y's country. At that time he kept about his person two
hundred Lucanian exiles, as faithful attendants, but whose fidelity,
according to the general disposition of people of that description, was
ever ready to follow the changes of fortune. When continual rains spread
such an inundation over all the plains, as cut off from the three
separate divisions of the army all means of mutual aid, the two parties,
in neither of which the king was present, were suddenly attacked and
overpowered by the enemy, who, after putting them to the sword, employed
their whole force in blockading the king himself. From this place the
Lucanian exiles sent emissaries to their countrymen, and stipulating a
safe return for themselves, promised to deliver the king, either alive
or dead, into their power. But he, bravely resolving to make an
extraordinary effort, at the head of a chosen band, broke through the
midst of their forces; engaged singly, and slew the general of the
Lucanians, and collecting together his men, who had been scattered in
the retreat, arrived at a river which pointed out his road by the ruins
of a bridge which had been recently broken by the violence of the flood.
Here, while the party was fording the river on a very uneven bottom, a
soldier, almost spent with fatigue and apprehension, cried out as a
reflection on the odious name of it,--"You are justly named Acheros
(dismal):" which expression reaching the king's ears, and instantly
recalling to his mind the fate denounced on him, he halted, hesitating
whether he should cross over or not. Then Sotimus, one of the royal band
of youths which attended him, asking why he delayed in such a critical
moment, showed him that the Lucanians were watching an opportunity to
perpetrate some act of treachery: whereupon the king, looking back, and
seeing them coming towards him in a body, drew his sword, and pushed on
his horse through the middle of the river. When he had now reached the
shallow, a Lucanian exile from a distance transfixed him with a javelin:
after his fall, the current carried down his lifeless body, with the
weapon sticking in it, to the posts of the enemy: there a shocking
mangling of it took place; for dividing it in the middle, they sent one
half to Consentia, and kept the other, as a subject of mockery, to
themselves. While they were throwing darts and stones at it, a woman
mixing with the crowd, who were enraged to a degree beyond the credible
extent of human resentm