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J08 HISTORY OF GREECE. nately elders and children, preserving only the grown women as captives. The sad details of a town taken by storm are to a great degree the same in every age and nation ; but the destroying bar- barians at Selinus manifested one peculiarity, which marks them as lying without the pale of Hellenic sympathy and sentiment. They mutilated the bodies of the slain ; some were seen with amputated hands strung together in a row and fastened round their girdles ; while others brandished heads on the points of their spears and javelins. 1 The Greeks (seemingly not numerous) who served under Hannibal, far from sharing in these ferocious mani- festations, contributed somewhat to mitigate the deplorable fate of the sufferers. Sixteen thousand Selinuntines are said to have been slain, five thousand to have been taken captive ; while two thousand six hundred escaped to Agrigentum. 2 These figures are probably under, rather than above, the truth. Yet they do not seem entitled to any confidence ; nor do they give us any account of the entire population in its different categories, old and young, men and women, freemen and slaves, citizens and me tics. We can only pretend to appreciate this mournful event in the gross. All exact knowledge of its details is denied to us. It does little honor either to the generosity or to the prudence of the Hellenic neighbors of Selinus, that this unfortunate city should have been left to its fate unassisted. In vain was messen- ger after messenger despatched, as the defence became more and more critical, to Agrigentum, Gela, and Syracuse. The military force of the two former was indeed made ready, but postponed its march until joined by that of the last ; so formidable was the account given of the invading host. Meanwhile the Syracusans were not ready. They thought it requisite, first, to close the war which they were prosecuting against Katana and Naxos, next, to muster a large and carefully-appointed force. Before these preliminaries were finished, the nine days of siege were ]past, and the death-hour of Selinus had sounded. Probably the Syracusans were misled by the Sicilian operations of Nikias, who, beginning with a long interval of inaction, had then approached their town by slow blockade, such as the circumstances of his case required. Expecting in the case of Selinus that Hannibal would enter upon 1 Diodor. xiii 57. 3 Diodir xiii, 57, 58.