previous next

This reply was considered by the Carthaginians to be harsh and arrogant and they outgeneralled Dionysius with their accustomed knavery. They pretended that they were satisfied with the terms, but stated that it was not in their power to hand over the cities; and in order that they might discuss the question with their government, they asked Dionysius to agree to a truce of a few days. [2] When the monarch agreed and the truce took effect, Dionysius was overjoyed, supposing that he would forthwith take over the whole of Sicily. The Carthaginians meanwhile gave their king Magon a magnificent funeral and replaced him as general with his son, who, though he was young indeed, was full of ambition and distinguished for his courage. He spent the entire period of the truce drilling and exercising his troops, and what with laborious exercise, hortatory speeches, and training in arms, he rendered the army obedient and competent. [3] At the expiration of the period agreed upon both sides deployed their forces and entered the battle with high spirit. There followed a sharp pitched battle at Cronium, as it is called, and the deity redressed by victory turn for turn the defeat of the Carthaginians. The former victors, who were loudly boasting because of their military success, were unexpectedly tripped up, and they who, because of their defeat, were crestfallen at the outlook, won an unexpected and important victory.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
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.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (2 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: