Tyrant by Valerio Massimo Manfredi Page A

likewise winning their battle against the Carthaginians and would soon defeat the Etruscans as well in the waters of Cumae. It was later said that the three battles were fought on the very same day, month and year, symbolizing the fact that the gods had willed the triumph of the Greeks on all fronts against eastern and western barbarians.
    But for Hannibal, son of Gisco, the city was cursed. His grandfather Hamilcar had found defeat there and had killed himself after having seen his entire army destroyed. From dawn to dusk, throughout the entire battle, he had sacrificed victim upon victim, imploring his gods for victory, but as the sun fell and he had to watch his men routed and hunted down like beasts, fleeing in every direction, he threw himself on to the pyre, screaming out promises for revenge amidst the flames.
    Hannibal’s own father had been defeated there as well, and sentenced to exile. He was the third of his family to attempt the endeavour and he had a burning desire to exact vengeance for the downfall and disgrace of his forebears; he would redeem their honour and his own.
    Diocles managed to put together three thousand men in all, calling up the contingent stationed in Acragas as well. He set off towards Himera to save her, if he could, from the bitter fate that had befallen Selinus.
    The Carthaginians had meanwhile positioned their assault towers at various points of the walls, and the rams battered relentlessly from daybreak to nightfall, continuing after dark at times. They found that these walls could not be demolished as easily as those of Selinus. The Himerans had, in fact, built them by embedding great blocks of stone both horizontally and transversally.
    Seeing that the rams were largely ineffective against these fortified walls, the Carthaginians withdrew and resolved to dig a mine. They worked ceaselessly day and night, in shifts, until they had opened a tunnel under the walls, which they reinforced as they went along with pinewood timbering that they had harvested from the surrounding forests and saturated with liquefied resin. Working by night, so as not to be seen by the city’s defenders, they dug ventilation chutes, both to give air to the miners and to feed the fires they would soon be setting.
    They finished just before dawn on a cloudy night. A group of raiders made their way through the tunnel to the opposite end and set the timber aflame. The blaze spread like wildfire as the incendiary substances the wood had been soaked with burst into flames. The sentries up high on the walls could see a row of red eyes lighting up in the plain: the glow of the fires burning below, visible from the ventilation shafts. Whirlwinds of flames and smoke soon roared out of the holes and twirling sparks rose to the sky, spreading an acrid, scorched smell throughout the countryside. The timbering was reduced to ash in no time and a stretch of wall, deprived of its foundations, crumbled to the ground with a resounding crash, taking the defenders with it into a heap of ruins.
    Even before the dense cloud of smoke and dust could clear, the bugles and war horns sounded and the Libyan, Mauritanian and Siculian infantry of Hannibal’s army launched their attack. The rest of the army drew up, ready to rush in as soon as the attackers had opened a passage; they would overwhelm anyone who tried to resist.
    But that screaming horde were no sooner at the base of the breach than the passage was already teeming with defenders. None of their actions had passed unobserved and nothing they could do would be unexpected. Every man capable of carrying arms had taken them up. Their outrage over the atrocities committed by the barbarians at Selinus was so strong that not only were the Himerans ready to die to the last man rather than surrender, but they hurled themselves at their assailants with such violence and loathing that no one could doubt their resolve.
    They were at the base of the breach even before the attackers arrived,