Book 19

1.1. Pyrrhus and the Roman consuls Publius Decius and Publius Sulpicius, having agreed through heralds upon the time in which they would fight it out, came down from their camps and were drawn up in array as follows: King Pyrrhus stationed the Macedonian phalanx first, on the right wing, and after it the Italian Greek mercenaries from Tarentum.

1.2. Then those from Ambracia, and after them the white-shielded phalanx of the Tarentines, and next the allied contingent of Bruttians and Lucanians; in the center of the phalanx the Thesprotians and Chaonians, and adjoining these the mercenaries of the Aetolians and Acarnanians and Athamanians, and last the Samnites, filling out the

1.3. left wing. Of the cavalry he posted on the right wing the Samnite and Thessalian and Bruttian horse and the mercenary horse from Tarentum; and on the left the Ambraciot and Lucanian and Tarentine horse and the Greek mercenary horse, which the Acarnanians and Aetolians and Macedonians and Athamanians made up.

1.4. The light-armed troops and the elephants he divided in two and stationed behind both wings, at a fitting distance, on ground rising a little above the plain. He himself, having about him the so-called royal squadron of picked horsemen, some two thousand in all, was outside the line, so as to be at hand from a ready position for whichever of his men should at any time be hard pressed. The consuls stationed on the left wing the legion called the first, opposite the Macedonian and Ambraciot phalanx and the mercenaries of the Tarentines; and following the first legion the third, over against the part where the white-shielded phalanx of the Tarentines was and the allied contingent of Bruttians and Lucanians.

1.5. Joined to the third they stationed the fourth, against the Molossians and Chaonians and Thesprotians; and the second on the right wing, opposite the mercenaries from Greece—Aetolians and Acarnanians and Athamanians—and the buckler-bearing phalanx of the Samnites. The Latins and Campanians and Sabines and Umbrians and Volscians and Marrucini and Paeligni and Frentani and the other subjects they divided into four parts and posted alongside the Roman

1.6. legions, that no part of their line might be weak. The cavalry, both their own and that of the allies, they divided and stationed on both wings. Outside the line they placed the light-armed troops and three hundred wagons in number, which they had prepared against the battle of the elephants. These had upright beams set upon them carrying crosswise poles, well-running, able to be swung round in whatever direction one wished as quick as thought; and at the ends of the poles were either tridents or sword-like points or scythes all of iron, or grappling-hooks let fall from above, heavy ravens.

1.7. To many of them fire-bearing hands were attached, having about them much tow smeared with pitch, projecting beyond the wagons, with which certain men, standing upon them, were to deliver, when they came near the beasts, fire-filled blows upon their trunks and faces. Upon the wagons, which were four-wheeled, stood also many of the light-armed: archers and stone-throwers and slingers of iron caltrops; and beside them, below, still more others.

1.8. Such, then, was the array of both forces that took the field; and the number of the king's was seventy thousand foot, among whom the Greeks who had crossed the Ionian gulf were sixteen thousand; and of the Roman more than seventy thousand, of whom from Rome itself were some twenty thousand. There were present horsemen to the Romans about eight thousand, and to Pyrrhus a little more, and beasts one short of twenty.

2.1. When the signals of battle had been displayed, the soldiers, chanting the paean and raising the war-cry to Enyalius, advanced together and, falling on, fought, displaying every science of arms. The horsemen drawn up on both wings, foreseeing the points in which they themselves had the advantage over the enemy, had recourse to these: the Romans to close and stationary combat, the Greek cavalry to wheelings round and counter-evolutions;

2.2. and the Romans, whenever they were pursued by the Greeks, turning their horses about and holding in their bridles, fought on foot; while the Greeks, whenever they perceived the Romans setting themselves to oppose them, inclining toward the spear and wheeling through one another, swung their horses round again to face the front, and

2.3. applying the spurs, charged together. Such, then, was the battle of the horsemen; that of the foot was in some respects like it, in others different—like in the whole, different in the parts. For the right wing was the stronger for each side, the left the weaker. Yet not with disgrace did either side turn its back to the enemy, but in good order, remaining by their standards, both sides, and keeping up the forward thrust, withdrew little by little to the rear.

