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Those who had been left behind in Himera spent the night under arms on the walls; and when with the coming of day the Carthaginians surrounded the city and launched repeated attacks, the remaining Himeraeans fought with no thought for their lives, expecting the arrival of the ships. [2] For that day, therefore, they continued to hold out, but on the next, even when the triremes were already in sight, it so happened that the wall began to fall before the blows of the siege-engines and the Iberians to pour in a body into the city. Some of the barbarians thereupon would hold off the Himeraeans who rushed up to bring aid, while others, gaining command of the walls, would help their comrades get in. [3] Now that the city had been taken by storm, for a long time the barbarians continued, with no sign of compassion, to slaughter everyone they seized. But when Hannibal issued orders to take prisoners, although the slaughter stopped, the wealth of the dwellings now became the objects of plunder. [4] Hannibal, after sacking the temples and dragging out the suppliants who had fled to them for safety, set them afire, and the city he razed to the ground, two hundred and forty years after its founding. Of the captives the women and children he distributed among the army and kept them under guard, but the men whom he took captive, some three thousand, he led to the spot where once his grandfather Hamilcar had been slain by Gelon1 and after torturing them put them all to death. [5] After this, breaking up his army, he sent the Sicilian allies back to their countries, and accompanying them also were the Campanians, who bitterly complained to the Carthaginians that, though they had been the ones chiefly responsible for the Carthaginian successes, the rewards they had received were not a fair return for their accomplishments. [6] Then Hannibal embarked his army on the warships and merchant vessels, and leaving behind sufficient troops for the needs of his allies he set sail from Sicily. And when he arrived at Carthage with much booty, the whole city came out to meet him, paying him homage and honour as one who in a brief time had performed greater deeds than any general before him.

1 Cp. Book 11.22.

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.

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  • Cross-references to this page (3):
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CAMPA´NIA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), HI´MERA
    • Smith's Bio, Ha'nnibal
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