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Hannibal, being eager to launch assaults in an increasing number of places, ordered the soldiers to tear down the monuments and tombs and to build mounds extending to the walls. But when these works had been quickly completed because of the united labour of many hands, a deep superstitious fear fell upon the army. [2] For it happened that the tomb of Theron,1 which was exceedingly large, was shaken by a stroke of lightning; consequently, when it was being torn down, certain soothsayers, presaging what might happen, forbade it, and at once a plague broke out in the army, and many died of it while not a few suffered tortures and grievous distress. [3] Among the dead was also Hannibal the general, and among the watch-guards who were sent out there were some who reported that in the night spirits of the dead were to be seen. Himilcar, on seeing how the throng was beset with superstitious fear, first of all put a stop to the destruction of the monuments, and then he supplicated the gods after the custom of his people by sacrificing a young boy to Cronus and a multitude of cattle to Poseidon by drowning them in the sea. He did not, however, neglect the siege works, but filling up the river which ran beside the city as far as the walls, he advanced all his siege-engines against them and launched daily assaults. [4]

The Syracusans, seeing that Acragas was under siege and fearing lest the besieged might suffer the same fate as befell the Selinuntians and Himeraeans,2 had long been eager to send them their aid, and when at this juncture allied troops arrived from Italy and Messene they elected Daphnaeus3 general. [5] Collecting their forces they added along the way soldiers from Camarina and Gela, and summoning additional troops from the peoples of the interior they made their way towards Acragas, while thirty of their ships sailed along beside them. The forces which they had numbered in all more than thirty thousand infantry and not less than five thousand cavalry.

1 Tyrant of Acragas, 488-472 B.C.; cp. Book 11.53.

2 Cp. chaps. 57 and 62 respectively.

3 A Syracusan, later executed by Dionysius (infra, chap. 96.3).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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