wherein to transport his army. His elder son Archagathus perceived his drift, arrested him, and put him under custody; but by means of a sudden tumult he was let loose, escaped, and fled alone, leaving both his sons behind him. His flight being noised through the army, all was in uproar; and extremity of rage caused not only the common soldier, but even such as had been friends to the tyrant, to lay hold upon his two sons and kill them. That this flight of Agathocles was extremely base, I need not use words to prove that his fear was truly, as all fear is said to be, a passion, depriving him of the succours which reason offered, the sequel doth manifest. His forsaken soldiers, being now a headless company, and no longer an army to be feared, obtained nevertheless a reasonable composition from the Carthaginians; to whom they sold those places, whereof they had possession, for nineteen talents. Likewise Agathocles himself, having lost his army, did nevertheless, by the reputation of this late war, make peace with Carthage upon equal terms.

After this, the tyrant, being delivered from foreign enemies, discovered his bloody nature in most abominable cruelties among the Sicilians. His wants and his fears urged him so violently, that he was not satisfied with the spoils of the rich, or the death of those whom he held suspected, but in a beastly rage depopulated whole cities. He devised new engines of torment;, wherein, striving to exceed the bull of Phalaris, he made a frame of brass that should serve to scorch men's bodies, and withal give him leave to behold them in their misery. So devilish is the nature of man, when reason, that should be his guide, is become a slave to his brutish affections. In these mischiefs he was so outrageous, that he neither spared sex nor age; especially when he was informed of the slaughter of his children in Afric. But this was not the way to preserve his estate; it threw him into new dangers. They whom he had chased out of their country took arms against him, and drove him into such fear, that he was fain to seek the love at Carthage, which, by ruling well, he might have had in Sicily. He

freely delivered into the Carthaginians' hands all those towns of the Phoenicians in Sicily belonging unto them, which were in his possession. They requited him honourably with great store of corn, and with four hundred talents of gold and silver. So (though not without much trouble and hazard) he prevailed against the rebels, and settled his estate. Having no further business left in Sicily, he made a voyage into Italy there he subdued the Brutians, rather by terror of his name than by any force, for they yielded at his first coming. This done, he went to the isle of Lipara, and made the inhabitants buy peace with one hundred talents of gold. But when he had gotten this great sum, he would needs exact a greater; and finding plainly that they had no more left, he was bold to spoil the temples of their gods. Herein, methinks, he did well enough. For how could he believe those to be gods, that had continually given deaf ears to his horrible perjuries? Then he returned richly home, with eleven ships laden with gold; all which, and all the rest of his fleet, were cast away by foul weather at sea; one galley excepted, in which he himself escaped, to suffer a more miserable end. A grievous sickness fell upon him, that rotted his whole body, spreading itself through all his veins and sinews. Whilst he lay in this case, all desiring his end, save only Theogenia (a wife that he had taken out of Egypt) and her small children; his nephew, the son of Archagathus, before mentioned, and a younger son of his own, began to contend about the kingdom. Neither did they seek to end the controversy by the old tyrant's decision; they regarded him not so much. But each of them laid wait for the other's life: wherein the nephew sped so well, that he slew his uncle, and got his grandfather's kingdom without asking any leave. These tidings wounded the heart of Agathocles with fear and sorrow. He saw himself without help, like to become a prey to his ungracious nephew, from whom he knew that no favour was to be expected, either by himself, or by those whom only he now held dear, which were Theogenia and her children. Therefore he advised her and them to fly before they were surprised; for

that otherwise they could by no means avoid either death, or somewhat that would be worse. He gave them all his treasures and goods, wherewith he even compelled them (weeping to leave him desolate in so wretched a case) to embark themselves hastily, and make speed into Egypt. After their departure, whether he threw himself into the fire, or whether his disease consumed him, there was none left that cared to attend him; but he ended his life as basely as obscurely, and in as much want as he first began it.

After the death of Agathocles it was, that the Mamertines, his soldiers, traitorously occupied Messana, and infested a great part of the island. Then also did the Carthaginians begin to renew their attempts of conquering all Sicily. What the nephew of Agathocles did, I cannot find: likely it is that he quickly perished; for the Sicilians were driven to send for Pyrrhus to help them, who had married with a daughter of Agathocles. But Pyrrhus was soon weary of the country, (as hath been shewed before,) and therefore left it; prophesying that it would become a goodly champaign field, wherein Rome and Carthage should fight for superiority. In which business how these two great cities did speed, the order of our story will declare.

SECT. V.

