Pyrrhus / Makers of History

by Jacob Abbott

State of Pyrrhus's army.
His enfeebled condition.

The force with which Pyrrhus returned to Tarentum was very nearly as large as that which he had taken away, but was composed of very different materials. The Greeks from Epirus, whom he had brought over with him in the first instance from his native land, had gradually disappeared from the ranks of his army. Many of them had been killed in battle, and still greater numbers had been carried off by exposure and fatigue, and by the thousand other casualties incident to such a service as that in which they were engaged. Their places had been supplied, from time to time, by new enlistments, or by impressment and conscription. Of course, these new recruits were not bound to their commander by any ties of attachment or regard. They were mostly mercenaries—that is, men hired to fight, and willing to fight, in any cause or for any commander, provided they could be paid. In a word, Pyrrhus's fellow-countrymen of Epirus had disappeared, and the ranks of his army were filled up with unprincipled and destitute wretches, who felt no interest in his cause—no pride in his success—no concern for his honor. They adhered to him only for the sake of the pay and the indulgences of a soldier's life, and for their occasional hopes of plunder.

Precarious situation of his affairs.

Besides the condition of his army, Pyrrhus found the situation of his affairs in other respects very critical on his arrival at Tarentum. The Romans had made great progress, during his absence, in subjugating the whole country to their sway. Cities and towns, which had been under his dominion when he went to Sicily, had been taken by the Romans, or had gone over to them of their own accord. The government which he had established at Tarentum was thus curtailed of power, and shut in in respect to territory; and he felt himself compelled immediately to take the field, in order to recover his lost ground.

He adopted vigorous measures immediately to re-enforce his army, and to obtain the necessary supplies. His treasury was exhausted; in order to replenish it, he dispatched embassadors to his various allies to borrow money. He knew, of course, that a large portion of his army would abandon him immediately so soon as they should find that he was unable to pay them. He was, therefore, quite uneasy for a time in respect to the state of his finances, and he instructed his embassadors to press the urgency of his wants upon his allies in a very earnest manner.

Affair of Locri.
Pyrrhus recaptures it.

He did not, however, wait for the result of these measures, but immediately commenced active operations in the field. One of his first exploits was the recapture of Locri, a city situated on the southern shore of Italy, as will be seen by the map. This city had been in his possession before he went to Sicily, but it had gone over to the Romans during his absence. Locri was a very considerable town, and the recovery of it from the Romans was considered quite an important gain. The place derived its consequence, in some considerable degree, from a celebrated temple which stood there. It was the temple of Proserpina, the Goddess of Death. This temple was magnificent in its structure, and it was enriched with very costly and valuable treasures. It not only gave distinction to the town in which it stood, but, on account of an extraordinary train of circumstances which occurred in connection with it, it became the occasion of one of the most important incidents in Pyrrhus's history.

Proserpina, the Goddess of Death.
Explanations.
Centaurs, mermaids, hippogriffs, and other fables.

Proserpina, as has already been intimated, was the Goddess of Death. It is very difficult for us at the present day to understand and appreciate the conceptions which the Greeks and Romans, in ancient times, entertained of the supernatural beings which they worshiped—those strange creations, in which we see historic truth, poetic fancy, and a sublime superstition so singularly blended. To aid us in rightly understanding this subject, we must remember that in those days the boundaries of what was known as actual reality were very uncertain and vague. Only a very small portion, either of the visible world or of the domain of science and philosophy, had then been explored; and in the thoughts and conceptions of every man, the natural and the true passed by insensible gradations, on every hand, into the monstrous and the supernatural, there being no principles of any kind established in men's minds to mark the boundaries where the true and the possible must end, and all beyond be impossible and absurd. The knowledge, therefore, that men derived from the observation of such truths and such objects as were immediately around them, passed by insensible gradations into the regions of fancy and romance, and all was believed together. They saw lions and elephants in the lands which were near, and which they knew; and they believed in the centaurs, the mermaids, the hippogriffs, and the dragons, which they imagined inhabiting regions more remote. They saw heroes and chieftains in the plains and in the valleys below; and they had no reason to disbelieve in the existence of gods and demi-gods upon the summits of the blue and beautiful mountains above, where, for aught they knew, there might lie boundless territories of verdure and loveliness, wholly inaccessible to man. In the same manner, beneath the earth somewhere, they knew not where, there lay, as they imagined, extended regions destined to receive the spirits of the dead, with approaches leading to it, through mysterious grottoes and caverns, from above. Proserpina was the Goddess of Death, and the queen of these lower abodes.

Various stories were told of her origin and history. The one most characteristic and most minutely detailed is this: