CHAP. XIV. ETRUSCANS AND GAULS DEFEATED.

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in the commonwealth itself was steadily advancing in the contrary direction. The foreign policy of the republic still remained in the hands of the Senate, and found a ready support from the kings and nobles abroad.

Latium and Campania, the country of the Sabines and of the Samnites, were all now fully subjected to the dominion of Rome. But northward the Etruscans were still hostile, and the Gauls had rapidly recovered their courage after the defeat of Sentinum. To the southward of the Roman frontier the Greek population of the coast, with the Lucanians and the Bruttians—a people formed at the extremity of the peninsula from the conflux of fugitive slaves and bandits-were all constantly on the alert to harass the conquering people, and received aid more or less openly from the still untamed remnant of the conquered Samnites. Tarentum stood at the head of this loose array, which can hardly deserve the name of a coalition, and, though it continued constantly to exercise the Roman arms, gave them no serious disquietude. On the border of the Apennines the case was different. If Arretium was maintained in its fidelity by the influence of the noble Cilnius, it was subjected to attack from other Etruscan forces, supported by the still restless Gauls. The Senones were the people who had first assailed Clusium and thence advanced against Rome. It was now again the Senones who armed the last of the Gaulish expeditions across the Apennines. A Roman force hastened to the relief of their faithful ally; but the prætor Metellus, seven tribunes, and thirteen thousand legionaries were left upon the field. Senate made a formal complaint their envoys were massacred. Thereupon the consul Dolabella advanced with another army secretly through the country of Picenum and took the Senones in the rear. He ravaged their territory, burned the villages, sold the men as slaves, and gave their women and children to the sword. At the same time the other consul met the Etruscans and their Gaulish allies in front, and effected their entire overthrow at the battle of the Vadimonian lake, the second great engagement that had recently taken place on that spot. Then at last the Gauls sought terms of peace, and the resistance of Etruria was in vain maintained for a brief space. The victory of Coruncanius at Vulsinii ended this long and terrible contest.

When the

U.C. 471.

B.C. 283.

Meanwhile there had been little slackening of hostilities in the south. The Greek city of Thurium had implored the succor of the republic against the banditti of Lucania. A first expedition made slight progress, but a second, conducted by Fabricius, succeeded in rescuing the threatened city and leaving it in charge of a Roman garrison. This was the first of the wars of Rome that

brought a large amount of treasure; it is difficult, indeed, to imagine whence a sum of 4000 talents could have been amassed unless the Greek cities were laid under contribution, and Thurium U.o. 472. itself made to pay largely for its rescue. But not the L.C. 252. public treasury only, but the legionaries themselves, were severally enriched by the booty of this campaign, and the fatal thirst for plunder was generated which soon turned the armies of Rome into an organized instrument of spoliation. The most opulent of the Grecian cities of Lower Italy were now thoroughly alarmed, and Tarentum, the queen of Magna Græcia―the wealthiest, the most luxurious, and unfortunately the least warlike of them all-determined to stand on her defence, or rather to intrust her defence to foreign auxiliaries.

CHAPTER XV.

The war with Pyrrhus.-Successes of the Romans. (B. C. 282-271.)

THE champion under whose wing the Tarentines placed themselves was Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. His country had been the ally of Macedonia, and he was himself the nephew of Olympia, wife of Philip, and a cousin of Alexander, the conqueror of Greece and Persia. He was nephew also to Alexander the Epirote, whose descent upon Italy thirty years earlier has been already mentioned. After the partition of the conquests of Alexander in the East it had become the fixed idea of the most ambitious among the Grecian chieftains who had obtained no share in the spoil to reproduce in the West the feats of their great prototype, and to establish over the Hellenic cities of Italy and Sicily, and the powers that bordered upon them, a new military empire not less sovereign and not less flourishing than his. Beyond the Greek cities of Thurium and Tarentum, of Sybaris and Crotona, in Italy, lay the forces of the Romans and the Etruscans; beyond the republics of Himera and Syracuse and Catana in Sicily lay the mighty dominion of Carthage. Etruria, with its traditionary wealth and art and science, was the Egypt of the West; while Carthage, with its commercial resources, represented the activity and splendor of Tyre. Rome alone, less known and less heeded among the Greeks than either of these, presented a constancy of character and a military prowess such as Alexander himself had nowhere encountered; and whatever might have been the fate of Etruria or Carthage in conflict with

CHAP. XV.

THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS.

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the Greeks or Macedonians, it was soon found that Rome was destined to become, not their subject, but their master.

The promises held out to Pyrrhus by the Tarentines were glowing, but proved utterly extravagant. They assured him that if he would undertake the protection of Southern Italy against Rome he would be met by a force of 370,000 allies from among the states she had harassed and controlled. The army he could himself bring across the Adriatic was comparatively small, but with 20,000 veteran infantry, and a due proportion of cavalry, backed by the formidable array of twenty elephants, a general of courage, skill, and resources might expect an easy victory over a foe untrained in the approved system of Grecian tactics. The Macedonian phalanx was the most perfect instrument of warfare the world had yet seen, and the Roman legions had never yet been brought into collision with it.

