The Greeks serving as allies of the Carthaginians, as they contemplated the reversal in the lives of the hapless Selinuntians, felt pity at their lot. The women, deprived now of the pampered life they had enjoyed, spent the nights in the very midst of the enemies' lasciviousness, enduring terrible indignities, and some were obliged to see their daughters of marriageable age suffering treatment improper for their years. [2] For the savagery of the barbarians spared neither free-born youths nor maidens, but exposed these unfortunates to dreadful disasters. Consequently, as the women reflected upon the slavery that would be their lot in Libya, as they saw themselves together with their children in a condition in which they possessed no legal rights and were subject to insolent treatment and thus compelled to obey masters, and as they noted that these masters used an unintelligible speech and had a bestial character, they mourned for their living children as dead, and receiving into their souls as a piercing wound each and every outrage committed against them, they became frantic with suffering and vehemently deplored their own fate; while as for their fathers and brothers who had died fighting for their country, them they counted blessed, since they had not witnessed any sight unworthy of their own valour. [3] The Selinuntians who had escaped capture, twenty-six hundred in number, made their way in safety to Acragas and there received all possible kindness; for the Acragantini, after portioning out food to them at public expense, divided them for billeting among their homes, urging the private citizens, who were indeed eager enough, to supply them with every necessity of life.
