the Carthaginians, could be enabled to make any such surrendry, in the public name of all their company.

If therefore the Mamertines, by no lawful surrendry of themselves and their possessions, were become subject unto Rome, by what better title could the Romans assist the Mamertines against their most ancient friends the Carthaginians, than they might have aided the Campanes against the Samnites, without the same condition? which was (as they themselves confessed) by none at all. But let it be supposed that some point, serving to clear this doubt, is lost in all histories. Doubtless it is, that no company of pirates, thieves, outlaws, murderers, or such other malefactors, can by any good success of their villainy obtain the privilege of civil societies to make league or truce, yea, or tó require fair war; but are by all means, as most pernicious vermin, to be rooted out of the world. I will not take upon me to maintain that opinion of some civilians, that a prince is not bound to hold his faith with one of these; it were a position of ill consequence: this I hold, that no one prince or state can give protection to such as these, as long as any other is using the sword of vengeance against them, without becoming accessary to their crimes. Wherefore we may esteem this action of the Romans so far from being justifiable, by any pretence of confederacy made with them, as that, contrariwise, by admitting this nest of murderers and thieves into their protection, they justly deserved to be warred upon themselves by the people of Sicily, yea, although Messana had been taken, and the Mamertines all slain, ere any news of this confederacy had been brought unto the besiegers. The great Alexander was so far persuaded herein, that he did put to sword all the Branchiadæ, (a people in Sogdiana,) and rased their city, notwithstanding that they joyfully entertained him as their lord and king; because they were descended from a company of Milesians, who, to gratify king Xerxes, had robbed a temple, and were by him rewarded with the town and country, which these of their posterity enjoyed. Nevertheless, in course of human justice, long and peaceable posses

sion gives jus acquisitum, a kind of right by prescription, unto that which was at first obtained by wicked means; and doth free the descendants from the crime of their ancestors, whose villainies they do not exercise. But that the same generation of thieves, which by a detestable fact hath purchased a rich town, should be acknowledged a lawful company of citizens, there is no show of right. For even the conqueror, that by open war obtaineth a kingdom, doth not confirm his title by those victories which gave him first possession; but length of time is requisite to establish him, unless by some alliance with the ancient inheritors he can better the violence of his claim, as did our king Henry the First by his marriage with Maud, that was daughter of Malcolm king of the Scots, by Margaret, the niece of Edmund Ironside. Wherefore I conclude, that the Romans had no better ground (if they had so good) of justice in this quarrel, than had the Goths, Huns, Vandals, and other nations, of the wars that they made upon the Roman empire, wherein Rome herself, in the time of her visitation, was burnt to the ground.

SECT. IV.
Of the island of Sicily.
§. I.

The quality of the island, and the first inhabitants thereof. THE defence of the Mamertines, or the possession of Messana, being now no longer, since the first victories of Appius Claudius, the objects of the Roman hopes; but the dominion of all Sicily being the prize for which Rome and Carthage are about to contend, it will be agreeable unto the order, which in the like cases we have observed, to make a brief collection of things concerning that noble island, which hath been the stage of many great acts, performed as well before and after, as in this present war.

That Sicily was sometimes a peninsula, or demi-isle, adjoined to Italy, as a part of Brutium in Calabria, near unto Rhegium, and afterward by violence of tempest severed from the same, it is a general opinion of all antiquity. But at what certain time this division happened, there is no me

morial remaining in any ancient writer. Strabo, Pliny, and Dionysius affirm, that it was caused by an earthquake; m Silius and Cassiodorus do think it to have been done by the rage and violence of the tide, and surges of the sea. Either of these opinions may be true; for so was Eubœa severed from Boeotia, Atalante and Macris from Euboea, Scilly here in England from the cape of Cornwall, and Britain itself (as may seem by Verstegan's arguments) from the opposite continent of Gaul. But for Sicily, they which lend their ears to fables, do attribute the cause of it to Neptune, (as Eustathius witnesseth,) who with his three-forked mace, in favour of Jocastus, the son of Æolus, divided it from the main land, and so made it an island, which before was but a demi-isle; that by that means he might the more safely inhabit and possess the same. n Diodorus Siculus, moved by the authority of Hesiodus, ascribeth the labour of sundering it from Italy to Orion; who, that he might be compared to Hercules, (cutting through the rocks and mountains,) first opened the Sicilian straits, as Hercules did those of Gibraltar.

