Tyrant (24 page)

Nothing of the sort happened. The confederate army came to a crashing halt, obeying the bugle signals, and thus the bulk of the Carthaginian army, unharmed, found shelter inside the fortified camp.

At that sight, the Acragantines had to resign themselves to what had happened. The confederate army was two stadia away now; attacking without their allies made no sense. They bitterly acknowledged that the opportunity to eliminate the threat that loomed over them had been lost.

But disappointment soon led to frustration and then to anger. The warriors crowded menacingly around their commanders and started shouting: ‘You sold us out!’

‘How much did the barbarians pay you?’

‘Traitors!’

‘Scheming bastards!’

Tellias did all he could to placate their anger. ‘Calm down!

You can’t accuse them of such things without any foundation!’ But his weak, clucking voice could not be heard over the growing uproar.

Stones began to fly and many hit their mark. Struck in the head, Cratippus fell to the ground, and after him the three fellow generals who had supreme command over the large army units. Only Argeus, the young officer who had gone to take orders to the mercenaries at the gates, was spared. When he arrived, the four commanders were already dead, half buried under a heap of rocks. The men who had stoned them stood now in a circle around the corpses, in silence; they didn’t even notice him when he appeared among them and walked pale and speechless towards the lifeless bodies.

They were all overcome with bitterness and disgust for what they had done. They were only too aware that justice had not been served by summary execution. What they had punished with such extreme fury was perhaps mere indecision or simple stupidity.

The encounter had been devastating for the Carthaginians: nearly six thousand men had been left on the field. Fewer than three hundred of the confederate combatants had fallen, but their frustration over the way victory had slipped from their hands was immense.

Dionysius rushed over to Daphnaeus and shouted: ‘Why didn’t you let us go on? Why did you stop us? You know what this is, don’t you? This is cowardice, this is—’

‘One more word and I’ll have you executed. Immediately!’

Dionysius bit his lip and returned to the ranks, smouldering with repressed rage.

Daphnaeus had no intention yet of attacking the fortified camp, defended by a deep trench, a mound and a palisade, and he led his men to the eastern camp that the enemy had abandoned in their flight. That same night a delegation from Acragas arrived to report on what had happened in the city and on how the commanders had been punished. Daphnaeus shuddered and was at a complete loss for words.

Dionysius stepped forward. ‘If you had only listened to me, this never would have happened. Himilco would have taken to his heels without a chance in the world of saving his skin.’

‘No one can tell what would have happened,’ replied Daphnaeus. ‘Keeping a cool head is the greatest virtue in war. Now they’re on the defensive, cooped up in their camp, while we control all the roads of access and exit; we can cut off their supply lines and starve them out if we want. As soon as their mercenaries find themselves with no food and no pay, they’ll rise up against Himilco, and it will be all over.’

Events seemed to prove Daphnaeus right for some time. It was already late in the season, and they were told – although no one would later remember who had said so – that the Carthaginian ships in Panormus had already been docked or pulled aground for maintenance, and that they would not be put back out to sea until the following spring. The Syracusan fleet, on the contrary, was still perfectly efficient and continued to provision the army.

Whenever Himilco sent out a unit in search of supplies or forage, the Syracusan cavalry would set off in pursuit and promptly wipe the men out. Surrender was expected from one day to the next, especially since bad weather was already setting in.

Precisely because a worsening of the weather was predicted, Syracuse decided to send a large consignment of grain and other foodstuffs by sea to provision Acragas before conditions made navigation impossible. But when the Syracusan convoy came into view of the city, they were shocked to find the entire Carthaginian fleet of nearly fifty ships in full battle order.

The fate of the battle was sealed from the start: the heavily laden Syracusan ships were too slow, while the Carthaginian vessels, already dismasted, more numerous and with the wind in their favour, launched the assault with infinitely superior speed and manoeuvring capability.

The few Syracusan ships capable of counter-attacking were almost immediately disabled and sunk, while the others were driven ashore along the stretch of coast that flanked the Carthaginian camp. Himilco’s mercenaries, who were reduced to serious straits and had been threatening desertion, rushed to plunder the ships and slaughter their crews, carrying all the grain meant for Acragas off to their own camp.

The events reversed the fate of the war, which had until then seemed decided. The Acragantines, who had never exercised restraint or rationed their provisions, realized all at once that their stores were extremely low.

The Spartan commander Dexippus, one of the few generals to have escaped death, assembled his officers and held council. ‘How many days can we hold out with what we have?’

‘Three or four days at most,’ they answered.

‘Then we must evacuate the city. Tomorrow.’

Utter silence met his words. No one dared reply, but each one of them was searching desperately within himself for a solution.

‘We must inform the Council,’ said one of his officers, ‘so they can notify the population.’

‘Just one moment,’ intervened one of the commanders who had not spoken until then, a man from Gela called Euritous. ‘Are you saying that we have to empty a city of two hundred thousand people and leave . . . just like that?’ He clapped one hand hard against the other.

‘Just like that,’ repeated Dexippus, unperturbed. ‘Do you have any other proposals?’

‘Fighting. We could fight them. Open a corridor leading inland and get provisions from the countryside.’

‘Combat on the open field alongside the Syracusans,’ shouted another, a young Acragantine battalion commander. ‘We can still beat them!’

There was no need to advise the Council. Guided by Tellias, the elders were at that moment arriving from the nearby
bouleuterion
to meet with the military chiefs and review the situation.

