51.
From Lilybaeum the consul dismissed King Hiero and his fleet, and leaving the praetor to protect the coast of Sicily, set sail for the island of Melita,1 which was held by the Carthaginians.
[2]
On his arrival, Hamilcar, Gisgo's son, the commandant of the garrison, surrendered himself and nearly two thousand soldiers, together with the town and island. From Melita Sempronius returned in a few days to Lilybaeum, and consul and praetor sold into slavery the prisoners they had made, with the exception of those who were distinguished by noble birth. When the consul judged that Sicily was in no danger from that quarter,2 he crossed over to the Isles of Vulcan, where it was rumoured that a Punic fleet was lying; but no single enemy was discovered near those islands.
[3]
They had already, as it happened, sailed across to ravage the Italian
[4??]
coast, and after pillaging the country about Vibo, were even threatening the town.
[5]
The consul was returning again to Sicily when tidings reached him of the enemy's raid on the lands of Vibo, and a letter was delivered to him from the senate, apprising him of Hannibal's descent into Italy and bidding him go to the assistance of his colleague at the earliest possible moment.
[6]
Beset with many cares at once, he immediately embarked his army and dispatched it through the Adriatic to Ariminum; to Sextus Pomponius, his lieutenant, he assigned five and twenty ships of war, with the task of defending the territory of Vibo and the coast of Italy; the fleet under Marcus Aemilius the praetor he increased to fifty sail.
[7]
He himself, [p. 153]after settling the affairs of Sicily, took ten ships, and3 skirting the Italian coast, arrived at Ariminum. Thence he marched with his army to the Trebia and effected a junction with his colleague.4
1 Malta.
2 i.e. Africa. Livy has omitted to mention the fact, recorded by Coelius (quoted by the grammarian Charisius, II. p. 203 K), that Sempronius even sent a swift galley to spy out a good landing-place for a Roman army on the coast of Africa.
3 B.C. 218
4 This important sketch of affairs in Sicily (chapters xlixli) is drawn from a source which cannot be identified. De Sanctis (p 186) thinks that the condensed and unrhetorical character of the style excludes its attribution to Coelius; neither Fabius nor Cincius is likely to have been so impartial in giving credit to the allies, like Hiero, and we know of no Greek writer who would have treated minor incidents with such particularity. He conjectures that the unknown writer may have been Eumachus of Naples (who wrote in Greek of the war with Hannibal) or some other Italian or Sicilian historian.
Livy. Boooks XXI-XXII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1929: no copyright notice.
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