Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 24
Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

29. Not many days had elapsed, when ambassadors from Leontini arrived, pleading for a force to defend their territory. The request of this embassy seemed very timely for the purpose of relieving the city of a disorderly and turbulent multitude and of sending away its leaders. [2] Hippocrates as magistrate was ordered to lead the deserters thither. Many of the mercenary auxiliaries followed, making four thousand armed men. [3] That enterprise gave joy both to the senders and the sent; for the one party were given a long-desired opportunity for revolution, and the other rejoiced also to think that the dregs of the city had been drained off. But they relieved the diseased body, so to speak, merely for the moment, only to have it relapse presently into a more serious ailment. [4] For Hippocrates began, at first with stealthy raids, to ravage lands on the border of the Roman province. Later, when Appius had sent troops to protect the farms of the allies, he made an attack with all his forces upon the unit on, guard duty facing him, and many were slain. [5] Marcellus, being informed of this, at once sent legates to Syracuse, to say that the promised peace had been broken, and that a reason for war would never be wanting unless Hippocrates and Epicydes should be sent far away, not merely from Syracuse, but from all Sicily. Epicydes, to avoid being present under an accusation brought against his absent brother, or else failing to do his part in provoking war, went likewise to Leontini; and seeing that its citizens were sufficiently [p. 269]aroused against the Roman people, began also to¹ estrange them from the Syracusans. [6] For, he explained, the Syracusans had made an alliance with the Romans with the provision that all the states which had been subject to the kings should be under their rule; [7] that now they were not satisfied with freedom, without also being lords and masters. [8] They must therefore report to them that the Lenities likewise thought it right that they should be free, either because it was on the soil of their city that the tyrant fell, or because there for the first time men shouted the summons to liberty, and deserting the king's generals flocked to Syracuse. Accordingly either that clause, he said, must be removed from the treaty, or else an alliance on such terms was not to be accepted. [9] The multitude was easily persuaded, and when the legates of the Syracusans complained of the slaughter of the [10??] Roman guard-post and also bade Hippocrates and Epicydes go away to Locri or wherever they preferred, provided they withdrew from Sicily, the people replied with spirit that they had not instructed the Syracusans to make a treaty for them with the Romans, and that they were not bound by treaties not of their own making. [11] This was reported to the Romans by the Syracusans, who stated that the men of Leontini were not subject to their authority; [12] and that consequently the Romans would make war upon them without violating the treaty made with Syracuse; also that they would themselves not refuse to give help in the war, on condition that, when reduced to subjection, the Leontini should again be under their authority, as had been settled in the treaty.