s critical
conjuncture, Gelon attacked, with all his forces, the Carthaginians, who
at first made a gallant resistance. But when the news of their general's
death was brought them, and they saw their fleet in a blaze, their courage
failed them, and they fled. And now a dreadful slaughter ensued; upwards
of a hundred and fifty thousand being slain. The rest of the army, having
retired to a place where they were in want of every thing, could not make
a long defence, and were forced to surrender at discretion. This battle
was fought the very day of the famous action of Thermopylae, in which three
hundred Spartans,(612) with the sacrifice of their lives, disputed
Xerxes's entrance into Greece.

When the sad news was brought to Carthage of the entire defeat of the
army, consternation, grief, and despair, threw the whole city into such a
confusion and alarm as are not to be expressed. It was imagined that the
enemy was already at the gates. The Carthaginians, in great reverses of
fortune, always lost their courage, and sunk into the opposite extreme.
Immediately they sent a deputation to Gelon, by which they desired peace
upon any terms. He heard their envoys with great humanity. The complete
victory he had gained, so far from making him haughty and untractable, had
only increased his modesty and clemency even towards the enemy. He
therefore granted them a peace, without any other condition, than their
paying two thousand(613) talents towards the expense of the war. He
likewise required them to build two temples, where the treaty of this
peace should be deposited, and exposed at all times to public view. The
Carthaginians did not think this a dear purchase of a peace, that was so
absolutely necessary to their affairs, and which they hardly durst hope
for. Gisgo, the son of Hamilcar, pursuant to the unjust custom of the
Carthaginians, of ascribing to the general the ill success of a war, and
making him bear the blame of it, was punished for his father's misfortune,
and sent into banishment. He passed the remainder of his days at Selinus,
a city of Sicily.

Gelon, on his return to Syracuse, convened the people, and invited all the
citizens to appear under arms. He himself entered the assembly, unarmed
and without his guards, and there gave an account of the whole conduct of
his life. His speech met with no other interruption, than the public
testimonies which were given him of gratitude and admiration. So far from
being treate