XVI.  If the fall of Dionysius seems strange, the good fortune of Timoleon was no less wonderful.  Within fifty days of his landing in Sicily, he was master of the citadel of Syracuse, and sent back Dionysius to Peloponnesus.  Encouraged by his success, the Corinthians sent him a reinforcement of two thousand hoplites and two hundred horse.  These men reached Thurii, but there found it impossible to cross over into Sicily, as the Carthaginians held the sea with a great fleet.  As it was necessary for them to remain there for a time, they made use of their leisure to perform a most excellent action.  For the Thurians made an expedition against the Bruttii,[A] and meanwhile these men took charge of their city, and guarded it carefully and trustily as if it had been their own.

[Footnote A:  The natives of Southern Italy.]

Hiketes meanwhile was besieging the citadel of Syracuse, and preventing corn from being brought by sea to the Corinthians.  He also obtained two strangers, whom he sent to assassinate Timoleon, who, trusting in the favour shown him by the gods, was living carelessly and unsuspectingly among the people of Adranum.  These men, hearing that he was about to offer sacrifice, came into the temple with daggers under their cloaks, and mingling with the crowd round the altar, kept edging towards him.  They were just on the point of arranging their attack, when a man struck one of them on the head with his sword, and he fell.  Neither the assailant nor the accomplice of the fallen man stood his ground, but the one with his sword still in his hand ran and took refuge on a high rock, while the other laid hold of the altar, and begged for pardon at Timoleon’s hands if he revealed the whole plot.  When assured of his safety he confessed that he and the man who had been killed had been sent thither to assassinate Timoleon.  Meanwhile others brought back the man from the rock, who loudly declared that he had done no wrong, but had justly slain him in vengeance for his father, whom this wretch had killed at Leontini.  Several of those present bore witness to the truth of his story, and they marvelled much at the ways of Fortune, how she makes the most incongruous elements work together to accomplish her purposes.  The Corinthians honoured the man with a present of ten minae, because he had co-operated with the guardian angel of Timoleon, and had put off the satisfaction of his private wrong until a time when it saved the life of the general.  This good fortune excited men’s feelings so that they guarded and reverenced Timoleon as a sacred person sent by heaven to restore the liberties of Sicily.