once menaced all the
nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed when
Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela.

FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN GREEKS AND ROMANS

B.C. 280-279

PLUTARCH

(The Romans, in B.C. 290, had conquered the Samnites and this extended
the Roman power to the very gates of the Grecian cities on the Gulf of
Tarentine. Tarentum, the chief city among them, was almost totally
controlled by a party which advised a peaceful submission to the Roman
conquerors. The opposing party of patriots, against such cowardly
measures, looked abroad for aid and found a ready ally in Pyrrhus, the
Molossian king of Epirus. He was warlike and adventurous, and a member
of the royal family of Macedonia, through Olympias, who was the mother
of Alexander the Great.

Pyrrhus had established a reputation for fighting. Not alone had he
fought at the memorable battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia, but he had proven a
formidable opponent to Demetinus, king of Macedonia, having forced the
latter powerful monarch to conclude a truce with him, though afterward
he had been conquered and driven back to his little kingdom of Epirus.
At the time the Tarentines sent to him to help them against Rome he was
eager for a field in which he might do something to prove his mettle.
This was the greatest opportunity of his life, and he seized upon it.
The campaign is memorable for having brought the Romans and Greeks into
conflict on the battle-field for the first time.)

Pyrrhus, now that he had lost Macedonia, might have spent his days
peacefully ruling his own subjects in Epirus; but he could not endure
repose, thinking that not to trouble others and be troubled by them was
a life of unbearable ennui, and, like Achilles in the _Iliad_,

"he could not rest in indolence at home,
He longed for battle, and the joys of war."

As he desired some new adventures he embraced the following opportunity.
The Romans were at war with the Tarentines; and as that people were not
sufficiently powerful to carry on the war, and yet were not allowed by
the audacious folly of their mob orators to make peace, they proposed to
make Pyrrhus their leader and to invite him to be their ally in the war,
because he was more at leisure than any of the other kings, and also was
the best general of them all. Of the older and more sensible citizens
some endeavored to oppose this fatal decision, but were overwhelmed by
the clamor of the war par