ty showed a
disposition to make peace and to restore the captives. When he was
made aware of this, he pretended, in order that he might not be the
cause of their letting slip their advantage, that he had swallowed
deadly poison and was destined certainly to die from its effects.
Hence no agreement and no exchange of prisoners was made. As he was
departing in company with the envoys, his wife and children and others
clung to him, and the consuls declared they would not surrender him,
if he chose to stay, nor yet would they detain him if he was for
departing. Consequently, since he preferred not to transgress the
oaths, he was carried back. He died of outrages, so the legend
reports, perpetrated by his captors. They cut off his eyelids and for
a time shut him in darkness, then they threw him into some kind of
specially constructed receptacle bristling with spikes; and they made
him face the sun; so that through suffering and sleeplessness,--for
the spikes kept him from reclining in any fashion,--he perished. When
the Romans found it out, they delivered the foremost captives that
they held to his children to outrage and put to death in revenge.

[Sidenote: B.C. 250 (_a.u._ 504)] They voted that the consuls, Atilius
Gaius, brother of Regulus, and Lucius Manlius, should make a campaign
into Libya. On coming to Sicily they attacked Lilybaeum and undertook
to fill up a portion of the ditch to facilitate bringing up the
engines. The Carthaginians dug below the mound and undermined it. As
they found this to be a losing game because of the numbers of the
opposing workmen, they built another wall, crescent-shaped, inside.
The Romans ran tunnels under the circle, in order that when the wall
settled they might rush in through the breach thus made. The
Carthaginians then built counter-tunnels and came upon many workers
who were unaware of what the other side was doing. These they killed,
and also destroyed many by hurling blazing firewood into the diggings.
Some of the allies now, burdened by the strain of the siege and
displeased because their superiors did not come down with their full
wages, made propositions to the Romans to betray the place. Hamilcar
discovered their plot but did not disclose it, for fear of driving
them into open hostility. However, he supplied their leaders with
money and in addition promised other supplies of it to the mass of
them. In this way he won their favor, and they did not even deny their
treachery b