At the time of his attack upon Italy Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was the
most brilliant soldier of his day: and his ambition was to rule, like
Alexander, over a world greater than that of his own Greek kingdom. From
babyhood he breathed and grew up amid storm and adventure, all his life
he was most at home in camps and on the battlefield. His father was
killed in battle when Pyrrhus was but five years old: he himself was
only saved from death by a faithful slave who carried him to the house
of the King of the Illyrians and laid him at his feet. The baby Pyrrhus
clasped the knees of the monarch who, looking into his face, could not
resist the appeal of the child's eyes, but kept him safe till he was
twelve years old and then helped to put him on his father's throne.
Though only a boy, Pyrrhus held it for five years. He was driven out,
but later he recovered his kingdom again. As he grew up he studied the
art of war constantly and wrote a handbook on tactics. As Plutarch, who
wrote his life, puts it, 'he was persuaded that neither to annoy others
nor be annoyed by them was a life insufferably languishing and tedious'.
Pyrrhus's appearance expressed the strong, generous simplicity and
directness of his character and his singleness of aim. The most
remarkable feature in his face was his mouth, for his front teeth were
formed of a continuous piece of bone, marked only with small lines
resembling the divisions of a row of teeth. Fear was absolutely unknown
to him. His weakness was that he did not understand men: though a
brilliant soldier he knew nothing about government. He was a soldier
only. He could win battles but not rule men.
[Illustration: PYRRHUS]
Pyrrhus came to Italy on the invitation of the people of Tarentum.
Tarentum was a wealthy and flourishing city in the south. Originally a
Greek settlement, its people were famous for the luxury and elegance of
their houses and lives, and scorned the rude, hardy, and simple Romans
as untutored barbarians. When some Roman ships appeared in their harbour
they were sunk by the Tarentines, who thought that as the Romans were at
that time busy--the Gauls had swept down from the north and they were
engaged with a war against the Samnites--Tarentum was safe from them.
But the Romans at once declared war (281). The Tarentines took fright:
they had no mind for fighting themselves and looked about for some one
who would do it for them. Thus they called to Pyrrhus to save the Greeks
in Italy. Pyrrhus saw in their appeal his chance of realizing what for
the great Alexander had remained a dream--an empire in the West. He took
sail at once. He was indeed so eager that he started in mid-winter
despite the storms, and lost part of his fleet on the way. Nevertheless
he brought a great army with him: Macedonian foot soldiers, then
considered the best in the world, horsemen, archers, and slingers; and
elephants, never before seen in Italy. In Tarentum he found nothing
ready. His first task was to make the idle, luxurious city into a camp.
The inhabitants, who cared for nothing but feasting, drinking, and
games, did not like this, but it was too late to be sorry. Pyrrhus had
come, and since no other towns in Italy gave any sign of joining him, he
had to make the most of Tarentum. The Tarentines, who had been used to
having all their fighting done for them by slaves, now had to go into
training themselves.
In the spring the Roman army took the field and marched south against
the invader. When Pyrrhus surveyed from a hill the Roman camp and line
of battle he exclaimed in surprise: 'These are no barbarians!' In the
end he won a victory at Heraclea (280), partly by reason of the panic
caused among the Roman soldiers by the elephants--they had never seen
such beasts before--but the victory was a very expensive one. Pyrrhus's
own losses were so heavy that he said, 'One more victory like this and I
shall be ruined.' As he walked over the field at night and saw the Roman
dead, all their wounds in front, lying where they had fallen in their
own lines, he cried: 'Had I been king of these people I should have
conquered the world.'
A deep impression was made on him by the envoy Fabricius. Plutarch tells
the story:
_Pyrrhus and Fabricius_
Presently envoys came to negotiate about the fate of the
prisoners, and among them Gaius Fabricius, who was famed among the
Romans, as Cineas told the King, for uprightness and military
talent, and for extreme poverty as well. Therefore Pyrrhus
received him kindly, apart from the rest, and urged him to accept
a present, of course not corruptly, but as a so-called token of
friendship and intimacy. When Fabricius refused, the King did no
more for the moment, but next day, wishing to try his nerves as he
had never seen an elephant, he had the largest of these beasts put
behind a curtain close to them as they conversed. This was done,
and at a signal the curtain was drawn aside, and the beast
suddenly raised its trunk and held it over the head of Fabricius,
uttering a harsh and terrifying cry. Undisturbed, he turned round
and, smiling, said to Pyrrhus, 'Yesterday your gold did not move
me, nor does your elephant to-day.'