2.4. Those who bore themselves most bravely were, of the king's army, the Macedonians—for these checked the first legion of the Romans and the Latins arrayed with them—and of the Roman, those gathered into the second legion, opposed to the Molossians and Thesprotians and Chaonians. When the king ordered the elephants to be brought against the laboring part of the army, those mounted upon the beam-bearing wagons, perceiving the onset of the beasts, drove together to meet them.

2.5. At first these checked the rush of the beasts, striking them with the engines and turning the fire-bearing hands into their eyes. Then, when those stationed in the towers no longer brought the beasts forward, but cast spears from above, and the light-armed cut through the wicker-screens set about the wagons and hamstrung the oxen, the men at the engines, leaping down from the vehicles, took refuge among the nearest foot and caused them great confusion.

2.6. The Lucanians and Bruttians stationed in the middle of the royal phalanx, after fighting no long time, turned to flight, driven back by the fourth Roman legion. And when once these had given way, and the part of the phalanx where they were was rent asunder, neither did the Tarentines, who had taken the position next to them, hold their ground, but they too, turning their backs to the enemy, fled.

3.1. King Pyrrhus, when he learned that the Lucanians and Bruttians and Tarentines were fleeing headlong, and that the phalanx in their quarter was mangled, gave over part of his own squadron to other commanders, and from the right wing sent off as many other horsemen as he judged sufficient to aid those being pursued by the Romans. And during the time these things were happening, aid manifest to the Romans came from the divinity.

3.2. For certain Daunians from the city of Argyrippa, which they now call Arpi, four thousand foot and about four hundred horse, sent as auxiliaries to the consuls, when they came near the royal camp—proceeding by chance along the road that leads to the rear of the enemy—and saw the plain full of men, halted there a little while and took many kinds of counsel. To come down from the heights and take part in the battle they gave up, knowing neither where anything friendly was nor where anything hostile, nor in what ground they might stand and render some help to their own that they could grasp; but they thought it best to surround and capture the camp of the enemy, supposing both that they themselves would have many fair spoils if they mastered the baggage, and that they would cause the enemy great confusion, if they should suddenly behold the rampart aflame; and the place was not more than twenty stades distant from the battle.

3.3. Having thus deliberated, and having heard from certain captives—men whom they had taken as they came out to gather wood—that only quite a few guarded the rampart, they attacked it from all sides. Pyrrhus, learning of this from a certain horseman who reported it—one who, when the rampart began to be besieged, had driven his horse through and, applying the spurs, came quickly—resolved to hold the rest of his force in the plain and neither to recall nor to move the phalanx; and choosing the elephants and the boldest of the horsemen, he sent them to aid the rampart.

3.4. But while these were still on their way, the rampart, stormed . . . suddenly went up in flames. And those who had done the deed, when they learned from the heights that the men sent by the king were coming against them, fled to the summit of a certain hill, where it was easy neither for the beasts to climb up nor for the horses.

3.5. The king's men, having come too late for the time of relief, turned against the Romans of the third and fourth legions, who had advanced far from the rest when they had routed the enemy opposite themselves. The Romans, foreseeing their onset, ran up to a high and bushy spot and set themselves in array.

3.6. The elephants, then, being unable to climb the rise, did them no harm, nor did the squadrons of horse; but the archers and slingers, casting from all sides, kept wounding and destroying many of them. When the commanders became aware of what was being done there, Pyrrhus sent from the shield-bearing phalanx Athamanians and Acarnanians and some of the Samnites, while the Roman consul sent certain squadrons of horse, since the foot needed such support. And at the same time another battle of foot and horse arose there, and still greater slaughter.

3.7. The king having begun it, the Roman consuls too recalled their men, as the sun was about to set; and bringing them across the river, they led them off to the camp, when it was already growing dark. The force of Pyrrhus, having lost tents and beasts of burden and slaves and all its baggage, encamped upon a certain elevated ground, where it passed the coming night in the open, without equipment, untended, not even well supplied with necessary food, so that many of the wounded perished as well, who might still have been saved had they received aid and care. Such was the end the second battle of the Romans against Pyrrhus reached, near the city of Asculum.

