24.6
The one
link with Rome had now gone with Thraso, and there was no doubt about
the movement towards revolt. Envoys were sent to Hannibal, and he sent
back, together with a young noble, also named Hannibal, two other agents,
Hippocrates and Epicydes, natives of Carthage and Carthaginians on the
mother's side, but their grandfather was a refugee from Syracuse. Through
their agency an alliance was formed between Hannibal and the Syracusan
tyrant, and with Hannibal's consent they stayed on with Hieronymus. As
soon as Appius Claudius, who was commanding in Sicily heard of this, he
sent envoys to the king. When they announced that they had come to renew
the alliance which had existed with his grandfather, they were laughed at,
and as they were leaving the king asked them in jest what fortune they had
met with in the battle of Cannae, for he could hardly believe what Hannibal's
envoys told him; he wanted to know the truth so that he might make up his
mind which course to follow as offering the best prospects. The Romans said
that they would come back to him when he had learnt to receive embassies
seriously, and, after warning him, rather than asking him, not to abandon
their alliance lightly, they departed. Hieronymus sent envoys to Carthage to
conclude a treaty in the terms of their alliance with Hannibal. It was agreed
in this compact that after they had expelled the Romans from Sicily -and
that would soon be done if they sent a fleet and an army -the river Himera,
which almost equally divides the island, was to be the boundary between the
dominions of Syracuse and that of Carthage. Puffed up by the flattery of
people who told him to remember not only Hiero but his maternal
grandfather, King Pyrrhus, Hieronymus sent a second legation to Hannibal to
tell him that he thought it only fair that the whole of Sicily should be ceded
to him and that Carthage should claim the empire of Italy as their own. They
expressed neither surprise nor displeasure at this fickleness and levity in the
hot-headed youth provided only they could keep him from declaring for
Rome.
