administration, as in all the republics governed by tyrants: that council was allowed to continue. The question now was, who were to be generals? There were also the brothers-in-law of the king elected among them; so that the revolution cannot have been a root and branch one. Nor indeed did they yet know after all whether they ought to uphold the league with the Carthaginians. The Roman prætor Appius Claudius negotiated with them, wishing to keep up the Roman alliance, and the Syracusan citizens felt great hesitation to break it; but these two envoys of Hannibal managed to get themselves chosen generals, and they now did all they could to disturb the negotiation. The whole history of those events is exceedingly perplexed. Livy has it from Polybius; his account therefore is authentic. After there had been several times an appearance of peace being concluded, the Carthaginian party brought about a revolution with the help of the mercenaries, by which the chief power was placed in the grasp of Hippocrates and Epicydes, and the whole family of Hiero was murdered on the threshold of the altar. After this horrible event, all was wild confusion: there was a republic indeed in name; but these two fellows ruled by means of the mercenaries; the unfortunate Syracusans were mere tools in their hands. Yet it must not be forgotten, that it was also the unjustifiable cruelty of the Romans which had irritated men’s minds. The community of Enna, called together under a false pretext, was slaughtered for a sham insurrection; so that far and near, every one fell away to the Carthaginians. These now sent a considerable fleet under Himilco to Sicily, which was indeed quite right and welcome to Hannibal himself, for the purpose of maintaining the island, and dividing the Roman forces. The fleet, for some time, kept the communication open between Carthage and Syracuse; but the generals showed themselves to be most wretchedly incompetent. Marcellus, who had gained glory by his contest against Viridomarus, and near Nola, now got the command of a Roman army in Sicily, and invested Syracuse. The town was quite easy to blockade on the landside; but the sea remained nearly always open. The war lasted for two years (538-540). It is represented to us as the siege of Syracuse; but it rather consisted in the Romans carrying on war from two very strong camps against the surrounding country. Himilco had made himself master of Agrigentum, and from thence of a great part of the Sicilian cities. Only the western towns of Lilybæum and Panormus, and Messana and Catana in the north, remained always with the Romans; but the whole semicircle round Agrigentum, even beyond Heraclea, became subject to the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians tried to relieve Syracuse, and they encamped in its neighbourhood; but the unwholesome air, which had prevailed there ever since the foundation of the city, and had more than once proved its salvation, destroyed the