406 HISTORY OF GREECE. repair. Hannibal left them no time to make good past deficieu cies. Instead of wasting his powerful armament (as the unfortu- nate Nikias had done five years before) by months of empty flou- rish and real inaction, he waited only until he was joined by the troops from Egesta and the neighboring Carthaginian dependen- cies, and then marched his whole force straight from Lilyboeum to Selinus. Crossing the river Mazara in his way, and otorming the fort which lay near its mouth, he soon found himself under the Selinuntine walls. He distributed his army into two parts, each provided with battering machines and movable wooden tow- ers ; and then assailed the walls on many points at once, choosing the points where they were most accessible or most dilapidated. Archers and slingers in great numbers were posted near the walls, to keep up a discharge of missiles and chase away the de- fenders from the battlements. Under cover of such discharge, six wooden towers were rolled qp to the foot of the wall, to which they were equal or nearly equal in height, so that the armed men in their interior were prepared to contend with the defenders almost on a level. Against other portions of the wall, battering- rams with iron heads were driven by the combined strength of multitudes, shaking or breaking through its substance, especially where it showed symptoms of neglect or decay. Such were the methods of attack which Hannibal now brought to bear upon the unprepared Selinuntines. He was eager to forestal the arrival of auxiliaries, by the impetuous movements of his innumerable barbaric host, the largest seen in Sicily since his grandfather Hamilkar had been defeated before Himera. Collected from all the shores of the western Mediterranean, it presented soldiers heterogeneous in race, in arms, in language, in everything, ex- cept bravery and common appetite for blood as well as plunder. 1 The dismay of the Selinuntines, when they suddenly found themselves under the sweep of this destroying hurricane, is not to be described. It was no part of the scheme of Hannibal to im- pose conditions or grant capitulation ; for he had promised the plunder of their town to his soldiers. The only chance of the besieged was, to hold out with the courage of desperation, until they could receive aid from their Hellenic brethen on the south 1 1>iodor. xiii, 54, 5-".
