Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/246

222 HISTORY OF GREECE. noon ; and its success was mainly determined by an intercepted letter which fell into the hands of Gelo, — a communication from the Selinuntines to Hamilkar, promising to send a body of horse to his aid, and intimating the time at which they would arrive. A party of Gelo's horse, instructed to personate this reinforce- ment from Selinus, were received into the camp of Hamilkar, where they spread consternation and disorder, and are even said to have slain the general and set fire to the ships: while the Greek army, brought to action at this opportune moment, at length succeeded in triumphing over both superior numbers and a determined resistance. If we are to believe Diodorus, one hundred and fifty thousand men were slain on the side of the Carthagi- nians ; the rest fled partly to the Sikanian mountains, where they became prisoners of the Agrigentines, — partly to a hilly ground, where, from want of water, they were obliged to surrender at discretion : twenty ships alone escaped with a few fugitives, and these twenty were destroyed by a storm in the passage, so that only one small boat arrived at Carthage with the disastrous tidings.i Disraissing such unreasonable exaggerations, we can only venture to assert that the battle was strenuously disputed, the victory complete, and the slain as well as the prisoners numerous. The body of Hamilkar was never discovered, in spite of careful search ordered by Gelo : the Carthaginians affirm- ed, that as soon as the defeat of his army became irreparable, he had cast himself into the great sacrificial fire, wherein he had been ofiering entire victims (the usual sacrifice consisting only of a small part of the beast) ,2 to propitiate the gods, and had there been consumed. The Carthaginians erected funereal monuments to him, graced with periodical sacrifices, both in Carthage and in » Diodor. xi. 21-24. ^ Herodotus, vii, 167. cru^ara o/la Karayi^uv. This passage of Hei'odotus receives illustration from the learned comment of Movers on the Pheuiciar inscription recently discovered at Marseilles. It was the usual custom of the Jews, and it had been in old times the custom with the Phenicians (Porphyr. de Abstin. iv, 15), to burn the victim entire: the Phenicians departed from this practice, but the departure seems to have been considered as not strictly correct, and in times of great misfortune or anxiety the old habit was resumed (Movers, Das Opfei-wesen der Karthager. Breslau, 1847, pp. 71-118).