Conspiracy of the Banished Syracusans (Spring 212)
While the Romans pressed the siege of Capua most vigorously, that of Syracuse was ended by the constancy and courage of the general and the army, which was assisted by the treachery of some inhabitants.
Indeed, at the beginning of spring, Marcellus had hesitated whether he would turn his arms against Agrigento, where Himilcon and Hippocrates commanded, or whether he would continue the siege of Syracuse. He saw clearly that this city was impregnable by force, because of its situation on land and sea, and by famine, because it drew almost without obstacle its convoys from Carthage. However, so as not to neglect anything, he addressed himself, among the Syracusan defectors who were in his camp, to persons of the highest rank, whom their estrangement for new ideas had caused to be banished from their country at the time of the defection; he urged them to sound out the dispositions of their partisans and to promise them, if they handed over Syracuse to him, the preservation of their liberty and their laws.
It was not easy to have lectures, because the large number of suspects kept all eyes open, all attention fixed on them, and all attempts of this nature were on guard against them. A slave of the exiles succeeded in introducing himself into the city as a defector, got together with some partisans of the Romans, and thus began the negotiation. Then several of the latter, hidden under nets in fishing boats, went to the camp and had talks with the defectors; others imitated them, then still others; finally they were eighty in number. Already all the measures were taken for treason, when the project was revealed to Epicyde by a certain Attalus, despite not having been privy to the secret. They were all made to expire in horrible tortures.
A new hope soon succeeded the one that had just vanished. A Lacedaemonian, named Damippus, deputy by Syracuse to King Philip, had been taken by the Roman fleet. Epicydes took great interest in redeeming it; Marcellus did not refuse; the policy of the Romans being therefore to seek the friendship of the Aetolians, allies of Lacedaemon. A place was chosen, to deal with this redemption, which, halfway between the town and the camp, was, on both sides, the most favorable:it was the port of Trogile, near a tower called Geleager. In one of these frequent interviews, a Roman, having observed the wall closely, counted the stones, measured with his eye the elevation of each of them, and by means of a calculation which gave him the total height, he recognized that in this place the wall was lower than the besiegers and himself had thought, and that one could reach the summit with ladders of mediocre size. He communicated his observations to Marcellus, who did not think it right to neglect this advice; but as it was not possible to reach this place of the ramparts, which its very weakness made it guard with more care, they waited for a favorable opportunity.
It was offered by a defector who came to announce that Syracuse was going to celebrate the feast of Diana for three days, and that in default of the other provisions which are lacking in a siege, wine would not be spared in the feasts, Epicydes having some. distributed to the whole city, and the great ones to each tribe.
At this news, Marcellus took counsel with a small number of tribunes, chose with them the centurions and soldiers most capable of executing such a bold enterprise, secretly provided himself with ladders, and ordered the rest of the army to take the necessary food and rest early, in order to be ready to march at night on an expedition. When he judged that the intemperance of the day had plunged the besieged into the first sleep, on a signal, he ordered the soldiers of the same mantle to carry ladders, and led about a thousand men in a row and in silence until at the place indicated. The first gain without tumult and without noise the top of the wall, and are imitated by the others; because the audacity of the first inspires courage in the less resolute.