Polymnia   

Phoenicians, Libyans, Iberians, Ligurians, Helisycians, Sardinians,
and Corsicans, under the command of Hamilcar the son of Hanno, king of
the Carthaginians. Terillus prevailed upon Hamilcar, partly as his
sworn friend, but more through the zealous aid of Anaxilaus the son of
Cretines, king of Rhegium; who, by giving his own sons to Hamilcar
as hostages, induced him to make the expedition. Anaxilaus herein
served his own father-in-law; for he was married to a daughter of
Terillus, by name Cydippe. So, as Gelo could not give the Greeks any
aid, he sent (they say) the sum of money to Delphi.
They say too, that the victory of Gelo and Thero in Sicily over
Hamilcar the Carthaginian fell out upon the very day that the Greeks
defeated the Persians at Salamis. Hamilcar, who was a Carthaginian
on his father's side only, but on his mother's a Syracusan, and who
had been raised by his merit to the throne of Carthage, after the
battle and the defeat, as I am informed, disappeared from sight:
Gelo made the strictest search for him, but he could not be found
anywhere, either dead or alive.
The Carthaginians, who take probability for their guide, give
the following account of this matter:- Hamilcar, they say, during
all the time that the battle raged between the Greeks and the
barbarians, which was from early dawn till evening, remained in the
camp, sacrificing and seeking favourable omens, while he burned on a
huge pyre the entire bodies of the victims which he offered. Here,
as he poured libations upon the sacrifices, he saw the rout of his
army; whereupon he cast himself headlong into the flames, and so was
consumed and disappeared. But whether Hamilcar's disappearance
happened, as the Phoenicians tell us, in this way, or, as the
Syracusans maintain, in some other, certain it is that the
Carthaginians offer him sacrifice, and in all their colonies have
monuments erected to his honour, as well as one, which is the grandest
of all, at Carthage. Thus much concerning the affairs of Sicily.
As for the Corcyraeans, whom the envoys that visited Sicily took
in their way, and to whom they delivered the same message as to
Gelo- their answers and actions were the following. With great
readiness they promised to come and give their help to the Greeks;
declaring that "the ruin of Greece was a thing which they could not
tamely stand by to see; for should she fall, they must the very next
day submit to slavery; so that they were bound to assist her to the
very uttermost of their power." But notwithstanding that they answered
so smoothly, yet when the time came for the succours to be sent,
they were of quite a different mind; and though they manned sixty
ships, it was long ere they put to sea with them; and when they had so
done, they went no further than the Peloponnese, where they lay to
with their fleet, off the Lacedaemonian coast, about Pylos and
Taenarum- like Gelo, watching to see what turn the war would take. For
they despaired altogether of the Greeks gaining the day, and
expected that the Persian would win a great battle, and then be master
of the whole of Greece. They therefore acted as I have said, in
order that they might be able to address Xerxes in words like these:
"O king! though the Greeks sought to obtain our aid in their war
with thee, and though we had a force of no small size, and could
have furnished a greater number of ships than any Greek state except
Athens, yet we refused, since we would not fight against thee, nor
do aught to cause thee annoyance." The Corcyraeans hoped that a speech
like this would gain them better treatment from the Persians than
the rest of the Greeks; and it would have done so, in my judgment.
At the same time, they had an excuse ready to give their countrymen,
which they used when the time came. Reproached by them for sending
no succours, they replied "that they had fitted out a fleet of sixty
triremes, but that the Etesian winds did not allow them to double Cape
Malea, and this hindered them from reaching Salamis- it was not from
any bad motive that they had missed the sea-fight." In this way the
Corcyraeans eluded the reproaches of the Greeks.
The Cretans, when the envoys sent to ask aid from them came and