XXXIII. This sight, and the failure of his plans, disheartened Pyrrhus, and he began to think of retreating. As the gates were narrow, he sent to his son Helenus, who had been left with a large force without the city, ordering him to break down a part of the wall, and protect the fugitives, if they were pressed by the enemy. But in the hurry and confusion the messenger did not clearly explain his orders, and by some mistake the young Helenus took all the remaining elephants and the best troops, and marched through the gate with them to help his father. Pyrrhus was already beginning to retire. As long as he fought in the market-place, where there was ample room, he effected his retreat in good order, and kept off the assailants by occasional movements in advance. But when his troops began to march down the narrow street leading to the gate, they were met face to face by the reinforcement coming to their assistance. At this crisis some of the soldiers refused to obey Pyrrhus's order to retreat, while others who were willing enough to do so could not stem the tide of men marching in from the gate. At the gate itself too the largest of the elephants had fallen sideways and lay there bellowing, blocking up the way for those who were trying to pass out, while one of the elephants of the reinforcing party, called "the Conqueror," was looking for his master, who had fallen off his back mortally wounded. Charging violently back against the surging tide of fugitives, the faithful beast trampled down friends and foes alike until he found his master's body, when he seized it with his trunk and carried it upon his tusks; and then, turning round in a frenzy of grief, overturned and crushed every one whom he met. As the men were thus crowded together, no one could do anything to help himself, but the whole mass surged backwards and forwards in one solid body. The enemy who attacked them behind did them but little hurt; they suffered chiefly from one another, because when a man had once drawn his sword or couched his lance he could not put it up again, and it pierced whoever might happen to be forced against it.

XXXIV. Pyrrhus, seeing the danger with which he was menaced on every side, took off the royal diadem from his helmet, and gave it to one of his companions. He himself, trusting to the fact of his being on horseback, now charged into the mass of assailants, and was struck through his cuirass by one of them with a spear. The wound was not a dangerous or important one, and Pyrrhus at once turned to attack the man from whom he had received it. He was an Argive, not of noble birth, but the son of a poor old woman, who, like the rest, was looking on at the battle from the roof of her house. As soon as she saw Pyrrhus attacking her son, in an ecstasy of fear and rage she took up a tile and hurled it at Pyrrhus. It struck him on the helmet, bruising the spine at the back of his neck, and he fell from his horse, blinded by the stroke, at the side of the sacred enclosure of Likymnius. Few recognized him, but one Zopyrus, who was in the service of Antigonus, and two or three others, seized him just as he was beginning to recover his senses, and dragged him into an archway near at hand. When Zopyrus drew an Illyrian sword to cut off his head Pyrrhus looked so fiercely at him that he was terrified, and bungled in his work, but at length managed to sever his head from his body. By this time most men had learned what had happened, and Halkyoneus, running up, asked to see the head, that he might identify it. When he obtained this he rode off with it to his father, and finding him sitting amongst his friends, he threw it down at his feet. Antigonus when he recognized it chased his son out of his presence, striking him with his staff, and calling him accursed and barbarous, and then covered his own face with his mantle and wept, remembering how in his own family his grandfather Antigonus and his father Demetrius had experienced similar reverses of fortune. He had the body and head of Pyrrhus decently arranged on a funeral pyre and burned. Halkyoneus, meeting Helenus in poor and threadbare clothes, embraced him kindly, and led him to Antigonus, who said to him, "This meeting, my boy, is better than the other; but still you do not do right in not removing these clothes, which rather seem to disgrace us who are, as it appears, the victors." He treated Helenus with great kindness, and sent him back to his kingdom of Epirus loaded with presents, and also showed great favour towards the friends of Pyrrhus, who, together with all his army and war material, had fallen into his hands.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] By 'Kings' throughout this 'Life,' Plutarch refers to the successors of Alexander the Great.

[39] See Thirlwall's 'History of Greece,' chap. lx.

[40] Plutarch's account of these transactions is hardly intelligible. Demetrius, it appears, was about to lay siege to Athens when Pyrrhus prevented him. See Thirlwall's History, chap. lx.

[41] The river Aciris, now called Agri.

[42] Demetrius.

[43] I have translated the above passages almost literally from the Greek. Yet I am inclined to think that Arnold has penetrated the true meaning, and shows us the reason for Fabricius's exclamation, when he states the Epicurean philosophy, as expounded by Kineas, to be "that war and state affairs were but toil and trouble, and that the wise man should imitate the blissful rest of the gods, who, dwelling in their own divinity, regarded not the vain turmoil of this lower world."—Arnold's 'History of Rome,' vol. ii. ch. xxxvii

[44] See an excellent note in Arnold's 'History of Rome,' vol. ii. ch. xxxvii.