Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/429

SIEGE OF SELINUS 407 ani coast, Agrigentum, Gela, and especially Syracuse, --all erf whom they had sent to warn and to supplicate. Their armed population crowded to man the walls, with a resolution worthy of Greeks and citizens ; while the old men and the females, though oppressed with agony from the fate which seemed to menace them, lent all the aid and encouragement in their power. Under the sound of trumpets, and every variety of war-cry, the assailants approached the walls, encountering everywhere a valiant resist- ance. They were repulsed again and again, with the severest loss. But fresh troops came up to relieve those who were slain or fatigued ; and at length, after a murderous struggle, a body of Campanians forced their way over the walls into the town. Yet in spite of such temporary advantage, the heroic efforts of the besieged drove them out again or slew them, so that night arrived without the capture being accomplished. For nine successive days was the assault thus renewed with undiminished fury ; for nine successive days did this heroic population maintain a success- ful resistance, though their enemies were numerous enough to relieve each other perpetually, though their own strength was every day failing, and though not a single friend arrived to their aid. At length, on the tenth day, and after terrible loss to the besiegers, a sufficient breach was made in the weak part of the wall, for the Iberians to force their way into the city. Still however the Selinuntines, even after their walls were carried, con- tinued with unabated resolution to barricade and defend their nar- row streets, in which their women also assisted, by throwing down stones and tiles upon the assailants from the house-tops. All these barriers were successively overthrown, by the unexhausted numbers, and increasing passion, of the barbaric host ; so that the defenders were driven back from all sides into the agora, where most of them closed their gallant defence by an honorable death. A small minority, among whom was Empedion, escaped to Agri- gentum, where they received the warmest sympathy and the most hospitable treatment. 1 Resistance being thus at an end, the assailants spread them- selves through the town in all the fury of insatiate appetites, murderous, lustful, and rapacious. They slaughtered indiscrimi- ' Diodor. xiii, 56 ; 57.