4.1. There came about a dreadful disaster concerning the city of the Rhegines, like that which befell Messene in Sicily, worthy of great watchfulness and forethought on the part of all cities; and it is necessary first to set forth the causes and pretexts of the evils that overtook it.

4.2. When the Lucanians and Bruttians, marching with large forces against Thurii, had ravaged their country and, having thrown a stockade about the city, were besieging it—against whom a Roman force was sent under the command of Fabricius the consul—the Rhegines, fearing lest the barbarians, when the Romans had departed, should send an army against them too, and holding the city of the Tarentines in suspicion, begged Fabricius to leave a force in their city against the sudden inroads of the barbarians, and in case any unforeseen plot from the Tarentines should arise against them. And they received eight hundred Campanians and four hundred Sidicini, of all of whom Decius, a Campanian by race, was the commander.

4.3. This man, when he was lodged with the most distinguished of the inhabitants and was feasted with splendid banquets through the hospitality of his hosts, and saw among many of them splendid and richly-stored furnishings of their houses, at first counted the Rhegines blessed for their prosperity; then he envied them as unworthy of it; and at last he began to plot against them as against enemies.

4.4. And having taken as partner in his secret designs the secretary, a knavish man and the architect of all villainy—who urged him to kill all the Rhegines and to seize their prosperity, part for himself and part to divide among the soldiers, saying that they had taken Messene a little before . . . —persuaded by him and having deliberated with him on the manner of the attempt, he summoned the company-commanders and the most distinguished of the soldiers to the council; and having begged them all to keep his words secret, he said that a great danger hung over him, requiring very great and swift vigilance, since the occasion gave no respite. For, he said, the most distinguished of the Rhegines, having learned of Pyrrhus's crossing, were secretly sending messages to him, promising to cut down the garrison and hand the city over to him.

4.5. While he was still saying this, there appeared a man planted for the purpose, squalid as if from the road, bringing letters forged by Decius himself, as though from some private guest-friend of his, in which it was shown that the king was about to send to Rhegium five hundred soldiers to seize the city, the Rhegines having promised to open the gates to them.

4.6. Some say that the letter-bearer was dispatched in haste by Fabricius the consul, and that the letter contained the very things I spoke of a little before, and warned Decius to forestall the Rhegines; and both accounts have reason. He then showed these things to those present in the council, and as soon as night came, the company-commanders, having told the other soldiers what they intended to do, went to the houses of the Rhegines; and finding some still feasting and others asleep, they slaughtered them at their own hearths as they begged for mercy and rolled at their knees and asked to learn for what they were suffering these things, sparing neither age nor any condition.

4.7. Having murdered the men, they wrought a deed still more terrible; for dividing among themselves the wives of their own hosts and the maidens, they consorted with them against their will—the women whose fathers and husbands they had slain before their eyes.

4.8. Decius had become, instead of a garrison commander, tyrant of the city of the Rhegines; and reckoning that he would pay the Romans the penalty for what he had done, he made an alliance with the Campanians who held Messene, who had the greatest strength of the cities in Sicily, and kept the city under heavy guard.

5.1. The senate, learning of the sufferings of the Rhegines from those who had escaped the destruction, without waiting even the briefest time, sent the city praetor leading another newly-levied army.

5.2. But anticipating the arrival of the Romans, the providence of the divinity took vengeance on Decius, the commander of the garrison, for his unholy designs in the most vital parts of life, casting a disease into his eyes that brought dreadful agonies. Eager to cure this, the man sent for a physician from Messene, Dexicrates by name, having learned that he was the best of the physicians of his time, but not knowing that he was a Rhegine by race. He, coming to Rhegium, anointed Decius's eyes with a caustic drug, and bidding him endure the agonies until he should return, went down to the sea, embarked on the boat prepared for him, and before anyone perceived what had been done, sailed off to Messene.

5.3. Decius, while his sight was being burned away, endured for a time, bearing dreadful pangs in expectation of the physician; but when much time passed and he could no longer bear the agonies, he sponged off the drug and, opening his eyes, found his sight burned out, and from that time remained blind. And carrying on a few days more, he fell into the power of the Romans, seized by his own men.

