"[A]
Thus it is that most people seem to suffer more from hard words than
hard deeds, and are more excited by insult than by actual hurt. What we
do to our enemies in war is done of necessity, but the evil we say of
them seems to spring from an excess of spite.
[Footnote A: A line in the Medea of Euripides. The point of the joke
depends on the punctuation, but cannot be kept in translation.]
XXXIII. On Timoleon's return the Syracusans brought the family and
daughters of Hiketes before the public assembly for trial, and condemned
them to death. And this, methinks, is the most heartless of Timoleon's
actions, that for want of a word from him these poor creatures should
have perished. He seems not to have interfered, and to have let the
people give full vent to their desire to avenge Dion, who dethroned
Dionysius. For Hiketes was the man who threw Dion's wife Arete alive
into the sea, with her sister Aristomache and her little son, as is told
in the Life of Dion.
XXXIV. After this he marched against Mamercus at Catana. He beat him in
a pitched battle near the river Abolus, routing him with a loss of two
thousand men, no small part of whom belonged to the Phoenician
contingent under Gisco. Hereupon, at the request of the Carthaginians,
he made peace, stipulating that they should hold the country beyond the
river Lykus, and that those who wished should be allowed to have it and
go to reside at Syracuse, with their families and property, and also
that they should give up their alliance with the despots.
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