144 TIMOLEON.

marched with the rest of his army to Syracuse, where he issued an edict for banishing the thousand mercenaries who had basely deserted him before the battle, and obliged them to quit the cit}^ before sunset. They, sail- ing into Italy, lost their lives there by the hands of the Bruttians, in spite of a public assurance of safety previ- ously given them ; thus receiving, from the divine power, a just reward of their own treachery. Mamercus, how- ever, the tj'raut of Catana, and Hicetes, after all, either envying Timoleon the glory of his exploits, or fearing him as one that would keep no agreement, nor have any peace with tyrants, made a league with the Carthaginians, and pressed them much to send a new aiTay and com- mander into Sicily, unless they would be content to haz- ard all, and to be wholly ejected out of that island. And in consequence of this, Gisco was despatched with a navy of seventy sail. He took numerous Greek mercenaries also into pay, that being the first time thej' had ever been enlisted for the Carthaginian service ; but then it seems the Carthaginians began to admire them, as the most irresisti- ble soldiers of all mankind. Uniting their forces in the ter- ritory of Messena, they cut off four hundred of Timoleon's paid soldiers, and within the dependencies of Carthage, at a place called Hierae, destroyed, by an ambuscade, the whole body of mercenaries that served under Euthymus the Leucadian; which accidents, however, made the good fortune of Timoleon accounted all the more remarkable, as these were the men that, with Philomelus of Phocis and Onomarchus, had forcibly broken into the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and were partakers with them in the sacrilege; so that, being hated and shunned by all, as persons under a curse, they were constrained to wander about in Peloponnesus ; when, for want of others, Timo- leon was glad to take them into service in his expedition for Sicily, where they were successful in whatever enter-