posing themselves recklessly, careless of wounds
or death. After a long struggle, it is said that they first gave way
at the point where Pyrrhus was urging on his soldiers in person,
though the defeat was chiefly due to the weight and crushing charge of
the elephants. The Romans could not find any opportunity in this sort
of battle for the display of their courage, but thought it their duty
to stand aside and save themselves from a useless death, just as they
would have done in the case of a wave of the sea or an earthquake
coming upon them. In the flight to their camp, which was not far off,
Hieronymus says that six thousand Romans perished, and that in
Pyrrhus's commentaries his loss is stated at three thousand five
hundred and five. Dionysius, on the other hand, does not admit that
there were two battles at Asculum, or that the Romans suffered a
defeat, but tells us that they fought the whole of one day until
sunset, and then separated, Pyrrhus being wounded in the arm by a
javelin, and the Samnites having plundered his baggage. He also states
the total loss on both sides to be above fifteen thousand.[44]

The armies separated after the battle, and it is said that Pyrrhus,
when congratulated on his victory by his friends, said in reply: "If
we win one more such victory over the Romans, we shall be utterly
ruined." For a large part of the force which he had brought with him
had perished, and very nearly all his friends and officers, and there
were no more to send for at home. He saw, too, that his allies were
becoming lukewarm, while the Romans, on the other hand, filled up the
gaps with a never-ceasing stream of fresh recruits, and did not lose
confidence by their defeats, but seemed to gather fresh strength and
determination to go on with the war.

XXII. While in these difficulties he conceived fresh hopes of success,
and engaged in an enterprise in another quarter, which was likely to
interfere with the prosecution of his original design. An embassy
arrived from Sicily, offering to place the cities of Agrigentum,
Syracuse, and Leontini in his hands, and begging him to aid them in
driving out the Carthaginians from the island, and freeing it from
despots, while at the same time messengers came from Greece with the
news that Ptolemy, surnamed Keraunus, or "the thunderbolt," had
perished, with all his army, in an engagement with the Gauls, and that
now was his opportunity to offer himself to the Macedonians, who were