A recontinuation of the Roman war in Sicily. How Hiero, king of Syracuse, forsook the Carthaginians, and made his peace with Rome.

WHEN Appius Claudius, following the advantage of his victory gotten at Messana, brought the war unto the gates of Syracuse, and besieged that great city, Hiero found it high time for him to seek peace; knowing that the Carthaginians had neither any reason to be offended with him for helping himself by what means he could, when they were not in case to give him assistance; and foreseeing withal, that when once he had purchased his quiet from the Romans, it would be free for him to sit still without fear of molestation, whilst Rome and Carthage were fighting for the mastery. In this good mood the new Roman consuls,

M. Valerius and C. Octacilius found him, and readily embraced the offer of his friendship. Yet they made use of their present advantage, and sold him peace for an hundred (some say two hundred) talents.

These consuls had brought a great army into Sicily; yet did they nothing else in effect than to bring over Hiero to their side. If the Syracusian held them busied (which I find not, otherwise than by circumstances, as by the sum of money imposed upon him, and by their performing none other piece of service) all the whole time of their abode in the island; then was his departure from the friendship of Carthage no less to his honour than it was to his commodity. For by no reason could they require, that he should suffer his own kingdom to run into manifest peril of subversion for their sakes, that should have received all the profit of the victory; seeing they did expose him to the whole danger, without straining themselves to give him relief. But the Carthaginians had lately made good proof of the strength of Syracuse, in the days of Agathocles; and therefore knew that it was able to bear out a very strong siege. And hereupon it is like that they were the more slack in sending help, if perhaps it were not some part of their desire that both Rome and Syracuse should weaken one the other, whereby their own work might be the easier against them both. Yet indeed the case of the besieged city was not the same when the Romans lay before it, as it had been when the Carthaginians attempted it. For there was great reason to try the uttermost hazard of war against the Carthaginians, who sought no other thing than to bring it into slavery; not so against the Romans, who thought it sufficient, if they could withdraw it from the party of their enemies. Besides, it was not all one to be governed by Agathocles or by Hiero. The former of these cared not what the citizens endured, so long as he might preserve his own tyranny; the latter, as a just and good prince, had no greater desire than to win the love of his people by seeking their commodity; but, including his own felicity within the public, laboured to uphold both by honest and faithful dealing. Hereby it came

to pass, that he enjoyed a long and happy reign; living dear to his own subjects, beloved of the Romans, and not greatly molested by the Carthaginians; whom either the consideration that they had left him to himself, ere he left their society, made unwilling to seek his ruin; or their more earnest business with the Romans made unable to compass it.

SECT. VI.

How the Romans besiege and win Agrigentum. Their beginning to maintain a fleet. Their first loss and first victory by sea. Of sea-fight in general.

HIERO having sided himself with the Romans, aided them with victuals and other necessaries; so that they, presuming upon his assistance, recall some part of their forces. The Carthaginians find it high time to bestir them: they send to the Ligurians, and to the troops they had in Spain, to come to their aid; who being arrived, they made the city of Agrigentum the seat of the war against the Romans, filling it with all manner of munition.

The Roman consuls, having made peace with Hiero, return into Italy; and in their places Lucius Posthumius and Quintus Mamilius arrive. They go on towards Agri

Agrigentum was a goodly city built by the Geloi, under conduct of Ariston and Pystilus. The compass was ten miles about the walls, and it had sometimes in it eight hundred thousand inhabitants. This city, by reason of the fertility of the soil, and the neighbourhood of Carthage, grew in a short space from small beginnings to great glory and riches. The plenty and luxury thereof was so great, as it caused Empedocles to say, that the Agrigentines built palaces of such sumptuosity, as if they meant to live for ever; and made such feasts, as if they meant to die the next day. But their greatest pomp and magnificence was in their goodly temples and theatres, waterconduits, and fish-ponds; the ruins whereof at this day are sufficient argument that Rome itself could never boast of the like. In the porch of

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the temple of Jupiter Olympius, (by which we may judge of the temple itself,) there was set out on one side the full proportion of the giants fighting with the gods, all cut out in polished marble of divers colours, a work the most magnificent and rare that ever hath been seen on the other side, the war of Troy, and the encounters which happened at that siege, with the personages of the heroes that were doers in that war; all of the like beautiful stone, and of equal stature to the bodies of men in those ancient times in comparison of which, the latter works of that kind are but petty things and mere trifles. would require a volume to express the magnificence of the temples of Hercules, Esculapius, Concord, Juno, Lacinia, Chastity, Proserpina, Castor and Pollux; wherein the masterpieces of those exquisite painters and

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