‘Can I have understood correctly?’ blurted out Tellias immediately. ‘Is there someone here who wants to evacuate the city?’

‘You’ve understood full well,’ retorted Dexippus. ‘We have no choice. There’s no way we can resist without food and provisions.’

‘You are crazy or a coward or both things together!’ screamed Tellias in his shrill voice. ‘We’ll throw open the gates, we’ll send out our boys armed to the teeth and they’ll break those scabby bastards’ arses! Then we’ll take back our grain and all the rest and make them sorry they ever thought of showing up here!’

‘If it were that simple,’ replied Dexippus, ‘I would do the same myself. I’m afraid it’s not. They won’t be lured into a battle on the open field. Why should they? They’ve got everything they need inside their fortified camp. They’ll wait until we’re half starved, then they’ll attack and finish us off. It’s much better to get out now while we’re still in time.’

Tellias shook his head. ‘This just isn’t possible,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. There must be another way! There must be another solution!’

He hadn’t finished speaking when a sentry who had been on duty up on the walls arrived. ‘Our Campanian mercenaries are deserting! They’re leaving from the southern gate and are headed towards the Carthaginian camp. When they found out there was nothing more to eat, they abandoned the stretch of walls they were guarding!’

‘See?’ said Dexippus. ‘If I had any doubts at all, they’re gone now. More than an entire stadium of the city’s walls are now unguarded. Do you know what that means?’

‘But the Syracusans and our Italian allies are still out there, by Heracles!’ broke in Tellias, anguished. ‘We can win even now with their help! Listen to me. We’ll contact Daphnaeus and the allies and decide together what must be done. We can’t rush into this . . . There’s still time . . .’ But his voice was suddenly tired and spent as he spoke these words.

‘As you wish,’ said Dexippus. ‘But we must act immediately.’ He called a sentry. ‘Take a horse, go out of the eastern gate and report to Daphnaeus. Tell him we have no food left and that we are planning to evacuate the city unless he has another feasible solution. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ nodded the sentry, and turned to do as he had been told.

‘Wait,’ said Tellias. ‘Tell him that we’re ready to meet him now, wherever he wants. And ask for an officer called Dionysius; he’s the field adjutant of the board of generals. Request his presence, if there is to be a meeting.’

‘I’ll do so,’ replied the sentry, and left. He was seen shortly thereafter riding at full tilt towards the Syracusan camp.

A cold, bone-chilling wind rose up, and a fine drizzle began to fall from the grey sky. The assembled men took shelter under the portico and waited at length, in silence, for the messenger to return with the sentence that would decide the fate of Acragas. But in the meantime, news filtered out that the city was to be evacuated and spread like fire from one house to the next, through every quarter. Despair did not spare a single home, not even the luxurious dwellings of the rich. Anguish gripped them all at the thought of leaving the place they were born in, and their anguish was joined by uncertainty and incredulity. Their authorities had not come to this decision after long agonizing, but suddenly, with no forewarning! It was true that the war had been going on for months, but it hadn’t really touched anybody; there had been no victims in the city, no damage to their property.

Daphnaeus’s answer arrived as evening was falling: he would meet the authorities and the military commanders of Acragas at the eastern necropolis, where it was flanked by the road that went inland towards Kamikos. The sentry mentioned that he found him to be discouraged and in a terrible humour. ‘Don’t expect miracles,’ he said after he’d reported on the outcome of his mission. ‘The morale in the Syracusan camp didn’t seem any better than here in the city.’

‘Wait before you say that,’ interrupted Tellias. ‘Let’s wait to hear what Daphnaeus has to propose. Such an extreme decision can only be taken when there’s absolutely no other way out.’

They set off immediately for the appointed place on horseback, leaving from a postern on the eastern side of the city. Tellias rode a mule, a meek animal who was used to his master’s outbursts of temper.

Daphnaeus was already there, flanked by two of his most highly ranked officers and by Dionysius. They were armed from head to toe and had been escorted by no less than fifty cavalrymen and about thirty lightly armed skirmishers.

Tellias noticed that, as far as he could tell from the coats of arms on their shields, they all appeared to be from Syracuse, Gela and Camarina; it seemed strange that only the Sicilian Greeks should have come.

He spoke up first, made confident by Dionysius’s presence. ‘Some of our military commanders, in particular Dexippus, here on my right, feel that we should evacuate the city tomorrow, because the remaining provisions will last us only a few days—’

‘What’s more,’ interrupted Dexippus, ‘our Campanian mercenaries have deserted to the enemy, leaving a segment of nearly one stadium of our walls undefended.’

‘Too big,’ thought Dionysius, and he seemed to remember once pronouncing or thinking those same words, in a dream perhaps.

‘I saw them go,’ said Daphnaeus.

‘It’s true,’ Tellias insisted stubbornly, ‘but we still have thousands of well-armed soldiers inside the city, and you have a powerful army out here. We can fight together and defeat them, can’t we?’

Daphnaeus did not answer at once, and those long moments of silence weighed like a stone in the heart of each man present. Dionysius gazed into his friend’s eyes with an expression of intense discouragement. Daphnaeus finally spoke: ‘Not any more, I’m afraid. The Greeks of Italy are leaving us. Tomorrow.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Tellias. ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘I am, unfortunately. They’re leaving, I tell you.’