the king’s generals, flocked to Syracuse.  That, therefore, either that article must be expunged from the treaty, or that that term of it would not be admitted.  They easily persuaded the multitude; and when the ambassadors of Syracuse complained of the slaughter of the Roman guard, and ordered that Hippocrates and Epicydes should depart either to Locri or any other place they pleased, provided they quitted Sicily, a reply was made to them in a haughty manner, “that they had neither placed themselves at the disposal of the Syracusans to make a peace for them with the Romans, nor were they bound by the treaties of other people.”  This answer the Syracusans laid before the Romans, declaring at the same time that “the Leontines were not under their control, and that, therefore, the Romans might make war on them without violating the treaty subsisting between them; that they would also not be wanting in the war, provided that when brought again under subjection, they should form a part of their dominion, agreeably to the conditions of the peace.”

30.  Marcellus marched with his entire forces against Leontini, having sent for Appius also, in order that he might attack it in another quarter; when, such was the ardour of the troops in consequence of the indignation they felt at the Roman guards being put to the sword during the negotiations for a peace, that they took the town by storm on the first assault.  Hippocrates and Epicydes, perceiving that the enemy were getting possession of the walls and breaking open the gates, retired with a few others into the citadel, from which they fled unobserved during the night to Herbessus.  The Syracusans, who had marched from home with eight thousand troops, were met at the river Myla by a messenger, who informed them that the city was taken.  The rest which he stated was a mixture of truth and falsehood; he said that there had been an indiscriminate massacre of the soldiers and the townsmen, and that he did not think that one person who had arrived at puberty had survived; that the town had been pillaged, and the property of the rich men given to the troops.  On receiving such direful news the army halted; and while all were under violent excitement, the generals, Sosis and Dinomenes, consulted together as to the course to be taken.  The scourging and beheading of two thousand deserters had given to this false statement a plausibility which excited alarm; but no violence was offered to any of the Leontine or other soldiers after the city was taken; and every man’s property was restored to him, with the exception only of such as was destroyed in the first confusion which attended the capture of the city.  The troops, who complained of their fellow-soldiers having been betrayed and butchered, could neither be induced to proceed to Leontini, nor wait where they were for more certain intelligence.  The praetors, perceiving their minds disposed to mutiny, but concluding that their violence would not be of long continuance,