g. As all the ordinary modes of
administering poison were precluded by the vigilance and strictness
with which the usual avenues of approach to the king were guarded,
Maenon contrived to accomplish his end by poisoning a quill which the
king was subsequently to use as a tooth-pick. The poison was
insinuated thus into the teeth and gums of the victim, where it soon
took effect, producing dreadful ulceration and intolerable pain. The
infection of the venom after a short time pervaded the whole system of
the sufferer, and brought him to the brink of the grave; and at last,
finding that he was speechless, and apparently insensible, his
ruthless murderers, fearing, perhaps, that he might revive again,
hurried him to the funeral pile before life was extinct, and the fire
finished the work that the poison had begun.

The declaration of Scripture, "They that take the sword shall perish
by the sword," is illustrated and confirmed by the history of almost
every ancient tyrant. We find that they almost all come at last to
some terrible end. The man who usurps a throne by violence seems, in
all ages and among all nations, very sure to be expelled from it by
greater violence, after a brief period of power; and he who poisons or
assassinates a precedent rival whom he wishes to supplant, is almost
invariably cut off by the poison or the dagger of a following one, who
wishes to supplant him.

The death of Agathocles took place about nine years before the
campaign of Pyrrhus in Italy, as described in the last chapter, and
during that period the kingdom of Sicily had been in a very distracted
state. Maenon, immediately after the poisoning of the king, fled to the
camp of Archagathus, who was at that time in command of an army at a
distance from the city. Here, in a short time, he contrived to
assassinate Archagathus, and to seize the supreme power. It was not
long, however, before new claimants and competitors for possession of
the throne appeared, and new wars broke out, in the course of which
Maenon was deposed. At length, in the midst of the contests and
commotions that prevailed, two of the leading generals of the
Sicilian army conceived the idea of bringing forward Pyrrhus's son by
Lanassa as the heir to the crown. This prince was, of course, the
grandson of the old King Agathocles, and, as there was no other
descendant of the royal line at hand who could be made the
representative of the ancient monarchy, it was thought, by the