5.4. For some, thinking this a vindication of Fabricius, both opened the city to the praetor and, having bound Decius, handed him over to Fabricius. He gave back the city to the surviving Rhegines, and ordering the garrison to leave everything there behind, led them off carrying nothing except their arms;

5.5. and choosing out from them the ringleaders, whom the rest declared to be partners in the unholy designs, he brought them in chains to Rome. These, after being scourged with whips in the forum, as was the ancestral custom established for malefactors, were put to death, their heads struck off with the axe—all except Decius and the secretary; for these, having either tricked their guards or bought with money the privilege of not dying under insult, made away with themselves. So much, then, for these matters.

6.1. Pyrrhus himself, uttering the Homeric verses which Hector is made to speak to Ajax, as though they had been spoken to himself by the Romans—"Therefore I am unwilling to strike you, being such a man, watching you by stealth, but openly, if I might hit you"—and saying after this that he was in danger of having taken up an evil cause of war against men most holy of the Greeks and most just, declared that he saw one deliverance from the war, fair and advantageous: if he should make them friends instead of enemies, by beginning some great act of kindness.

6.2. Ordering the Roman captives to be brought forward, and giving them all clothing befitting free persons and provisions for the journey, he exhorted them to remember what manner of man he had been toward them, and to tell the others, and, when they came to their own countries, to act with all zeal that they might make their cities his friends.

6.3. Royal gold has indeed an irresistible strength, and no guard against this missile has been found for men.

7.1. Cleinias of Croton, being tyrant, robbed the cities of their freedom, gathering exiles from every quarter and freeing slaves; and having with these strengthened his tyranny, he killed some of the most distinguished of the Crotoniates and drove others from the city. Anaxilas seized the citadel of the Rhegines and, having held power all his life, left the rule to his son Leophron. And others, having established dominions from these beginnings in the cities,

7.2. ruined all their affairs. The last and greatest of all afflictions for all the cities was the tyranny of Dionysius, who became master of Sicily. For he crossed into Italy against the Rhegines, the Locrians having called him in, with whom the Rhegines were at variance; and when the Italian Greeks assembled against him with large forces, he joined battle, killed many, and took by storm two of their cities.

7.3. Then, making another crossing afterward, he uprooted the Hipponians from their land and carried them off to Sicily, and destroyed the Crotoniates and the Rhegines, and continued for twelve years tyrannizing over these cities. Thereafter some, fearing the tyrant, put themselves into the hands of the barbarians, while others, warred upon by the barbarians, handed their cities over to the tyrant; and at whoever's hand they suffered, ever in distress, like the tide of a strait they turned this way and that toward whatever chanced to come.

8.1. Pyrrhus crossed a second time into Italy, since affairs in Sicily did not proceed for him according to his mind, because his leadership appeared to the most distinguished cities not kingly but despotic. For having been brought into Syracuse by Sosistratus, who then ruled the city, and by Thoenon the garrison commander, and having received from them the money and some two hundred bronze-beaked ships, and having brought all Sicily under himself except the city of Lilybaeum, which alone the Carthaginians still held, he turned to tyrannical self-will. For taking away the properties of the household members or friends of Agathocles, he bestowed upon his own friends what those had received from him, and assigned the greatest offices in the cities to his own shield-bearers and captains, not according to the local laws of each city nor for the customary term, but as it

8.2. pleased him. Suits and disputes and all the other administrations of civic life he in some cases arbitrated himself, in others handed over to be managed and decided by the men about his court, men who looked to nothing other than to make gain and to squander in luxury the resources at hand; and through all these things he was burdensome to the cities that had received him and

8.3. hateful. Perceiving that many were now secretly disposed against him, he brought garrisons into the cities, making a pretext of the war from the Carthaginians, and seizing the most distinguished men from each city he put them to death, falsely alleging that he had discovered plots and treasons; among whom was Thoenon the garrison commander, who was acknowledged by all to have shown the greatest zeal and eagerness both for his crossing and for the taking over of the island; for he had met him bringing a naval fleet, and had given over the island in Syracuse, which he himself controlled.

