ocri. He instituted solemn services there in honor of
Proserpina, to express his penitence for his faults, and, to give a
still more decisive proof of his desire to appease her anger, he put
to death the counselors who had advised him to take the treasures.

Notwithstanding all these attempts to atone for his offense, Pyrrhus
could not dispel from his mind the gloomy impression which had been
made upon it by the idea that he had incurred the direct displeasure
of Heaven. He did not believe that the anger of Proserpina was ever
fully appeased; and whenever misfortunes and calamities befell him in
his subsequent career, he attributed them to the displeasure of the
goddess of death, who, as he believed, followed him every where, and
was intent on effecting his ruin.

It was now late in the season, and the military operations both of
Pyrrhus and of the Romans were, in a great measure, suspended until
spring. Pyrrhus spent the interval in making arrangements for taking
the field as soon as the winter should be over. He had, however, many
difficulties to contend with. His financial embarrassment still
continued. His efforts to procure funds were only very partially
successful. The people too, in all the region about Tarentum, were, he
found, wholly alienated from him. They had not forgiven him for having
left them to go to Sicily, and, in consequence of this abandonment of
their cause, they had lost much of their confidence in him as their
protector, while every thing like enthusiasm in his service was wholly
gone. Through these and other causes, he encountered innumerable
impediments in executing his plans, and his mind was harassed with
continual disappointment and anxiety.

Such, however, was still his resolution and energy, that when the
season arrived for taking the field, he had a considerable force in
readiness, and he marched out of Tarentum at the head of it, to go and
meet the Romans. The Romans themselves, on the other hand, had raised
a very large force, and had sent it forward in two divisions, under
the command of the two consuls. These two divisions took different
routes; one passing to the north, through the province of Samnium, and
the other to the south, through Lucania--both, however, leading toward
Tarentum. Pyrrhus divided his forces also into two parts. One body of
troops he sent northwardly into Samnium, to meet the northern division
of the Roman army, while with the other he advanced himself by the