418 HISTORY OF GREECE. upon the field unheeded for about two years. Having placed these bones on cars richly decorated, he marched with his; forces and conveyed them across the island from Himera to the Syracu- san border. Here as an exile he halted ; thinking it suitable now to display respect for the law, though in his previous attempt he had gone up to the very gates of the city, without any similar scruples. But he sent forward some friends with the cars and the bones, tendering them to the citizens for the purpose of being honored with due funeral solemnities. Their arrival was the sig- nal for a violent party discussion, and for an outburst of aggra- vated displeasure against Diokles, who had left the bodies unbu- ried on the field of battle. " It was to Hermokrates (so his parti- sans urged) and to his valiant efforts against the Carthaginians, that the recovery of these remnants of the slain, and the oppor- tunity of administering to them the funeral solemnities, was now owing. Let the Syracusans, after duly performing such obse- quies, testify their gratitude to Hermokrates by a vote of restora- tion, and their displeasure against Diokles by a sentence of ban- ishment." l Diokles with his partisans was thus placed at great disadvantage. In opposing the restoration of Hermokrates, he thought it necessary also to oppose the proposition for welcoming and bur.ying the bones of the slain citizens. Here the feelings of the people went vehemently against him ; the bones were received and interred, amidst the respectful attendance of all ; and so strong was the reactionary sentiment generally, that the partisans of Hermokrates carried their proposition for sentencing Diokles to banishment. But on the other hand, they could not so far pre- vail as to obtain the restoration of Hermokrates himself. The purposes of the latter had been so palpably manifested, in trying a few months before to force his way into the city by surprise, and in now presenting himself at the frontier with an armed force under his command, that his readmission would have been noth- ing less than a deliberate surrender of the freedom of the city to a despot. 2 Having failed in this well-laid stratagem for obtaining a vote of 1 Diodor. xiii, 63, 75.
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