As soon as it was learned, in the camp of the Sicilians, that Epicydes had moved away from Syracuse, that the Carthaginians had abandoned Sicily, and had, in a way, delivered it a second time to the Romans, after having, in the preliminary, sounded the dispositions of the besieged, deputies were sent to Marcellus to settle the conditions on which the city would be returned. There was enough agreement to abandon to the Romans all that had belonged to the kings, and to leave the rest of the island to the Sicilians, with their freedom and their laws. The deputies ask for an interview with those whom Epicyde had entrusted with the conduct of business; they announce that the army has charged them to treat at the same time with Marcellus and with them, so that fortune would be equal for all, for the besieged as for those who were outside, and that there would be no stipulation particular and exclusive. Then introduced into the city to confer with their hosts and their friends, they make known to them the conditions agreed upon with Marcellus, promise them life and thus decide them to join them in attacking the lieutenants of Epicydes, Polyclitus, Philistion, and Epicide surnamed Sindon.
These having been killed, they summoned a general assembly and, after having deplored the famine which caused so many secret murmurs in the city itself, they represented that despite all the evils with which they were overwhelmed, fortune should not be blamed, since it was in the power of the Syracusans to put an end to it. It was out of affection and not out of hatred that the Romans had undertaken the siege of Syracuse. They had, in fact, taken up arms only when they saw Sicily in the power of Hippocrates and Epicydes, those satellites of Hannibal and then of Hieronymus; they had invested the city, rather to drive out its cruel tyrants than to reduce it itself. Now that Hippocrates was no more, that Epicydes was kept far from Syracuse and his lieutenants put to death, that the Carthaginians, vanquished on land and sea, were forced to renounce the entire possession of Sicily, what motive would it remain for the Romans not to desire the preservation of Syracuse, as in the time of Hieron, the most faithful of their friends? The city and its inhabitants therefore had nothing to fear except from themselves, if they let slip the opportunity of reconciling themselves with the Romans. There would perhaps never be one so favorable as the very moment when the death of their tyrants had restored them to their freedom.