view of those who were awaiting a similar fate; and thus the dead were the means of destroying the sick, and the sick those who were in health, both by fear and by the filthy state and the noisome stench of their bodies.  Some preferring to die by the sword, even rushed alone upon the outposts of the enemy.  The violence of the plague, however, was much greater in the Carthaginian than the Roman army; for the latter, from having been a long time before Syracuse, had become more habituated to the climate and the water.  Of the army of the enemy, the Sicilians, as soon as they perceived that diseases had become very common from the unwholesomeness of the situation, dispersed to their respective cities in the neighbourhood; but the Carthaginians, who had no place to retire to, perished, together with their generals, Hippocrates and Himilco, to a man.  Marcellus, on seeing the violence with which the disease was raging, had removed his troops into the city, where their debilitated frames were recruited in houses and shade.  Many however, of the Roman army were cut off by this pestilence.

27.  The land forces of the Carthaginians being thus destroyed, the Sicilians, who had served under Hippocrates retired to two towns of no great size, but well secured by natural situation and fortifications; one was three miles, the other fifteen, from Syracuse.  Here they collected a store of provisions from their own states, and sent for reinforcements.  Meanwhile, Bomilcar, who had gone a second time to Carthage, by so stating the condition of their allies as to inspire a hope that they might not only render them effectual aid, but also that the Romans might in a manner be made prisoners in the city which they had captured, induced the Carthaginians to send with him as many ships of burden as possible, laden with every kind of provisions, and to augment the number of his ships.  Setting sail, therefore, from Carthage with a hundred and thirty men of war and seven hundred transports, he had tolerably fair winds for crossing over to Sicily, but was prevented by the same wind from doubling Cape Pachynum.  The news of the approach of Bomilcar, and afterwards his unexpected delay, excited alternate fear and joy in the Romans and Syracusans.  Epicydes, apprehensive lest if the same wind which now detained him should continue to blow from the east for several days, the Carthaginian fleet would return to Africa, put the Achradina in the hands of the generals of the mercenary troops, and sailed to Bomilcar; whom he at length prevailed upon to try the issue of a naval battle, though he found him with his fleet stationed in the direction of Africa, and afraid of fighting, not so much because he was unequal in the strength or the number of his ships, for he had more than the Romans, as because the wind was more favourable to the Roman fleet than to his own.  Marcellus also seeing that an army of Sicilians was assembling from every part of the island, and that the Carthaginian