When the day fixed for the election arrived, to the surprise of all, a man from the back of the crowd proposed Epicydes, then another nominated Hippocrates. The voices of their supporters become more and more numerous and evidently carried with them the assent of the people. [2] As a matter of fact the gathering was a very mixed one; there were not only citizens, but a crowd of soldiers present, and a large proportion of deserters, ripe for a complete revolution, were mingled with them. [3] The praetors pretended at first not to hear and tried hard to delay the proceedings; at last, powerless before a unanimous assembly, and dreading a seditious outbreak, they declared them to be duly elected praetors. [4] They did not reveal their designs immediately they were appointed, though they were extremely annoyed at envoys having gone to Appius Claudius to arrange a ten days' truce, and at others having been sent, after it was arranged, to discuss the renewal of the ancient treaty. [5] The Romans had at the time a fleet of a hundred vessels at Murgantia awaiting the issue of the disturbances which the massacre of the royal family had created in Syracuse and the effect upon the people of their new and untried freedom. [6] During that time the Syracusan envoys had been sent by Appius to Marcellus on his arrival in Sicily, and Marcellus, after hearing the proposed terms of peace, thought that the matter could be arranged and accordingly sent envoys to Syracuse to discuss publicly with the praetors the question of renewing the treaty. [7] But now there was nothing like the same state of quiet and tranquillity in the city. As soon as news came that a Carthaginian fleet was off Pachynum, Hippocrates and Epicydes, throwing off all fear, went about amongst the mercenaries and then amongst the deserters declaring that Syracuse was being betrayed to the Romans. [8] When Appius brought his ships to anchor at the mouth of the harbour in the hope of increasing the confidence of those who belonged to the other party, these groundless insinuations received to all appearance strong confirmation, and at the first sight of the fleet the people ran down [9??] to the harbour in a state of great excitement to prevent them from making any attempt to land.
Livy. History of Rome. English Translation by. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 1. Livy. History of Rome. English Translation. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 2.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.