generally shrank from anything like serious effort and resented his calling upon them for men and money. Rome meantime raised a special war contribution, called on her subjects and allies for their full contingent of troops, and posted strong garrisons in all towns of doubtful fidelity. She was now quite the dominant power in Italy, but her position was critical, as in the north she had had trouble with the Etruscans and Gauls, while in the south the Lucanians and Bruttians were making common cause with Tarentum and the Greek cities. In fact there was the possibility of a most formidable coalition of the Italian peoples both in the north and in the south against Rome, and so Pyrrhus had a good deal on which to build his hopes of success. For the first time in history Greeks and Romans met in battle at Heraclea near the shores of the Gulf of Tarentum, and the cavalry and elephants of Pyrrhus secured for him a complete victory, though at so heavy a loss as to convince him of the great uncertainty of final success. Although he now had the Samnites as well as the Lucanians and Bruttians and all the Greek cities of southern Italy with him, he found every city closed against him as he advanced on Rome through Latium, and his dexterous minister Cineas utterly failed to negotiate a peace, the old blind Appius Claudius declaring in the senate that Rome never negotiated with a foreign enemy on Italian ground. In the second year of the war, 279, Pyrrhus again defeated a Roman army at Asculum (Ascoli) in Apulia, but he was no nearer decisive success, as Rome still had armies in the field and her Italian confederation was not broken up. For a while he quitted Italy for Sicily with the view of making himself the head of the Sicilian Greeks and driving the Carthaginians out of the island. In his military operations he was on the whole successful, and Rome and Carthage in face of the common danger concluded an offensive and defensive alliance against him. He passed three years in Sicily, but through want of political tact he gave offence to the Greek cities, which he treated rather too much in the fashion of a despot, not paying any respect to their local constitutions or sufficiently humouring their republican tastes and love of independence. He thus lost a good opportunity of uniting both the Italian and Sicilian Greeks against Rome. On his return to Italy in 276 he had neither men nor money adequately supplied him, as Tarentum and the other Greek cities had no confidence in him. It is said that he was thoroughly disheartened, and was haunted by mysterious dreams and forebodings which followed on an act which he imagined had involved him in the guilt of sacrilege. He made indeed one more effort, and engaged a Roman army at Beneventum in the Samnite country, but his arrangements for the battle miscarried, and he was defeated with the loss of his camp and the greater part of his army. He had made a fair trial of the strength of Rome and had been utterly baffled. Nothing remained but to go back to his allies at Tarentum. He left a garrison in the city and returned the following year to his home in Epirus after a six years’ absence. The brief remainder of his life was passed in camps and battles, without, however, any glorious result. He won a victory over Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia, on Macedonian ground. In 273 he was invited into the Peloponnesus to settle at the sword’s point a dispute about the royal succession at Sparta. He besieged the city, but was repulsed with great loss. Next he went to Argos at the invitation of a political faction, and here in the confusion of a fight by night in the streets he met his death in his forty-sixth year from the hand of a woman, who hurled a ponderous roof-tile upon his head just at the moment, it is said, when he was striking a blow at her son.

Pyrrhus was no doubt a brilliant and dashing soldier, but he was aptly compared “to a gambler who made many good throws with the dice, but could not make the proper use of the game.” There was something chivalrous about him which seems to have made him a general favourite. After his death Macedonia had for a time at least nothing to fear, and the liberty of Greece was quite at the mercy of that power.

For Pyrrhus, English readers will do well to consult Thirl wall, Greece, vols, vii., viii.; Mommsen, History of Rome, ii. 7; Niebuhr, Lectures on Roman History, lects. 1., li. Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus is the fullest of our original sources of information, and there is frequent mention of him in Polybius.