without straining themselves to give him relief. But the Carthaginians had lately made good proof of the strength of Syracuse in the days of Agathocles, and therefore knew that it was able to bear a very strong siege. And hereupon, it is like, that they were the more slack in sending help; if (perhaps) it were not some part of their desire, that both Rome and Syracuse should weaken each one the other, whereby their own work might be the easier against them both. Yet, indeed, the case of the besieged city was not the same when the Romans lay before it, as it had been when the Carthaginians attempted it; for there was great reason to try the uttermost hazard of war against the Carthaginians, who sought no other thing than to bring it into slavery. Not so against the Romans, who thought it sufficient if they could withdraw it from the party of their enemies. Besides, it was not all one to be governed by Agathocles or by Hiero. The former of these cared not what the citizens endured, so long as he might preserve his own tyranny; the latter, as a just and good prince, had no greater desire than to win the love of his people by seeking their commodity; but, including his own felicity within the public, laboured to uphold both by honest and faithful dealing. Hereby it came to pass that he enjoyed a long and happy reign; living dear to his own subjects, beloved of the Romans, and not greatly molested by the Carthaginians; whom, either the consideration, that they had left him to himself ere he left their society, made unwilling to seek his ruin, or their more earnest business with the Romans made unable to compass it.

SECT. VI.

How the Romans besiege and win Agrigentum. Their beginning to maintain a fleet. Their first loss and first victory by sea. Of sea-fight in general.

HIERO, having sided himself with the Romans, aided them with victuals and other necessaries; so that they, presuming upon his assistance, recal some part of their forces. The Carthaginians find it high time to bestir them; they send to the Ligurians, and to the troops they had in Spain, to come to their aid; who being arrived, they make the city of Agrigentum the seat of war against the Romans, filling it with all manner of munition.

The Roman consuls having made peace with Hiero, return into Italy, and, in their places, Lucius Posthumius and Quintus Mamilius, arrive. They go on towards Agrigentum'; and, finding no enemy in the field, they besiege it, though it were stuffed

1 Agrigentum was a goodly city built by the Geloi, under conduct of Ariston and Fystilus. The compass was ten miles about the walls, and it had sometimes in it eight hundred thousand inhabitants. This city, by reason of the fertility of the soil, and the neighbourhood of Carthage, grew in a short space from small beginnings to glory and riches. The plenty and luxury thereof was so great, as it caused Empedocies to say, that the Agrigentines built palaces of such sumptuosity as if they meant to live for ever; and made such feasts as if they meant to die the next day. But their greatest pomp and magnificence was in their goodly temples and theatres, water-conduits, and fish-ponds; the ruins whereof at this day are sufficient arguments that Rome itself could never boast of the like. In the porch of the temple of Jupiter Olympius, (by which we may judge of the temple itself,) there was set out on one side the full proportion of the giants fighting with the gods, all cut out in polished marble of divers colours; a work the most magnificent and rare that ever hath been seen. On the other side, the war of Troy, and the encounters which happened at that siege, with the personages of the heroes that were doers in that war, all of the like beautiful stone, and of equal stature to the bodies of those men in ancient times. In comparison of which the latter works of that kind are but petty things and mere trifles. It would require a volume to express the magnificence of the temples of Hercules, Esculapius, Concord, Juno, Lucina, Chastity, Proserpina, Castor and Pollux; wherein the masterpieces of those exquisite painters and carvers, Phidias, Zeuxis, Myron, and Polycletus, were to be seen. But in process of time it ran the same fortune that all other great cities have done, and was ruined by calamities of war, whereof this war present brought unto it not the least.