They which value the islands of the midland sea, according to their quantity and content, do make this the greatest, as Eustathius and Strabo, who affirm this not only to excel the rest for bigness, but also for goodness of soil. As concerning the form of this island, Pomponius Mela saith it is like that capital letter of the Greeks which they call Delta; namely, that it hath the figure of a triangle; which is generally known to be true. That the whole island was consecrated to Ceres and Proserpina, all old writers with one consent affirm. To Ceres it was dedicated, because it first taught the rules of setting and sowing of corn; to Proserpina, not so much, for that she was from hence violently taken by Pluto, as because (which Plutarch and Diodorus do report for truth) that Pluto, as soon as she, uncovering herself, first shewed herself to be seen of him, gave her the dominion thereof.

Plin. 1. 2. cap. 91.

m Sil. 1. 5.

" Orion. 1. 4. c. 14. Diod. 1. 6. Ovid.

de Fast. 4.

Of the fertility and riches of this country, there is a famous testimony written by Cicero, in his second oration against Verres, where he saith that Marcus Cato did call it the " granary and storehouse of the commonwealth, and "the nurse of the vulgar sort." The same Cicero doth add in that place, that it was not only the storehouse of the people of Rome, but also that it was accounted for a wellfurnished treasury: for without any cost or charge of ours, saith he, it hath usually clothed, maintained, and furnished our greatest armies with leather, apparel, and corn. • Strabo reporteth almost the same thing of it. Whatsoever Sicily doth yield, (saith Solinus,) whether by the sun and temperature of the air, or by the industry and labour of man, it is accounted next unto those things that are of best estimation; were it not that such things as the earth first putteth forth are extremely overgrown with saffron. Diodorus Siculus saith, that in the fields near unto Leontium, and in divers other places of this island, wheat doth grow of itself, without any labour or looking to of the husbandman. Martianus sheweth, that there were in it six colonies and sixty cities: there are that reckon more, whereof the names are found scatteringly in many good authors.

Now besides many famous acts done by the people of this island, as well in peace as war, there be many other things which have made it very renowned, as the birth of Ceres, the ravishing of Proserpina, the giant Enceladus, the mount Etna, Scylla and Charybdis, with other antiquities and rarities; besides those learned men, the noble mathematician Archimedes, the famous geometrician Euclides, the painful historian Diodorus, and Empedocles the deep philosopher.

That Sicily was at first possessed and inhabited by giants, Læstrygones, and Cyclops, barbarous people and uncivil, all histories and fables do jointly with one consent aver. Yet Thucydides saith, that these savage people dwelt only in one part of the island. Afterward the Sicani, a people of Spain, possessed it: that these Sicani were not bred in the 0 Strabo, 1. 6.

isle, (although some do so think,) Thucydides and Diodorus do constantly avouch.

Of these it was named Sicania. The Sicani were invaded by the Siculi, who, inhabiting that part of Latium whereon Rome was afterward built, were driven by the Pelasgi from their own seats, and finding no place upon the continent, which they were able to master and inhabit, passed over into this island three hundred years before the Greeks sent any colonies thither; and (saith Philistus) eighty years before the fall of Troy. These Siculi gave the name of Sicilia to the island; and, making war upon the Sicani, drave them from the east and northern part thereof into the west and south. At their landing, they first built the city Zancle, afterward called Messana; and after that Catana, Leontium, and Syracuse itself, beating from thence the Ætolians, who long before had set up a town in that place. As for the name of Syracuse, it was not known till such time as Archias of Corinth (long after) won that part of the island from the Siculi; neither did the Siculi at their first arrival dispossess the Ætolians thereof, but some hundred years after their descent, and after such time as they had founded the cities before named, with Neæ, Hybla, Trinacia, and divers others.

After these Siculi came another nation out of Italy, called Morgetes, who were thence driven by the Enotrians. These sat down in that part of Sicily where they afterward raised the cities of Morgentum and Leontium: for at this time the Siculi were divided, and by a civil war greatly enfeebled. Among these ancient stories, we find the last voyage and the death of Minos, king of Crete. Thucydides, an historian of unquestionable sincerity, reports of Minos, that he made conquest of many islands; and some such business, perhaps, drew him into Sicily. But the common report is, that he came thither in pursuit of Dædalus. The tale goes thus: Dædalus fleeing the revenge of Minos, came into Sicily to Cocalus, king of the Sicani, and, during his abode there, he built a place of great strength near unto Megara, for Cocalus to lay up his treasure in, together