It was in full assurance perhaps of this foreign protection that the Tarentines dared first to intercept and destroy some vessels belonging to the republic, and when an envoy was sent from Rome to demand reparation, to insult him publicly, and allow a wretched buffoon to void ordure upon his garment. Postumius replied to the mockery of the Tarentines by a solemn declaration that their blood should wash out the stain, and, returning to the city, he exposed the defiled vestment in the Senate-house. The Fathers, however, refused to be carried away with any sudden impulse. Affairs in the north were still unsettled; this new war must be carried on, not against Tarentum and Magna Græcia, but against a mightier foe behind them. The question of war or negotiation was discussed for some days, and offers of accommodation were still urged. The U.C. 473. nobles of the doomed city would, as usual, have made .. 281. terms, but the populace resisted, and at last no course remained for Rome but to arm herself for a contest with an unknown foe and with indefinite resources.

But fortune was favorable to Rome. Pyrrhus, on arriving at Tarentum, assumed at once the mastery over the lazy and dissolute mob who had placed themselves under his protection. The Tarentines were soon weary of his authority, and the allies they heedlessly promised failed to make their appearance. Mean while the Romans acted with promptness and boldly challenged him to battle, which he tried to avert by negotiation. His terms were at once rejected; the armies met in open field at Heraclea, on the banks of the Siris, and it was more by the surprise of a charge of elephants than by the vaunted tactics of the phalanx that the Romans were thrown into disorder. The beaten army lost 15,000 men, but the victors left 13,000 on the field, and

the victors could worse bear the lesser loss. "Such another U.c. 474. victory," said Pyrrhus, "would be worse than a deB.C. 280. feat." But he might now think himself at least in a better position to offer terms sich as the Romans would not reject. He demanded only security for his Italian allies, and consented to return himself across the sea. The proposition was brought by his favorite counsellor, Cineas, whose eloquence, it was said, had gained his master more advantages than his own sword. This eloquence was fortified by presents for the senators and for the wives of the senators. None of them would take of his gold, but many were well-disposed to peace for its own sake. The blind Appius caused himself to be led into the Senate-house to declaim against it. "Rome," he declared," shall never treat with an enemy in arms." Cineas himself was struck with the simple grandeur of the Roman people, and avowed that their senators were an assembly of kings. Dismissed without success, his report of what he had seen and heard affected the invader with profound discouragement.

The Romans took a special pride in recounting the incidents of the war with Pyrrhus, in which the valor, the constancy, and above all the magnanimity of their own race were held to have baffled the skill and science and manifold resources of the highest ancient civilization. Much no doubt they colored and much they imagined; but the result was that they drew a glowing picture of the national character which has impressed itself upon later generations, and thrown a halo around the name of Rome which has never ceased to encircle it. Thus has M. Curius Dentatus become proverbial for austere frugality. When Fabricius went to treat with the invader, and it was sought to terrify him into dishonorable terms, the coolness he displayed in the face of the formidable elephants of Pyrrhus won the admiration of the enemy, and was commemorated to his honor by his countrymen. Nor was Pyrrhus more successful in attempting to bribe him; and so much was he at last impressed by a spirit thus superior both to fear and interest, that he consented at his instance to let his prisoners go free to celebrate the Saturnalia at Rome. This indulgence, said another story, was granted them in return for the generosity of the Senate in disclosing to their enemy the offer made them by his physician of poisoning him. The captives, it was added, went on parole, and such was the true Roman sense of honor that they all kept their word and returned. When a Decius, the descendant of the Decii who had devoted themselves for their country, declared that he would himself follow his ancestor's example, Pyrrhus thought to deter him by threatening to put him to death, if taken, as a sorcerer

CHAP. XV.

SUCCESSES OF THE ROMANS.

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in league with infernal powers. But Decius carried out his purpose notwithstanding; nor was his self-devotion unrewarded. The victory, indeed, remained with Pyrrhus, but again it was a victory not less disastrons than a defeat. The camp of the victor was pillaged during the action by his own allies. The position of the invader became at last untenable. He sought and found a pretext for quitting Italy, leaving only a force in the citadel of Tarentum, and betook himself to Sicily, to assist the Greeks in that island against the Carthaginians.

Between Rome and Carthage there had been treaties of amity and commerce, and now a common interest seemed to invite them to unite against their common assailant. Carthage offered alliance, but Rome stiffly refused. She would carry out her own war by herself alone. While, however, the arms of Pyrrhus were occupied and baffled in Sicily, the legions quickly reduced his allies on the continent. The Lucanians, the Bruttians, the Sallentines, and the Tarentines themselves were forced to make a compact with Rome, and Samnium was once more ravaged, and its wretched people driven into the mountains. Pyrrhus made a last effort to recover his position by offering battle to the Romans. The legionaries had now learned to turn the elephants against their own masters, and it was by the rout of these treacherous auxiliaries-these bulls of Lucania, as the Romans now termed them in derision-that the last attack of the invader was converted into a veritable defeat. Pyrrhus returned in utter discomfiture to his own country, and soon after perished in an obscure combat with his own countrymen at Argos.

The Roman armies seem still to have found some occupation in the south of Italy for a few years. It was not till the submission of the Greek garrison at Tarentum, with the destruction of its walls and the surrender of its fleet, in the year 272, that the conquest of the southern half of the peninsula could be considered as complete. Nor, indeed, yet actually complete, till in the following year the legion of Campanian auxiliaries, which had revolted from the republic and seized upon Rhegium, was reduced by siege, and its surviving remnant led captive to Rome and subjected to the punishment of the axe. To the B.O. 271. north Vulsinii, already worsted, invoked the protection of Romc against her revolted slaves, and was the last of the Italian cities to surrender to the conquering republic. The Vulsinians, it may be remarked, among other booty delivered up 2000 statues. Such was the commencement of the long career of the Romans in the plunder of works of art and monuments of foreign civilization.

U.O. 483.