DEATH OF PYRRHUS
Antigonus was occupying the heights. Pyrrhus proposed to him to settle their quarrel in a single combat, but Antigonus answered that if Pyrrhus was weary of life he might find many roads to death. The Argives begged the two kings to withdraw and to permit them to remain friends of both. They consented to do so, but during the night the partisans of Pyrrhus admitted him into the town. The members of the opposite party immediately summoned Antigonus. At the same time Areus arrived with the relics of his army. Fighting went on in the streets all night in the midst of a general confusion. Pyrrhus would have retired, but his Galatæ, coming to his assistance, blocked the narrow streets. One of his elephants had fallen across the gateway, another whose driver was wounded was overturning friends and enemies indiscriminately. Pyrrhus received a blow from the javelin of an Argive soldier and turned against the man who had wounded him; the soldier’s mother, who, with some other women, was watching the fight from the top of the roofs, seeing her son in danger seized a tile and flung it at the king’s head. He fell from his horse. Though he had removed the plume from his helmet he was recognised: his head was cut off and taken to Antigonus. At this example of the mutability of fortune the latter was reminded of his father Demetrius and caused a search to be made for the body of Pyrrhus, which he burned, with the head, on a funeral pyre. He sent the ashes to Pyrrhus’ son Helenus who returned to Epirus (272).