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And so, while the city was being taken, there was to be observed among the Greeks lamentation and weeping, and among the barbarians there was cheering and commingled outcries; for the former, as their eyes looked upon the great disaster which surrounded them, were filled with terror, while the latter, elated by their successes, urged on their comrades to slaughter. [2] The Selinuntians gathered into the market-place and all who reached it died fighting there; and the barbarians, scattering throughout the entire city, plundered whatever of value was to be found in the dwellings, while of the inhabitants they found in them some they burned together with their homes and when others struggled into the streets, without distinction of sex or age but whether infant children or women or old men, they put them to the sword, showing no sign of compassion. [3] They mutilated even the dead according to the practice of their people, some carrying bunches of hands about their bodies and others heads which they had spitted upon their javelins and spears.1 Such women as they found to have taken refuge together with their children in the temples they called upon their comrades not to kill, and to these alone did they give assurance of their lives. [4] This they did, however, not out of pity for the unfortunate people, but because they feared lest the women, despairing of their lives, would burn down the temples, and thus they would not be able to make booty of the great wealth which was stored up in them as dedications. [5] To such a degree did the barbarians surpass all other men in cruelty, that whereas the rest of mankind spare those who seek refuge in the sanctuaries from the desire not to commit sacrilege against the deity, the Carthaginians, on the contrary, would refrain from laying hands on the enemy in order that they might plunder the temples of their gods. [6] By nightfall the city had been sacked, and of the dwellings some had been burned and others razed to the ground, while the whole area was filled with blood and corpses. Sixteen thousand was the sum of the inhabitants who were found to have fallen, not counting the more than five thousand who had been taken captive.

1 Cp. Book 5.29 for the custom of the Gauls of preserving the heads of warriors they had conquered.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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