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At that juncture, when night brought an end to all further striving for victory, the Carthaginians abandoned the attack. And when day came, the Himeraeans decided not to allow themselves to be shut in and surrounded in this ignominious manner, as were the Selinuntians, and so they stationed guards on the walls and led out of the city the rest of their soldiers together with the allies who had arrived, some ten thousand men. [2] And by engaging the enemy thus unexpectedly, they threw the barbarians into consternation, thinking as they did that allied forces had arrived to aid those who were penned in by the siege. And because the Himeraeans were far superior in deeds of daring and of skill, and especially because their single hope of safety lay in their prevailing in the battle, at the outset they slew the first opponents. [3] And since the multitude of the barbarians thronged together in great disorder because they never would have expected that the besieged would dare such a move, they were under no little disadvantage; for when eighty thousand men streamed together without order into one place, the result was that the barbarians clashed with each other and suffered more heavily from themselves than from the enemy. [4] The Himeraeans, having as spectators on the walls parents and children as well as all their relatives, spent their own lives unsparingly for the salvation of them all. [5] And since they fought brilliantly, the barbarians, dismayed by their deeds of daring and unexpected resistance, turned in flight. They fled in disorder to the troops encamped on the hills, and the Himeraeans pressed hard upon them, crying out to each other to take no man captive, and they slew more than six thousand of them, according to Timaeus, or, as Ephorus states, more than twenty thousand. [6] But Hannibal, seeing that his men were becoming exhausted, brought down his troops who were encamped on the hills, and reinforcing his beaten soldiers caught the Himeraeans in disorder as they were pushing the pursuit. [7] In the fierce battle which ensued the main body of the Himeraeans turned in flight, but three thousand of them who tried to oppose the Carthaginian army, though they accomplished great deeds, were slain to a man.

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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