"Well," said Cineas, "if you conquer Italy, what next?"
"Greater victories would follow. There are Libya and Carthage to be won."
"And then?" asked Cineas.
"Then I should be able to master all Greece."
"And then?" continued the counsellor.
"Then," said Pyrrhus, "I would live at ease, eat and drink all day, and enjoy pleasant conversation."
"And what hinders you from taking your ease now, without all this peril and bloodshed?"
Pyrrhus had no answer to this. But thirst for fame drove him on, and the days of ease never came.
In the following year Pyrrhus crossed to Italy with an army of about twenty-five thousand men, and with a number of elephants, animals which the Romans had never seen, and with which he hoped to frighten them from the battle-field. He had been promised the aid of all southern Italy, and an army of three hundred and fifty thousand infantry and twenty thousand cavalry. In this he was destined to disappointment. He found the people of Tarentum given up to frivolous pleasure, enjoying their theatres and festivals, and expecting that he would do their fighting while they spent their time in amusement.
They found, however, that they had gained a master instead of a servant. Frivolity was not the idea of war held by Pyrrhus. He at once shut up the theatre, the gymnasia, and the public walks, stopped all feasting and revelry throughout the city, closed the clubs or brotherhoods, and kept the citizens under arms all day. Some of them, in disgust at this stern discipline, left the city. Pyrrhus thereupon closed the gates, and would let none out without permission. He even went so far as to put to death some of the demagogues, and to send others into exile. By these means he succeeded in making something like soldiers of the pleasure-loving Tarentines.