These were the days when the Samnites with the coöperation of other captives and slaves in the city came to an agreement to form a conspiracy against Rome. Numbers of them had been brought there with a view to their utilization in the equipment of the fleet. Herius Potilius, the leader of the auxiliary force, found it out and pretended to be of like mind with them, in order that he might fully inform himself in regard to what they had determined. As he was not able to give knowledge of the affair,--for all those about him were Samnites,--he persuaded them to gather in the Forum at a time when a senate meeting was being convened and denounce him with declarations that they were being wronged in the matter of the grain which they were receiving. They did this and he was sent for as being the cause of the tumult; and he then laid bare to the Romans the plot. For the moment they merely dismissed the protestants (after they had become quiet) but by night all of those who held slaves arrested some of them. And in this way the entire conspiracy was overthrown.
[Sidenote: B.C. 253 (_a.u._ 496)] The following summer the Romans and the Carthaginians fought in Sicily and Sardinia at once. Somewhat later Atilius Latinus[18] went to Sicily and finding a city named Mytistratus being besieged by Florus he made use of the latter's support. He made assaults upon the circuit of the wall which the natives with the help of the Carthaginians at first withstood vigorously, but when the women and children were moved to tears and laments they abandoned resistance. The Carthaginians passed out secretly by night and at daybreak the natives voluntarily swung the gates wide open. The Romans went in and proceeded to slaughter them all till Atilius made proclamation that the remainder of the booty and the human beings belonged to him who might take them. Forthwith they spared the lives of the remaining captives and after pillaging the city burned it to the ground.
[Footnote 18: A. Atilius Calatinus is meant.]
VIII, 12.--Thence they proceeded heedlessly against Camarina and came into a region where an ambuscade had already been set. They would have perished utterly, had not Marcus Calpurnius, serving as military tribune, matched the catastrophe by his cleverness. He saw that one and one only of the surrounding hills had by reason of its steepness not been occupied and he asked of the consul three hundred heavy-armed men and with them he set out for that point. His purpose was to make the enemy turn their attention to his detachment so that then the rest of the Romans might make their escape. And so it happened; for when the adversaries saw his project, they were thunderstruck and left the consul and his followers as men already captured in order to make a united rush upon Calpurnius. A fierce battle ensued in which many of the opposing side and all the three hundred fell. Calpurnius alone survived. He had been wounded and lay unnoticed among the heaps of slain, being as good as dead by reason of his wounds; afterward he was found alive and his life was saved. While the three hundred were fighting, the consul got away; and after this escape he reduced Camarina and other cities, some by force and some by capitulation. Next Atilius set out against Lipara. But Hamilcar at night by stealth occupied it in advance and by making a sudden sally killed many Romans.