+32.+ But finding that his long and piteous appeals produced no effect,
at last he sent out the young king with the bodyguards. As soon as they
had got the king, the Macedonians placed him on a horse and conducted
him to the stadium. His appearance being greeted with loud shouts and
clapping of hands, they stopped the horse, and dismounting the child,
ushered him to the royal stall and seated him there. But the feelings
of the crowd were divided: they were delighted that the young king
had been brought, but they were dissatisfied that the guilty persons
had not been arrested and met with the punishment they deserved.
Accordingly, they continued with loud cries to demand that the authors
of all the mischief should be brought out and made an example. The
day was wearing away, and yet the crowd had found no one on whom to
wreak their vengeance, when Sosibius, who, though a son of the elder
Sosibius, was at that time a member of the bodyguard, and as such had
a special eye to the safety of the king and the State,—seeing that the
furious desire of the multitude was implacable, and that the child
was frightened at the unaccustomed faces that surrounded him and the
uproar of the crowd, asked the king whether he would “surrender to
the populace those who had injured him or his mother.” The boy having
nodded assent, Sosibius bade some of the bodyguard announce the king’s
decision, while he raised the young child from his seat and took him
to his own house which was close by to receive proper attention and
refreshment. When the message from the king was declared, the whole
place broke out into a storm of cheering and clapping of hands. But
meanwhile Agathocles and Agathocleia had separated and gone each to
their own lodgings. Without loss of time soldiers, some voluntarily and
others under pressure from the crowd, started in search of them.
[Sidenote: Death of Agathocles, his sister, and Oenanthe.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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