History of Rome

​Indeed, they shouted out that they should keep good courage: that they would undergo every fortune with them.

​During this conversation the standards had halted and the column was held back, nor had the news of what was the cause of the delay yet reached the leaders. After the rumor that Hippocrates and Epicydes were present spread through the ranks, and there was a murmur throughout the whole column of those who without doubt approved of their arrival, immediately the praetors, spurring their horses, hastened to the front standards.

​Asking what custom that was, what lawlessness of the Cretans, to join in conversation with the enemy and to mix them into their own column without the order of the praetors, they ordered Hippocrates to be seized and chains to be thrown on him.

​At this command, immediately so great a shout arose first from the Cretans, and then was taken up by the others, that it easily appeared that they had to fear for themselves if they should push further.

​Anxious and uncertain of their situation, they ordered the standards to be carried back to Megara, whence they had set out, and sent messengers to Syracuse concerning the present state of affairs.

​Hippocrates also added a trick to minds already inclined to every suspicion, and having sent some of the Cretans to occupy the roads, he read aloud a letter, which he himself had composed, as if it had been intercepted: “The Syracusan praetors to the consul Marcellus.”

​After the greeting, as is customary, it was written that he had acted rightly and in order in that he had spared no one in Leontini.

​But that the cause of all the mercenary soldiers was the same, and that Syracuse would never be at peace as long as any of the foreign auxiliaries were either in the city or in their army, and therefore he should take care ​to bring under his power those who with their praetors had camp near Megara, and by their punishment finally free Syracuse.

​When these things had been read, there was a rush to arms with so great a shout that the praetors in the midst of the tumult fled on horseback in panic to Syracuse.

​And not even by their flight was the sedition suppressed, and attacks were being made against the Syracusan soldiers; nor would there have been any restraint by anyone, if Epicydes and Hippocrates had not gone to meet the anger of the crowd, not out of pity or humane intention, but lest they should cut off for themselves the hope of return, ​and while they held at the same time the soldiers themselves as faithful allies and at the same time as hostages, ​they might then also win over their relatives and friends, first by so great a service, and then by a pledge.

​And having experienced how fickle the crowd was, moved by an empty or light breeze, having found a soldier from that number who had been besieged in Leontini, they suborned him to carry a message to Syracuse consistent with those things which had been falsely reported at Mylas, ​and by presenting himself as an eyewitness and narrating as if seen what was doubtful, he might arouse the anger of the people.