n mentioned that one of the wives whom Pyrrhus
had married after the death of Antigone, the Egyptian princess, was
Lanassa, the daughter of Agathocles, the King of Sicily. Agathocles
was a tyrannical monster of the worst description. His army was little
better than an organized band of robbers, at the head of which he went
forth on marauding and plundering expeditions among all the nations
that were within his reach. He made these predatory excursions
sometimes into Italy, sometimes into the Carthaginian territories on
the African coast, and sometimes among the islands of the
Mediterranean Sea. In these campaigns he met with a great variety of
adventures, and experienced every possible fate that the fortune of
war could bring. Sometimes he was triumphant over all who opposed him,
and became intoxicated with prosperity and success. At other times,
through his insane and reckless folly, he would involve himself in
the most desperate difficulties, and was frequently compelled to give
up every thing, and to fly alone in absolute destitution from the
field of his attempted exploits to save his life.

On one such occasion, he abandoned an army in Africa, which he had
taken there on one of his predatory enterprises, and, flying secretly
from the camp, he made his escape with a small number of attendants,
leaving the army to its fate. His flight was so sudden on this
occasion that he left his two sons behind him in the hands and at the
mercy of the soldiers. The soldiers, as soon as they found that
Agathocles had gone and left them, were so enraged against him that
they put his sons to death on the spot, and then surrendered in a body
to the enemy. Agathocles, when the tidings of this transaction came to
him in Sicily, was enraged against the soldiers in his turn, and, in
order to revenge himself upon them, he immediately sought out from
among the population of the country their wives and children, their
brothers and sisters, and all who were in any way related to them.
These innocent representatives of the absent offenders he ordered to
be seized and slain, and their bodies to be cast into the sea toward
Africa as an expression of revengeful triumph and defiance. So great
was the slaughter on this occasion, that the waters of the sea were
dyed with blood to a great distance from the shore.

Of course, such cruelty as this could not be practiced without
awakening, on the part of those who suffered from it, a spirit of
hatred