8.4. Attempting to seize Sosistratus as well, he was disappointed of his hope, the man having perceived the plot beforehand and fled from the city. And when affairs began to be thrown into confusion, the city of the Carthaginians, thinking it had got a suitable occasion for the recovery of the places it had lost, sent an army against the island.

9.1. When Pyrrhus was at a loss and seeking resources of every kind, the worst and most unholy of his friends, seeing this—Euegorus son of Theodorus, and Balacrus son of Nicander, and Deinarchus son of Nicias, zealots of godless and accursed doctrines—proposed to him a resource of unholy money: to open the sacred treasuries of Persephone.

9.2. For there was in this city a holy temple, possessing much gold guarded untouched through all time, in which was a certain bottomless store of gold, unseen by the many, lying beneath the earth. Deceived by these flatterers, and constrained by necessity, which is stronger than all, he made use of the men who had proposed the plan as ministers of the sacrilege, and putting the gold driven out from the temple into ships, along with the rest of the money, he sent it off to Tarentum, filled with much gladness. But just providence showed forth its power. For when the ships had put out from the harbor and, catching the offshore breeze, had advanced, a contrary wind arose and held through the whole night, sinking some, casting others into the strait of Sicily; and those in which the offerings were being carried, and the gold brought from the offerings, ran aground upon the Locrian shores; and the men sailing in them, overwhelmed in the back-rush of the waves, were destroyed, while the sacred money, the ships being torn apart, was cast forth upon the nearest banks of the Locrians.

9.3. The king, struck with dread, gave back to the goddess all the adornment and the treasures, thinking thereby to deprecate her wrath; foolish, he did not even know that which he was not to bring to pass. "For not swiftly is the mind of the gods that are forever turned aside,"

9.4. as it is said by Homer. But since he had dared to lay hands upon the sacred money and to set it as a resource of wars, the divinity made his intention profitless, that he might become an example and a lesson to all men who came after him.

10.1. For this cause Pyrrhus too was defeated by the Romans by main force. For it was not a poor and untrained army that he had, but the strongest of those then existing among the Greeks and one that had fought the most wars; nor was the multitude of the men then arrayed against the Romans small, but as much even as threefold; nor was the general one of the chance sort, but one whom all agree to have been the greatest of the generals who flourished in the same age;

10.2. nor was it the unequal nature of the ground, nor the sudden arrival of reinforcements for the other side, nor any other calamity and unexpected pretext falling upon him, that crushed the affairs of Pyrrhus, but the wrath of the goddess against whom he had committed impiety—a wrath of which not even Pyrrhus himself was ignorant, as Proxenus the historian relates and as Pyrrhus himself writes in his own memoirs.

11.1. The men-at-arms, weighed down, as was likely, with helmets and breastbones and shields, marching toward hilly ground and along long paths—and these not even highways but goat-tracks through woods and over crags—were likely to keep no order, and, before the enemy appeared to them, to have their bodies worn out by thirst and toil.

11.2. Those who fight at close quarters with cavalry spears held with a grip in both hands, and who for the most part succeed in their battles, the Romans call Principes.

12.1. On the night in which Pyrrhus was about to lead his army to the mountain and fall secretly upon the Roman rampart, it seemed to him in his sleep that most of his teeth fell out and a quantity of blood flowed from his mouth.

12.2. Troubled by the vision and divining that a great calamity would come to pass—for once before, when he had beheld such a vision in a dream, a dreadful misfortune had befallen him—he wished to hold back that day; but he was not strong enough to conquer fate, his friends opposing the delay and demanding that he not let the opportunity slip from his hands.

12.3. When Pyrrhus's men had climbed up with the elephants, the Romans, getting wind of it, wounded a young elephant, which caused great disorder among the Greeks and flight; and the Romans killed two elephants, and shutting up eight in a place from which there was no way out, took them alive when the Indians in charge of them gave them up, and wrought great slaughter among the soldiers.

13.1. The consul Fabricius, having become censor, expelled from the council of the senate a man honored with two consulships and one dictatorship, Publius Cornelius Rufinus, because he had been thought the first to be extravagant in the acquisition of silver drinking-vessels, having acquired ten pounds of them; and these are a little more than eight Attic minae.

