Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 24
Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

30. Marcellus, proceeding with his whole army [p. 271]to Leontini and summoning Appius also to make an¹ attack from the other side, found such enthusiasm in his soldiers, due to anger aroused by the slaughter of men of the guard while negotiations were pending, that they took the city at the first assault. [2] Hippocrates and Epicydes, on seeing that the walls were being taken and gates forced, sought refuge with a few men in the citadel. Thence they fled secretly by night to Herbesus.² [3] The Syracusans, who had set out from home in a column of eight thousand men, were met at the river Mylas by a messenger, reporting that the city³ had been captured, but for the rest mingling the false with the true: [4] that a general massacre of soldiers and townspeople had occurred, and no adults, he thought, had survived; that the city had been plundered, the property of the wealthy given away. [5] On hearing news so terrible the column halted, and in the general excitement the commanders —and they were Sosis and Dinomenes — considered what they should do. [6] The appearance of well-founded alarm had been lent to the falsehood by the scourging and beheading of deserters, about two thousand men. [7] But not one of the Leontinians or of the other soldiers had been injured after the capture of the city; and, except what had been lost in the first confusion of the capture of the city, all their property was being restored to them. [8] And the soldiers, complaining that their comrades had been betrayed to their death, could neither be induced to go to Leontini nor to wait at the same spot for more trustworthy news. [9] The generals,⁴ seeing them inclined to mutiny, but that the outbreak would not last long if the leaders in folly should be removed, led the army to Megara:⁵ [10] and then with a few [p. 273]horsemen they went themselves to Herbesus, in the⁶ hope of getting possession of the city by treachery, owing to the general alarm. [11] When this undertaking disappointed them, they thought they must use force, and moved their camp from Megara the next day, to attack Herbesus with all their troops. [12] Hippocrates and Epicydes, thinking that their plan to put themselves at the mercy of the soldiers, who were in large part used to them and also at that time inflamed by the report of the slaughter of their comrades, was not so much one which at first sight promised safety, as it was the only possible plan in a desperate situation, went out to meet the column. [13] The first unit happened to be that of six hundred Cretans, who had served under them in the army of Hieronymus and were under obligations to Hannibal, as they had been captured among the Roman auxiliaries at Lake Trasumennus and allowed to go free. [14] Recognizing them from their standards and the character of their weapons,⁷ Hippocrates and Epicydes, holding out olive branches and in addition the woollen bands of suppliants, implored them to admit them and, having done so, to protect and not betray them to the Syracusans, to be themselves presently surrendered by the same to the Roman people for brutal execution.