ey fought
in that part of the field. As the Romans were almost wholly
unaccustomed to the warfare of elephants, they knew not how to
resist them, and the huge beasts bore down all before them wherever
they moved. In this crisis, Curius ordered a fresh body of troops to
advance. It was a corps of reserve, which he had stationed near the
camp under orders to hold themselves in readiness there, to come
forward and act at any moment, and at any part of the field wherever
their services might be required. These troops were now summoned to
advance and attack the elephants. They accordingly came rushing on,
brandishing their swords in one hand, and bearing burning torches,
with which they had been provided for the occasion, in the other.
The torches they threw at the elephants as soon as they came near,
in order to terrify them and make them unmanageable; and then, with
their swords, they attacked the keepers and drivers of the beasts,
and the men who fought in connection with them. The success of this
onset was so great, that the elephants soon became unmanageable.
They even broke into the phalanx, and threw the ranks of it into
confusion, overturning and trampling upon the men, and falling
themselves upon the slain, under the wounds which the spears
inflicted upon them.

[Illustration: THE ROUT.]

A remarkable incident is said to have occurred in the midst of this
scene of confusion and terror, which strikingly illustrates the
strength of the maternal instinct, even among brutes. It happened that
there was a young elephant, and also its mother, in the same division
of Pyrrhus's army. The former, though young, was sufficiently grown to
serve as an elephant of war, and, as it happened, its post on the
field of battle was not very far from that of its mother. In the
course of the battle the young elephant was wounded, and it uttered
immediately a piercing cry of pain and terror. The mother heard the
cry, and recognized the voice that uttered it through all the din and
uproar of the battle. She immediately became wholly ungovernable, and,
breaking away from the control of her keepers, she rushed forward,
trampling down every thing in her way, to rescue and protect her
offspring. This incident occurred at the commencement of the attack
which the Roman reserve made upon the elephants, and contributed very
essentially to the panic and confusion which followed.

In the end Pyrrhus was entirely defeated. He was compelled to aband