13.2. The Athenians won renown because they penalized the idle and lazy and those who practiced nothing useful as wronging the commonwealth; and the Lacedaemonians, because they entrusted to the eldest men the right to strike with their staves those of the citizens who behaved disorderly in any public place whatever; but of things done within the house they took no thought or guard, holding the house-door of each to be the boundary of the freedom of his life.

13.3. But the Romans, throwing open every house and extending the office of the censors even to the bedchamber, made it the overseer and guardian of all that took place within—thinking that a master should be neither cruel in the punishments of his slaves, nor a father bitter or, beyond measure, soft in the upbringing of his children, nor a husband unjust toward the partnership of his wedded wife, nor children disobedient to aged fathers, nor true brothers pursuing the larger share instead of the equal; nor drinking-bouts and night-long revels, nor wantonness and corruptions of young men of like age, nor ancestral honors of rites or burials left undone, nor anything else done contrary to what is fitting or expedient for the city. They plundered the possessions of the citizens on the charge of aiming at kingship.

14.1. Numerius Fabius Pictor and Quintus Fabius Maximus and Quintus Ogulnius, having gone on an embassy to Ptolemy Philadelphus, were honored by him both for the embassy and with private gifts; and he ruled Egypt as the second after Alexander the Macedonian.

14.2. When they had sailed back to the city, they reported all else that they had accomplished during their absence, and the gifts which they had received from the king they brought into the public treasury. The senate, admiring all their deeds, did not allow them to make the royal favors public property, but to carry off into their own houses honors of virtue and adornments for their descendants.

15.1. The Bruttians, submitting of their own accord to the Romans, gave over to them half of the mountain country, which is called Sila, and is full of timber well-suited for buildings and for shipbuilding and for every other kind of construction. For much sky-high fir grows in it, and much black poplar, and much resinous pine, and beech and stone-pine, and spreading oak, and ash trees nourished by the streams that flow through; and all the other deep woodland, woven together by its branches, makes the mountain shaded through the whole day.

15.2. From this, the timber that grows nearest the sea and the rivers, when it has been cut at the cut from the root, is brought down whole to the nearest harbors, sufficient for all Italy both for ships and for the building of houses; while that growing above, far from the sea and the rivers, is cut into pieces and provides oars and poles and arms of every kind and household utensils, carried on men's backs; and the greatest part of it, and the richest, is worked into pitch and provides the most fragrant and sweetest of all that we know, the so-called Bruttian pitch. From this the Roman people each year receives great revenues from the leases.

16.1. There was a second uprising in the city of the Rhegines on the part of the Roman and allied garrison left there, and because of it many men were slain and many fled. To punish these rebels, one of the consuls, Gaius Genucius, led out the army; and becoming master of the city, he gave back to the exiles of the Rhegines the possession of their own, but seizing those who had attacked the city, he brought them in chains to Rome. At these the senate and the people were so angered and indignant that no lenient judgment was passed concerning them, but by all the tribes the death appointed by the laws for malefactors was voted against all those under accusation.

16.2. When the decree concerning the punishment had been ratified, stakes were driven into the forum, and being brought forward three hundred men at a time, with their elbows twisted back, they were bound to the stakes naked; then, after being scourged with whips while all looked on, their neck-tendons beneath the head were struck off with the axe; and after these another three hundred, and again as many more, were destroyed—four thousand five hundred in all. And they did not even receive burial, but, dragged from the forum to an open spot before the city, they were torn apart by birds and dogs.

17.1. The destitute multitude, who had no thought of fair or just things, deceived by a certain Samnite, gathered together to one place. And at first they led a life out in the open and full of hardship upon the mountains; but when it now seemed to have grown greater and able to give battle, it seized a strong city, from which, setting out, it plundered all the country round about.

17.2. Against these the consuls led out an army, and taking the city with no great labor, they scourged with rods and put to death those responsible for the revolt, and sold the rest as spoil. It happened that the land had been sold the year before along with the other spear-won territory, and the silver that fell due from the price had been divided among the citizens.