with fifty thousand soldiers. After a while, the time of harvest being come, a part of the Roman army range the country to gather corn, and those at the siege grow negligent; the Carthaginians sally furiously, and endanger the Roman army, but are in the end repelled into the town with great loss; but, by the smart felt on both sides, the assailants redoubled their guards, and the besieged kept within their covert. Yet the Romans, the better to assure themselves, cut a deep trench between the walls of the city and their camp, and another on the outside thereof, that neither the Carthaginians might force any quarter suddenly by a sally, nor those of the country without break upon them unawares; which double defence kept the besieged also from the receiving any relief of victuals and munitions, whilst the Syracusan supplies the assailants with what they want. The besieged send for succour to Carthage, after they had been in this sort pent up five months. The Carthaginians embark an army, with certain elephants, under the command of Hanno, who ar rives with it at Heraclea, to the west of Agrigentum. Hanno puts himself into the field, and surpriseth Erbesus, a city wherein the Romans had bestowed all their provisions. By means hereof, the famine without grew to be as great as it was within Agrigentum, and the Roman camp no less straitly assieged by Hanno, than the city was by the Romans; insomuch as, if Hiero had not supplied them, they had been forced to abandon the siege. But, seeing that this distress was not enough to make them rise, Hanno determined to give them battle. To which end departing from Heraclea, he makes approach unto the Roman camp. The Romans resolve to sustain him, and put themselves in order. Hanno directs the Numidian horsemen to charge their vantguard, to the end to draw them further on; which done, he commands them to return as broken, till they came to the body of the army, that lay shadowVOL. V.

C

ed behind some rising ground. The Numidians perform it accordingly; and while the Romans pursued the Numidians, Hanno gives upon them, and having slaughtered many, beats the rest into their trenches.

After this encounter, the Carthaginians made no other attempt for two months, but lay strongly encamped, waiting until some fit opportunity should invite them. But Hannibal, that was besieged in Agrigentum, as well by signs as messengers, made Hanno know, how ill the extremity which he endured was able to brook such dilatory courses. Hanno thereupon a second time provoked the consuls to fight. But his elephants being disordered by his own vantguard, which was broken by the Romans, he lost the day, and with such as escaped he recovered Heraclea. Hannibal perceived this, and remaining hopeless of succour, resolved to make his own way. Finding therefore that the Romans, after this day's victory, wearied with labour, and secured by their good fortune, kept negligent watch in the night, he rushed out of the town with all the remainder of his army, and passed by the Roman camp without resistance. The consuls pursue him in the morning, but in vain; sure they were, that he could not carry the city with him, which with little ado the Romans entered, and pitifully spoiled. The Romans, proud of this victory, purpose hence, forth rather to follow the direction of their present good fortunes, than their first determinations. They had resolved, in the beginning of this war, only to succour the Mamertines, and to keep the Carthaginians from their own coasts; but now they determine to make themselves lords of all Sicily; and. from thence, being favoured with the wind of good success, to sail over into Africa. It is the disease of kings, of states, and also of private men, to covet the greatest things, but not to enjoy the least; the desire of that which we neither have nor need, taking from

us the true use and fruition of what we have already. This curse upon mortal men was never taken from them, since the beginning of the world to this present day.

To prosecute this war, Lucius Valerius, and Titus Octacilius, two new consuls, are sent into Sicily. Whereupon, the Romans being masters of the field, many inland towns gave themselves unto them. On the contrary, the Carthaginians keeping still the lordship of the sea, many maritimate places became theirs. The Romans therefore, as well to secure their own coasts, often invaded by the African fleets, as also to equal themselves in every kind of warfare with their enemies, determine to make a fleet. And herein fortune favoured them with this accident, that being altogether ignorant in shipwrights craft, a storm of wind thrust one of the Carthaginian gallies of five banks to the shore.

Now had the Romans a pattern; and by it they began to set up an hundred quinqueremes, which were gallies rowed by five on every bank; and twenty, of three on a bank; and while these were in preparing, they exercised their men in the feat of rowing. This they did after a strange fashion. They placed upon the sea-sands many seats, in order of the banks in gallies, whereon they placed their watermen, and taught them to beat the sand with long poles, orderly, and as they were directed by the master, that so they might learn the stroke of the galley, and how to mount and draw their oars.

When their fleet was finished, some rigging and other implements excepted, C. Cornelius, one of the new consuls, (for they changed every year) was made admiral; who being more in love with this new kind of warfare, than well advised, passed over to Messina with seventeen gallies, leaving the rest to follow him. There he stayed not, but would needs row along the coast to Lipara, hoping to do some piece of service. Hannibal, a Carthaginian, was at