alienated the minds of the Sicilians, and alarmed the mercenary troops in the service of Syracuse. The latter immediately joined Hippocrates and Epicydes, who had made their escape to Herbessus; the gates of Syracuse were opened to them by their partisans within the walls, and the party hostile to Rome was thus established in the undisputed command of that city.
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