LXI. Timoleon freed Corinth his own country, from the tyranny of Timophanes, his brother. Plutarch relates the transaction in this manner. Timoleon, and two of his friends who were zealous assertors of liberty, having taken a solemn oath to depose the tyrant if he refused to relinquish his usurpation, went to his house, and finding they could not move him by intreaties, Timoleon retired a little and burst into tears, and at that instant, his two friends flew upon Timophanes, and tore him to pieces. Diodorus Siculus says, Timoleon killed his brother on the public parade. The first historian considers the love of liberty as a principle implanted in the nature of man, and therefore endeavours all he can to soften and excuse the atrociousness of the act. The second blazons and exaggerates it, with a view of exalting the zeal of Timoleon for his country. In the midst of so many dangers, produced by the characters, motives, and passions of authors, truth, in navigating the sea of history, is shipwrecked, and hinder’d from being handed down to posterity. LXII. Cyrus, according to Xenophon, died composed, and in his bed. Onesicritus, Arrian, Herodotus, Justin, and Valerius Maximus, affirm, that Thomyris, queen of the Massagetes, having overcome, and made him a prisoner, caused him to be put to death, and his head to be immerged in a vessel filled with human blood, in order, as the irritated queen declared, that the thirst he had ever had for that fluid might be satiated. Ctesias writes, that he was killed by an arrow shot at him by an Indian. Diodorus, that he was made a prisoner, and crucified by a queen of the Scythians; and according to Lucian, he died of grief, on account of Cambyses his son, having under the false pretence of an order from him, put to death the major part of those he most esteemed. LXIII. One of the most remarkable transactions of the Roman History, is the defeat of the Fabians, in the engagement of Cremera. This body, composed of one family only, and which Florus calls a Patrician Army, were cut to pieces, and out of three hundred and six Fabians, there remained only one youth of fourteen years old alive, who was spared on account of his tender age. There are few facts which have been more unanimously attested than this, nor by a greater number of authors. Titus Livius, Ovid, Aurelius Victor, Silius, and Festus, relate it exactly in the same manner; but notwithstanding this, Dionysius Halicarnassus rejects it as intirely fabulous. Titus Livius places the death and fanatic consecration of the two Decii, in the wars against the Latins and the Samnites; but Cicero places it in those with the Etruscans, and against Pyrrhus. LXIV. The silence of Polybius, respecting the fate of Regulus after his captivity, has occasioned many learned men to doubt of all that has been said on that subject.