Hieronymus on his part selected Agatharchus, Onesimus,
and Hipposthenes to send with Hannibal to
Carthage, with instructions to make an alliance
on the following terms: "The Carthaginians to
assist him with land and sea forces, in expelling the Romans
from
Sicily, and then divide the island with him; so as to have
the river Himera, which divides
Sicily almost exactly in half, as
the boundary between the two provinces." The commissioners
arrived in
Carthage: and finding, on coming to a conference,
that the Carthaginians were prepared to meet them in every
point, they completed the arrangement. Meanwhile Hippocrates
got the young Hieronymus entirely into his hands: and at first
fired his imagination by telling him of Hannibal's marches
and pitched battles in
Italy; and afterwards by repeating to
him that no one had a better right to the government of all
Siceliots than he; in the first place as the son of Nereis
daughter of Pyrrhus, the only man whom all Siceliots alike
had accepted deliberately and with full assent as their leader
and king; and in the second place in virtue of his grandfather
Hiero's sovereign rights. At last he and his brother so won
upon the young man by their conversation, that he would
attend to no one else at all: partly from the natural feebleness
of his character, but still more from the ambitious feelings
which they had excited in him.
The king's pretensions rise, and a new arrangement is made with Carthage. |
And therefore, just when
Agatharchus and his colleagues were completing
the business on which they had been sent in
Carthage, he sent fresh ambassadors, saying that
all
Sicily belonged to him; and demanding that
the Carthaginians should help him to recover
Sicily: while he promised that he would assist the Carthaginians
in their Italian campaign. Though the Carthaginians now saw
perfectly well the whole extent of the young man's fickleness
and infatuation: yet thinking it to be in manifold ways to their
interests not to let Sicilian affairs out of their hands, they
assented to his demands; and having already prepared ships
and men, they set about arranging for the transport of their
forces into
Sicily.
