Читать книгу Ancient Rome: The Lives of Great Men - Mary Agnes Hamilton - Страница 20

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.

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: