ROMAN EMPIRE. 



393 



Itoman 



The Taren- 

 tine* invite 

 I'yrrhui to 

 command 

 their ar- 



Ty rrhus re- 



forms the 

 Tarentines. 

 B. C. 280. 



Advances 

 to meet the 



HoiUMU. 



himself enclosed in the middle of the Ssmnite army. 

 Stripping them of every tiling but their garments, 

 Pontius made them pass through the yoke, and stipu- 

 late:! that they should evacuate the territory of the 

 Samnite*. The Romans were deeply afflicted with this 

 disgraceful treaty, but they soon found cause to break 

 it. Under the dictatorships and consulates of Papirius 

 Cursor, the Romans gained repeated triumphs over the 

 Samnites, and by the exertions of Fabius Maximus and 

 Decius, they were finally subjugated. 



Alarmed at the increase of the Roman power, the 

 Tarentines resolved to oppose them ; but being devoted 

 more to the pursuits of indolence and pleasure than to 

 those of war, they invited Pyrrhus king of Epirus to 

 lead their armies to battle. When the Roman general 

 Emilius heard of this invitation, he carried on the war 

 with greater vigour, and soon drove the Tarentine 

 army within the walls of their capital. 



The Tarentine ambassadors succeeded in making a 

 treaty with Pyrrhus, who immediately dispatched his 

 skilful general Cyneas with 3000 men to take posses- 

 sion of Tarentum. When he had, after much diffi- 

 culty, got the command of the citadel, he solicited 

 Pyrrhus to hasten into Italy. Emilius now resolved 

 to go into winter quarters in Apulia, but his road lying 

 through defiles flanked by lofty hills on the one side 

 and by the sea on the other, he was unexpectedly at- 

 tacked by the Tarentines and Epirots, who had posted 

 archers and slingers on the hills, and armed several 

 barks with ballistae. Emilius, however, placed his 

 Tarentine prisoners between him and the enemy, and 

 thus made his way through the defiles without any 

 farther molestation. In the following year Emilius 

 was made proconsul. 



Pyrrhus had no sooner arrived in Tarentum than he 

 found the inhabitants engrossed with licentiousness 

 and gaiety. They had expected that the Epirots alone 

 were to brave the dangers of the war; but Pyrrhus re- 

 solved to reform them and to put an end to the divi- 

 sions which were fomented b) r their idleness and vices. 

 He prohibited their feasts, their masquerades, and their 

 plays. He put down the harangues and debates of 

 their demagogues ; and, selecting the strongest of the 

 youth he inured them to military exercises and the use 

 of arms. The Tarentines could not brook such a 

 system of severe and rigorous discipline ; they com- 

 plained loudly of their new ally, and even attempted 

 to quit their country, but Pyrrhus made it a capital 

 crime to abandon their territory, and increased the 

 severity of his measures in proportion as they endea- 

 voured to resist or evade them. 



While Pyrrhus was thus disciplining the Tarentines, 

 P. Valerius Laevinus the Roman consul entered Lu- 

 cania and ravaged the country. Though Pyrrhus had 

 not yet collected hia contingents from the allies of the 

 Tarentines, he yet ventured into the field, and ad- 

 vanced to the Roman camp on the banks of the Siris. 

 Upon reconnoitring the camp from the opposite bank, 

 and observing the entrenchments, and the good order 

 which characterized the whole, he renounced his plan 

 of attacking them, and waited in his own entrench- 

 ments for the reinforcements which he expected. 



The Roman consul, however, was desirous of bring- 

 ing Pyrrhus to a general engagement before the arrival 

 of the confederate troops, lie accordingly addressed 

 his array, and drawing up his infantry on the banks of 

 the Siris, the cavalry were ordered to make a great 

 detour in order to cross some unprotected part of the 

 river. Having succeeded in passing the Siris, the 



VOL. XVII. PART II. 



cavalry attacked the troops which Pyrrhus had drawn 

 up iii trout of the Roman infantry, and thus gave time 

 to the latter to cross the river by bridges which had 

 been prepared for them. In the mean time, Pyrrhus 

 advanced with his army, in the hopes of destroying the fil 

 Romans during th<: hurry and disorder of forming on 

 the banks of the river; but the Roman cavalry kept 

 the Epirots in check till the infantry were formed. 

 At this early period of the action, Pyrrhus astonished 

 the Romans by his bravery and skill. He hid a horse 

 killed under him at the first onset, and as a report had 

 gone abroad that he was slain, he rode through all his 

 ranks before he began the general attack. The rich- 

 ness of his equipments having marked him out to the 

 enemy, he exchanged his dress and his helmet with his 

 favourite Megacles, and thus masked he attacked the 

 Romans with a vigour to which they had not been 

 accustomed. The Romans bore the onset with un- 

 daunted firmness. The Epirots and the Romans gave 

 way by turns, and by turns were rallied, and their 

 leader Megaclei, in the royal garb, was pursued by 

 Dexter a Roman knight, who slew him and carried his 

 dress and armour to the consul. When these were 

 shown to the Epirots, they began to give way under 

 the belief that their king had fallen ; but Pyrrhus 

 learning what had happened, rode bareheaded along 

 the first lines of his army and raised their hopes and 

 their courage. 



Laevinus now ordered his cavalry to advance ; but 

 the moment this was observed by Pyrrhus, he brought 

 twenty elephants in front of his army, having towers 

 on their backs full of archers. Awed by the sight of 

 these animals, which they had never seen before, the 

 courage of the Roman cavalry began to abate ; but as 

 they advanced nearer to them, their horses took fright 

 at the strange noise of the elephants, and either threw 

 their riders or carried them off at full gallop. Al- 

 though the cavalry were thus thrown into disorder, 

 and many of them slain by the darts of the archers, 

 yet the infantry still maintained their position till 

 Pyrrhus at the head of his Thessalian horse attacked Pyrrhu* de- 

 them in a furious onset, and forced them to repass the 

 river in disorder, and take refuge in Apulia. Although 

 Pyrrhus remained master of the field, yet he lost in 

 this engagement many of his best officers and soldiers, 

 and was heard to confess that another such victory 

 would compel him to return to Epirus. 



While he was engaged in burying the dead, with 

 which the field of battle was covered, Pyrrhus is said 

 to have observed that the Romans had all fallen by 

 honourable wounds, and that the dead still grasped 

 their swords in their hands. He remarked even in 

 the faces of the slain a martial air and a boldness of 

 aspect which drew from him the celebrated exclama- 

 tion, "Oh that Pyrrhus had the Romans for his soldiers, 

 or the Romans Pyrrhus for their leader together we 

 should subdue the whole world." 



After repairing the disasters of this bloody engage- 

 ment, Pyrrhus followed the Romans into the territories 

 of their allies, and after advancing even into the neigh- 

 bourhood of Rome, he made himself master of the 

 greater part of Campania. Here he was joined by the 

 Samnites, the Lucanians, and the IWessapians, and 

 with these reinforcements he laid siege to Capua. 

 Laevinus, however, forced him to raise the siege, but 

 Pyrrhus turning all on a sudden towards Rome by the 

 Latin way, surprised Fregellae, and passing through 

 the territory of the Hernici, he arrived at Praneste. 

 Here he is said to have obtained a sight of Rome from 

 So 



