In the year 464 from the founding of the City, the Tarentines, catching sight from their theatre, where they were watching a show, of a Roman fleet that happened to be sailing past, attacked it as enemies. Only five ships barely escaped by flight; the rest of the fleet was dragged into the harbour and destroyed; the captains of the ships were slaughtered, all who were fit for war were put to death, and the rest were sold for a price.
1 Anno ab urbe condita CCCCLXIIII Tarentini Romanam classem forte praetereuntem, spectaculo theatri prospectam hostiliter inuaserunt, quinque tantum nauibus uix per fugam elapsis; cetera retracta in portum classis et profligata est; praefecti nauium trucidati, omnes bello utiles caesi, reliqui pretio uenditi sunt.
Envoys were at once sent to Tarentum by the Romans to complain of the wrongs inflicted; they were beaten by those same people and brought back wrongs increased still further. From these causes a great war arose.
2 continuo missi Tarentum a Romanis legati, ut de inlatis quererentur iniuriis, pulsati ab isdem auctas insuper iniurias rettulerunt. his causis bellum ingens exortum est.
The Romans, measuring who and how great were the enemies clamouring around them, were driven by the utmost necessity to force even the proletarii into arms — that is, to enrol for military service those who were always left free in the City for the sake of supplying offspring: for indeed concern for offspring is vain unless present circumstances are provided for.
3 Romanos, qui quantique hostes circumstreperent permetientes, ultima adegit necessitas proletarios quoque in arma cogere, hoc est eos qui in urbe semper sufficiendae prolis causa uacabant, militiae adscribere: quippe cum frustra de prole cura est, nisi rebus praesentibus consulatur.
And so the Roman army, with the consul Aemilius, burst into the whole territory of the Tarentines, laid waste everything with fire and sword, stormed a great many towns, and cruelly avenged the injury it had insolently received.
4 itaque inruit in uniuersos Tarentinorum fines cum Aemilio consule Romanus exercitus, igni ferroque uastat omnia, plurima expugnat oppida, iniuriam insolenter acceptam crudeliter uindicat.
Straightway the Tarentines, already propped up by many forces from their neighbours, were strengthened above all by Pyrrhus, who, on account of the greatness of his strength and of his counsels, even drew to himself the supreme command and the name of the war.
5 continuo Tarentinos, plurimis finitimorum praesidiis fultos, maxime Pyrrhus auxit, qui etiam in se ob magnitudinem uirium consiliorumque summam belli nomenque transduxit.
For, intending to defend Tarentum as a city founded by the Lacedaemonians and kin to Greece, he brought over the entire forces of Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia, and was the first to bring into Italy elephants, twenty in number, which until that time the Romans had never seen: terrible by land and sea, with men and horses, with arms and beasts, and finally with his own strength and wiles —
6 nam Tarentum, utpote ex Lacedaemoniis conditam cognatamque Graeciae ciuitatem, uindicaturus totas uires Epiri Thessaliae et Macedoniae, elephantos etiam usque in id tempus inuisos Romanis numero XX in Italiam primus inuexit: terra mari, uiris equis, armis beluis, ad postremum uiribus suis dolisque terribilis,
except that, deceived by the ambiguous response of that most vain Delphic spirit and most lying scoundrel, whom they themselves call a great prophet, he came to the same end as one who had never consulted him.
7 nisi quod Delphici illius uanissimi spiritus et mendacissimi nebulonis, quem magnum ipsi uatem ferunt, responso circumuentus ambiguo exitum fecit eius, qui non consuluisset.
And so at Heraclea, a city of Campania, and by the river Liris, the first battle was joined between King Pyrrhus and the consul Laevinus. The day was spent in a most grievous struggle, all on both sides being intent on dying and ignorant of flight.1
8 itaque apud Heracleam, Campaniae urbem, fluuiumque Lirim prima inter Pyrrhum regem et Laeuinum consulem pugna commissa est. consumpta est grauissimo certamine dies, utrimque omnibus mori intentis, fugere nesciis.
1Heraclea lay in Lucania on the Gulf of Tarentum, and the battle of 280 BC was fought by the river Siris; Orosius puts it in Campania, by the Liris.
But when the Romans saw the elephants brought in between the clashing lines — fierce in form, heavy in smell, terrible in bulk — they were surrounded and terrified by a new kind of fighting, and, the horses especially panicking, they scattered in flight.
9 introductos autem inter concurrentia agmina elephantos forma truces, odore graues, mole terribiles ut uidere Romani, nouo pugnandi genere circumuenti et territi, equis maxime pauitantibus, diffugerunt.
But after Minucius, first hastatus of the fourth legion, cut off with his sword the trunk that one of the beasts had stretched out against him, and forced it, maddened by the pain of the wound, to turn away from the battle and rage against its own side, and they began to be thrown into confusion and disorder by its unbridled rushing about, an end was put to the fighting, with the help of night as well.
10 sed postquam Minucius quartae legionis primus hastatus protentam in se manum beluae gladio desecuit et conturbatam dolore uulneris auerti bello atque in suos saeuire conpulit eiusque inmoderato discursu perturbari ac permisceri coepere, finis pugnae etiam beneficio noctis inpositus est.
That the Romans had been beaten was revealed by their shameful flight: of them 14,880 foot soldiers are said to have fallen on that occasion, and 1,310 to have been captured; of the cavalry, 246 were slain and 802 captured; and 22 standards were lost.
