490 HISTORY OF GREECE. etmctecl to watch for the arrival of any force from Carthage, and to employ himself in besieging the neighboring towns of Egesta and Entella. The operations against these two towns however had little success. The inhabitants defended themselves bravely, and the Egestaeans were even successful, through a well-planned nocturnal sally, in burning the enemy's camp, with many horses, at d stores of all kinds in the tents. Neither of the two towns was yet reduced, when, in the ensuing spring, Dionysius himself re- turned with his main force from Syracuse. He reduced the inhab- itants of Halikyae to submission, but effected no other permanent conquest, nor anything more than devastation of the neighboring territory dependent upon Carthage. 1 Presently the face of the war was changed by the arrival of Imilkon from Carthage. Having been elevated to the chief mag- istracy of the city, he now brought with him an overwhelming force, collected as well from the subjects in Africa as from Iberia and the Western Mediterranean. It amounted, even in the low estimate of Timseus, to one hundred thousand men, reinforced afterwards in Sicily by thirty thousand more, and in the more ample computations of Ephorus, to three hundred thousand foot, four thousand horse, four hundred chariots of war, four hundred ships of war, and six hundred transports carrying stores and en- gines. Dionysius had his spies at Carthage, 2 even among men of rank and politicians, to apprise him of all movements or public orders. But Imilkon, to obviate knowledge of the precise point in Sicily where he intended to land, gave to the pilots sealed in- structions, to be opened only when they were out at sea, indicat- ing Panormus (Palermo) as the place of rendezvous. 3 The transports made directly for that port, without nearing the land elsewhere ; while Imilkon with the ships of war approached the 1 Diodor. xiv, 54. Leptines was brother of Dionysius (xiv, 102; xv. 7), though he after wards married the daughter of Dionysius, a marriage not condemned by Grecian sentiment. 8 Justin, xx, 5. One of these Carthaginians of rank, who, from political enmity to Hanno, wrote letters in Greek to communicate information to Dionysius, was detected and punished as a traitor. On this occasion, the Carthaginian senate is said to have enacted a law, forbidding all citizens t learn Greek, either to write it or to speak it.
- Diodor. xiv, 54 ; Polyaenus, v, 10, 1.
