repute, who, after Aetius had died in the manner told above,[30] no
longer deigned to yield obedience to the emperor, but beginning a
revolution and detaching all the others from allegiance, held the power
of Dalmatia himself, since no one dared encounter him. But the Emperor
Leon at that time won over this Marcellianus by very careful wheedling,
and bade him go to the island of Sardinia, which was then subject to the
Vandals. And he drove out the Vandals and gained possession of it with
no great difficulty. And Heracleius was sent from Byzantium to Tripolis
in Libya, and after conquering the Vandals of that district in battle,
he easily captured the cities, and leaving his ships there, led his army
on foot toward Carthage. Such, then, was the sequence of events which
formed the prelude of the war.

But Basiliscus with his whole fleet put in at a town distant from
Carthage no less than two hundred and eighty stades (now it so happened
that a temple of Hermes had been there from of old, from which fact the
place was named Mercurium; for the Romans call Hermes "Mercurius"), and
if he had not purposely played the coward and hesitated, but had
undertaken to go straight for Carthage, he would have captured it at the
first onset, and he would have reduced the Vandals to subjection without
their even thinking of resistance; so overcome was Gizeric with awe of
Leon as an invincible emperor, when the report was brought to him that
Sardinia and Tripolis had been captured, and he saw the fleet of
Basiliscus to be such as the Romans were said never to have had before.
But, as it was, the general's hesitation, whether caused by cowardice or
treachery, prevented this success. And Gizeric, profiting by the
negligence of Basiliscus, did as follows. Arming all his subjects in the
best way he could, he filled his ships, but not all, for some he kept in
readiness empty, and they were the ships which sailed most swiftly. And
sending envoys to Basiliscus, he begged him to defer the war for the