11 uictos fuisse Romanos turpis fuga prodidit: quorum tunc cecidisse referuntur peditum X̅I̅I̅I̅I̅ DCCCLXXX, capti I̅ CCCX, equites autem caesi CCXLVI, capti DCCCII, signa amissa XXII.
How great a number of Pyrrhus’s allies was destroyed on the other side has not been handed down to memory, chiefly because it is the custom of the ancient writers not to record the number of the slain on the side that conquered, lest the losses of the victor tarnish the glory of the victory —
12 nam quantus e diuerso numerus sociorum Pyrrhi fuerit extinctus, memoriae traditum non est, maxime quia scriptorum ueterum mos est ex ea parte quae uicerit occisorum non commendare numerum, ne uictoriae gloriam maculent damna uictoris,
unless perhaps so few fall that the very fewness of the lost increases the wonder and terror of their valour, as happened in the first encounter of the Persian war under Alexander the Great: of whose army, among nearly four hundred thousand of the enemy slain, only nine foot soldiers are said to have been missing.
13 nisi forte cum adeo pauci cadunt, ut admirationem terroremque uirtutis augeat paucitas perditorum, sicut in prima Persici belli congressione apud Alexandrum Magnum fuit: cui inter CCCC fere milia hostium interfecta nouem tantummodo in exercitu eius pedites defuisse referuntur.
But Pyrrhus bore witness before his gods and before men to the dreadfulness of the slaughter he had suffered in this war, fixing an inscription in the temple of Tarentine Jupiter, in which he wrote this: “Men who before were unconquered, best father of Olympus, these I conquered in battle, and by them was I conquered.”
14 sed Pyrrhus atrocitatem cladis, quam hoc bello exceperat, dis suis hominibusque testatus est, adfigens titulum in templo Tarentini Iouis, in quo haec scripsit: Qui antehac inuicti fuere uiri, pater optime Olympi, Hos ego in pugna vici uictusque sum ab isdem.
And when he was reproached by his allies for calling himself conquered when he had conquered, he is said to have answered: “Indeed, if I conquer again in the same way, I shall return to Epirus without a single soldier.”
15 et cum a sociis increpitaretur, cur se uictum diceret qui uicisset, respondisse fertur: Ne ego si iterum eodem modo uicero, sine ullo milite Epirum reuertar.
Meanwhile the Roman army, after it had been beaten and had fled secretly from its camp, found the wretched disaster of the war increased and heaped up by graver portents.
16 interea Romanus exercitus, postquam uictus clam fugit e castris, miserabilem belli cladem grauioribus monstris auctam accumulatamque persensit.
For a storm, rising up like some enemy, with a horrible crash of the sky seized the foragers, who happened to have gone out, and burnt them up with dreadful thunderbolts.
17 nam pabulatores forte progressos uelut hostilis quaedam oborta tempestas cum horribili fragore caeli correptos diris fulminibus exussit.
Indeed, the same whirlwind laid low thirty-four of them; twenty-two were left half-dead; and a great many beasts of burden were killed or carried off: so that it may rightly be said to have happened not as a sign of devastation to come, but as the devastation itself.
18 quippe XXX et IIII eorum idem turbo prostrauit; duo et uiginti semineces relicti, iumenta exanimata et capta conplurima: ut merito contigisse non in signum uastationis futurae sed uastatio ipsa referatur.
The second battle between Pyrrhus and the Roman consuls was fought within the borders of Apulia. There the slaughter of war fell to both sides, but chiefly to Pyrrhus, and the victory went to the Romans.2
19 Secunda inter Pyrrhum et Romanos consules pugna in Apuliae finibus fuit. ubi clades belli ad utrosque sed maxime ad Pyrrhum, uictoria ad Romanos concessit.
2This is the battle of Asculum in Apulia (279 BC). Greek accounts, notably Plutarch’s, give it to Pyrrhus at a heavy cost; Orosius follows the Roman tradition, also found in Eutropius, that makes it a Roman victory.
For when for a long time all had been rushing stubbornly into mutual slaughter, and the outcome of the war hung in the balance, Pyrrhus, wounded, with his arm pierced through, was the first to withdraw from the battle. But the legate Fabricius was also wounded on that occasion.
20 nam cum diu obnixe cunctis in mutuam caedem ruentibus, anceps belli penderet euentus, Pyrrhus, transfixo bracchio saucius, prior cessit e proelio. sed et Fabricius legatus tunc uulneratus est.
The elephants, which had been found in the first battle to be capable of being wounded and put to flight, were then driven wild by fires thrust beneath their hinder and softer parts, and, carrying the blazing towers about with them besides in their frightened frenzy, they became the destruction of their own side.
21 elephanti prima pugna uulnerari atque in fugam cogi posse deprehensi, deinde subiectis inter posteriora ac mollia ignibus exagitati, ardentes insuper machinas furore trepido circumferentes exitio suis fuere.
In that battle five thousand Romans were slain, while of the army of Pyrrhus twenty thousand were laid low. Fifty-three of the king’s standards were captured; eleven of the Romans’ were lost.
22 caesa sunt in ea pugna V milia Romanorum, de exercitu uero Pyrrhi XX milia prostrata sunt. regis signa ablata LIII, Romanorum undecim amissa sunt.
Pyrrhus, broken by the war, and summoned to the rule of Sicily on the death of Agathocles, king of Syracuse, withdrew to Syracuse.3
23 Pyrrhus bello fractus, Agathocle mortuo rege Syracusano ad Siciliae arcessitus imperium Syracusas concessit.
3Agathocles had died in 289 BC. Pyrrhus crossed to Sicily in 278 BC, called in by the Sicilian Greeks against Carthage.