The fate of Hamilcar himself was wrapped in romantic mystery. Some said that he was slain by one of the horsemen who made their way into the camp; according to others he destroyed himself. While the conflict was raging he remained in the camp, occupied in soliciting the favour of the gods by costly sacrifices. He was not content to offer the victims in the usual way, by pieces taken from this or that part. They were thrown whole into the fire, which was built high in order to consume them. When he found that his devotion was unavailing and that the tide of battle was turning against him, he threw himself into the furnace. Certain it is that he was never again seen alive. Gelo erected a monument to him on the field of battle, and the Carthaginians paid to his memory yearly honours of sacrifice. There must have been some greatness in the man which was thus recognised by the conqueror, and by the city which had, one would think, no reason to be grateful to him. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: See p. 41.] II THE STORM FROM AFRICA Though the Carthaginians, for some reasons which we do not understand, commemorated Hamilcar on the field of Himera, they did their best at home to banish all recollection of his disastrous expedition. They even sent his son, Gisco, into exile for no reason except his unfortunate parentage. Gisco took up his abode in the Greek city of Selinus. A Greek city was not likely to be an agreeable home for a stranger not of Hellenic blood. The Greek's pride of race was intense; all the outside world was barbarian to him. Anyhow, one of Gisco's children, Hannibal by name, carried away from the place where his youth was spent an intense dislike of the race. "He was by nature," says Diodorus, "a Greek-hater." The guilt of his race had been expiated, it would seem, by his father's lifelong exile, and he had been permitted to return home, and had even risen to the highest office in the State. An opportunity now came to him for gratifying the animosity which he felt against the city of Selinus. This seems to have been in a state of chronic enmity with its neighbour Egesta. The quarrel between them had already led to the most disastrous consequences. It was the complaint of Egesta against their neighbours of Selinus that had given Athens a pretext for their Sicilian expedition. Only two years had passed since this expedition had come to an end, disastrous beyond all precedent in Greek history, and now this paltry quarrel was about to cause another devastating war. Egesta was, of course, worse off than when she made her unlucky application to Athens and was hard pressed by her Greek neighbours. She now sent envoys to Carthage. Hannibal, as I have said, saw his opportunity. He persuaded his countrymen to take up the cause of the weaker State. The first thing was to send envoys to Sicily with instructions so to manage the affair as to make an appeal to arms certain.