But the misery of the Romans ceases with no truce: the interval between wars is taken up with the evils of diseases, and when there is rest from battle abroad, the wrath of heaven is at work within.
1 Sed Romanorum miseria nullis cessat indutiis; consumitur morborum malis intercapedo bellorum et, cum foris cessatur a proelio, agitur introrsum ira de caelo.
For in the consulship of Fabius Gurges, for the second time, and Gaius Genucius Clepsina, a grievous pestilence invaded the City and its territory. Seizing upon all, but especially upon women and cattle, it emptied them of their future offspring by killing the young in the womb; and, in untimely births, miscarriages were forced out and cast away at peril to the mothers, so that it was believed that succession would fail and the race of living creatures would come to an end, since the lawful order of life-giving birth had been taken away.
2 nam Fabio Gurgite iterum C. Genucio Clepsina consulibus pestilentia grauis urbem ac fines eius inuasit; quae cum omnes tum praecipue mulieres pecudesque corripiens necatis in utero fetibus futura prole uacuabat, et immaturis partubus cum periculo matrum extorti abortus proiciebantur, adeo ut defectura successio et defuturum animantum genus adempto uitalis partus legitimo ordine crederetur.
Meanwhile the consul Curius met Pyrrhus on his return from Sicily, and this third war against the Epirotes was fought in Lucania, on the Arusinian plains.1
3 Interea reuersum ex Sicilia Pyrrhum Curius consul excepit, tertiumque id bellum contra Epirotas apud Lucaniam in Arusinis campis gestum est.
1This is the battle fought near Beneventum in Samnium in 275 BC; Orosius places it in Lucania.
And so, at the first encounter, when Pyrrhus’s soldiers were wavering under the onset of the Romans and, looking about for a way of flight, were preparing to give ground in the battle, Pyrrhus ordered the elephants to be brought in from the reserves.
4 itaque primo concursu cum Pyrrhi milites Romanorum inpressione trepidarent et circumspectantes fugam bello cedere molirentur, Pyrrhus elephantos ex subsidiis iussit induci.
The Romans, now accustomed to fighting with the beasts, had prepared fire-darts wrapped in tow and smeared with pitch, and made to cling fast with hooked barbs besides; and, hurling these, set alight, at the backs of the beasts and at the towers, they turned the raging and burning beasts back without difficulty to the destruction of those whose support they had been.
5 Romani, adsueti iam pugnare cum beluis, cum malleolos stuppa inuolutos ac pice oblitos uncis insuper aculeis tenaces praeparauissent eosque flammatos in terga beluarum turresque uibrarent, non difficile furentes ardentesque beluas in eorum excidia, quorum subsidia fuerant, retorserunt.
They say that the king had eighty thousand foot soldiers in that battle, and six thousand horse. Of these, 33,000 are reported to have been slain, and 1,300 were captured.
6 LXXX milia peditum in illo proelio habuisse regem dicunt, equitum uero VI milia. ex his caesa referuntur XXXIII milia, capti autem sunt mille trecenti.
Pyrrhus at last, in the fifth year after his coming, fled from Italy defeated. After the many and most grievous wars that he waged, he was lured on by greed for the kingdom of Sparta, and fell in Greece at Argos, a most flourishing city of Achaea, struck by a stone.
7 Pyrrhus quinto demum anno, quam uenerat, ab Italia uictus aufugit. qui post multa grauissimaque bella, quae gessit, in Graecia apud Argos Achaiae florentissimam urbem, Spartani regni auiditate seductus, saxo ictus occubuit.
At that time also, among the Romans, Sextilia, a Vestal virgin, convicted and condemned of unchastity, was buried alive at the Colline Gate.
8 Tunc quoque apud Romanos Sextilia uirgo Vestalis conuicta damnataque incesti ad portam Collinam uiua defossa est.