und.

He adopted vigorous measures immediately to re-enforce his army, and
to obtain the necessary supplies. His treasury was exhausted; in order
to replenish it, he dispatched embassadors to his various allies to
borrow money. He knew, of course, that a large portion of his army
would abandon him immediately so soon as they should find that he was
unable to pay them. He was, therefore, quite uneasy for a time in
respect to the state of his finances, and he instructed his
embassadors to press the urgency of his wants upon his allies in a
very earnest manner.

He did not, however, wait for the result of these measures, but
immediately commenced active operations in the field. One of his first
exploits was the recapture of Locri, a city situated on the southern
shore of Italy, as will be seen by the map. This city had been in his
possession before he went to Sicily, but it had gone over to the
Romans during his absence. Locri was a very considerable town, and the
recovery of it from the Romans was considered quite an important gain.
The place derived its consequence, in some considerable degree, from a
celebrated temple which stood there. It was the temple of Proserpina,
the Goddess of Death. This temple was magnificent in its structure,
and it was enriched with very costly and valuable treasures. It not
only gave distinction to the town in which it stood, but, on account
of an extraordinary train of circumstances which occurred in
connection with it, it became the occasion of one of the most
important incidents in Pyrrhus's history.

Proserpina, as has already been intimated, was the Goddess of Death.
It is very difficult for us at the present day to understand and
appreciate the conceptions which the Greeks and Romans, in ancient
times, entertained of the supernatural beings which they
worshiped--those strange creations, in which we see historic truth,
poetic fancy, and a sublime superstition so singularly blended. To aid
us in rightly understanding this subject, we must remember that in
those days the boundaries of what was known as actual reality were
very uncertain and vague. Only a very small portion, either of the
visible world or of the domain of science and philosophy, had then
been explored; and in the thoughts and conceptions of every man, the
natural and the true passed by insensible gradations, on every hand,
into the monstrous and the supernatural, there being no principles of
any kind established in men