These men crossed into Italy and perished
there at the hands of the Bruttians, who broke their word to them and
betrayed them. This was the penalty which Heaven imposed on them for
their desertion. But Mamercus, the despot of Catana, and Hiketes, either
through disgust at Timoleon's successes, or else fearing him as a man
not likely to keep faith with despots, made an alliance with Carthage,
as they said that the Carthaginians, unless they wished to be utterly
driven out of Sicily, must send a competent force and a general. Gisco
the son of Hanno sailed thither with seventy ships, and also with a
force of Greek mercenary soldiers, whom the Carthaginians had never used
before; but now they were full of admiration for the Greeks, as being
the most warlike and invincible of men. Having effected a junction of
their forces in the territory of Messina, they cut to pieces a body of
four hundred foreign soldiers whom Timoleon sent against them; and in
the Carthaginian dominion they laid an ambush near the place called
Hietae, and cut off the hired troops of Euthymus the Leukadian. Both
these circumstances made the good fortune of Timoleon more renowned. For
these were some of the men who under Philomelus of Phokis and Onomarchus
sacrilegiously took Delphi, and shared in the plunder of the temple. As
all men loathed them and shrank from them as from men under a curse,
they wandered about Peloponnesus until Timoleon, being unable to get any
other soldiers, enlisted them in his service.
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