At dinner all sorts of subjects were discussed, and as a great
deal was said about Greece and its philosophers, Cineas happened
to mention Epicurus and explained the doctrines of his disciples
about the gods and service to the state and the chief end of life.
This last, as he said, they identified with pleasure, while they
avoided service to the state as interrupting and marring their
happiness, and banished the gods far away from love and anger and
care for mankind to an untroubled life of ceaseless enjoyment.
Before he had finished, Fabricius interrupted him and said, 'By
Hercules, I hope that Pyrrhus and the Samnites will hold these
doctrines as long as they are at war with us.'
This filled Pyrrhus with such admiration of his high spirit and
character that he was more anxious than before to be on terms of
friendship instead of hostility with the Romans, and he privately
urged Fabricius to arrange a peace and to take service with him
and live as the first of all his comrades and generals. It is said
that he quietly replied, 'O king, you would gain nothing; for
these very men who now honour and admire you will prefer my rule
to yours if they once get to know me.' Such were his words; and
Pyrrhus did not receive them with anger or in a spirit of offended
majesty, but he actually told his friends of the nobility of
Fabricius and gave him sole charge of the prisoners on the
understanding that, if the Senate refused the peace, they should
be sent back after greeting their friends and keeping the festival
of Saturn. As it happened, they were sent back after the festival,
the Senate ordaining the penalty of death for anyone who stayed
behind.
Plutarch, xxx. 20.
He was yet more deeply impressed by the strength of the Roman character
a little later. When he found that none of the Latins were going to join
him Pyrrhus sent an ambassador to the Senate, offering terms of peace.
This ambassador was loaded with costly presents for the leading Romans
and their wives. All these gifts were refused. Then Pyrrhus's envoy came
before the Senate, to see whether eloquence could not do what bribes had
failed to effect. He had been a pupil of the great Demosthenes, the most
wonderful orator of Greece, and his golden words moved many of the
senators; they thought it would be wise to make terms. But old Appius
Claudius, one of the most distinguished men in Rome, the builder of the
great military road known as the Appian way, had been carried into the
Senate House by his sons and servants, for he was very old and nearly
blind. He now rose to his feet and his speech made these senators
ashamed of themselves. 'Hitherto', he cried, 'I have regarded my
blindness as a misfortune; but now, Romans, I wish I had been deaf as
well as blind, for then I should not have heard these shameful counsels.
Who is there who will not despise you and think you an easy conquest, if
Pyrrhus not only escapes unconquered but gains Tarentum as a reward for
insulting the Romans?' His words stirred the senators deeply. They voted
as one man to continue the war. Pyrrhus's ambassador was told to tell
his master that the Romans could not treat so long as there was an enemy
on Italian soil. He told Pyrrhus that the Senate seemed to him an
assembly of kings.
The firm mind of the Romans did not change when Pyrrhus marched north.
Though he got within forty miles of the city there was no panic: only a
rush of men to join the armies standing outside the walls to guard it.
He had to retire south again. Even after another victory in the next
campaign--at Asculum (279)--Rome was not shaken: the Italians stood
firm. Pyrrhus knew that to win battles was not enough; he could not
conquer Rome unless he could shake the solid resistance of a whole
people. This he could not do. Nor did he know how to appeal to the
Italians and unite them against Rome. To the Italians Pyrrhus was a
foreigner, called in by the Tarentine Greeks whom they rightly despised.
Against him they rallied round Rome. And the Romans never wavered for an
instant. At the darkest hour there had been no break in the will of the
whole people. Pyrrhus saw this: he saw that the Romans would last him
out. After Asculum he crossed to Sicily and defeated the Carthaginians,
the allies of Rome who were gradually capturing the island from
Agathocles the king. But though he soon overran a large part of this
island, the Greeks in Sicily liked his iron rule no better than the
Greeks of Tarentum had done. He returned to Italy, leaving the great
fortress of Lilybaeum still in Carthaginian hands, crying as he sailed
away, 'What a battleground for Romans and Carthaginians I am leaving.'
In Italy he fought one more big battle, at Beneventum (275); but it was
a defeat. His hopes were ended. He had won glory for himself, but he
had, and this he knew, helped to unite Italy under Rome; and, as he saw,
to prepare the way for a great struggle between Rome and Carthage.
Pyrrhus saw, sooner than any Roman, the great struggle coming in which
the fate of Rome was to be decided. He had shown the Romans the way: had
made their strength visible to them and turned their eyes beyond Italy,
across the seas.