openly avow their sentiments, though they were chagrined that ambassadors had been sent to Appius Claudius to negotiate a ten days’ truce, and that on obtaining this, others were sent to treat for the renewal of the old alliance.  The Romans, with a fleet of a hundred ships, were then stationed at Murgantia, waiting the issue of the commotion raised at Syracuse by the death of the tyrants, and to what their recent acquisition of liberty would impel the people.  Meanwhile, the Syracusan ambassadors were sent by Appius Claudius to Marcellus on his coming into Sicily, and Marcellus having heard the conditions of peace, and being of opinion that matters might be brought to a settlement, himself also sent ambassadors to Syracuse to treat with the praetors in person on the renewal of the alliance.  But now by no means the same state of quiet and tranquillity existed there.  Hippocrates and Epicydes, their fears being removed, after that intelligence had arrived that a Carthaginian fleet had put in at Pachynum, complained sometimes to the mercenary soldiers, at other times to the deserters, that Syracuse was being betrayed to the Romans.  And when Appius began to station his ships at the mouth of the port, in order to inspire the other party with courage, their false insinuations appeared to receive great corroboration; and on the first impulse, the populace had even run down in a disorderly manner to prevent them from disembarking.

28.  While affairs were in this unsettled state, it was resolved to call an assembly; in which, when some leaned to one side and some to the other, and an insurrection being on the point of breaking out, Apollonides, one of the nobles, delivered a speech fraught with salutary advice, considering the critical state of affairs:  “Never,” he said, “had a state a nearer prospect of safety and annihilation.  For if they would all unanimously espouse the cause either of the Romans or the Carthaginians, there could be no state whose condition would be more prosperous and happy; but if they pulled different ways, the war between the Romans and Carthaginians would not be more bloody than that which would take place between the Syracusans themselves, in which both the contending parties would have their forces, their troops, and their generals, within the same walls.  Every exertion ought therefore to be made that all might think alike.  Which alliance would be productive of the greater advantages, was a question of quite a secondary nature, and of less moment; though the authority of Hiero ought to be followed in preference to that of Hieronymus in the selection of allies, and a friendship of which they had had a happy experience through a space of fifty years, ought to be chosen rather than one now untried and formerly unfaithful.  That it ought also to have some weight in their deliberations, that peace with the Carthaginians might be refused in such a manner as not immediately, at least, to have a war with them, while with the Romans they must