The Carthaginian general then opened secret negotiations with his antagonist. To tell the story in a few words, he purchased the safety of himself and the native Carthaginian officers in the army by a bribe of three hundred talents. The money went into the private coffers of Dionysius, and Himilco was allowed to escape with his countrymen, though some of the forty ships filled with the fugitives were captured. The Syracusan admiral, of course, knew nothing about the arrangement, and Dionysius, while he contrived to postpone, could not absolutely forbid pursuit. The mercenaries thus left to their fate had various fortunes. Dionysius took some of them into his own service; the native Sicilians contrived, for the most part, to escape unmolested to their own homes. A considerable number surrendered, and were sold as slaves. Himilco reached Carthage in safety, but could not endure the humiliating position in which he found himself. He blocked up the doors of his house, refused admittance to friends and kinsmen, even to his own children, and died by voluntary starvation. Whether Carthage would have made any attempt to recover what had been lost, we cannot say. The events that followed made it impossible. Her African subjects revolted from her; her allies deserted her. For a few weeks she stood as much alone as Syracuse had stood a few weeks before. But the combination against her was not one that could hold together long. It soon began to fall to pieces, Carthage helping the process by heavily bribing the leaders. But her power was crippled for a time, and she had to be content with withdrawing her boundary line in Sicily to its old place in the western portion of the Island. It would be tedious to follow in detail the wars of the next few years. War followed war; sometimes one party triumphed, sometimes another. We have just seen Carthage reduced again to the narrow limits within which she had been confined before 409. Then, twelve years afterwards (383), Dionysius is compelled, after a disastrous defeat at Cronium, at which he is said to have lost 14,000 men, to concede nearly half of the Island. In 368 again--our knowledge of these campaigns is sadly broken and confused--there is another change of fortune, a brilliant victory of Dionysius, followed, however, by a reverse, which had the effect of leaving things very much as they had been when the campaign began. In 367 Dionysius died, after a reign of thirty-eight years. I am not concerned now with his character as a domestic ruler. In this respect his name is proverbial for a cruel tyranny, amply punished by the torturing suspicions with which the life of the tyrant was harassed. But it is impossible to deny his great merits as a soldier. He had faults, but he certainly supported the Greek cause in Sicily against the incessant attacks of a very powerful enemy. We shall see how much his abilities were missed when his power passed into the hands of a feebler successor. IV