



Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
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 Makers of History

 Pyrrhus

 BY JACOB ABBOTT

 WITH ENGRAVINGS

 NEW YORK AND LONDON
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
 1901




 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
 hundred and fifty-four, by

 HARPER & BROTHERS,

 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
 of New York.




[Illustration: PYRRHUS VIEWING THE ROMAN ENCAMPMENT.]




PREFACE.


In respect to the heroes of ancient history, who lived in times
antecedent to the period when the regular records of authentic history
commence, no reliance can be placed upon the actual verity of the
accounts which have come down to us of their lives and actions. In
those ancient days there was, in fact, no line of demarkation between
romance and history, and the stories which were told of Cyrus, Darius,
Xerxes, Romulus, Pyrrhus, and other personages as ancient as they, are
all more or less fabulous and mythical. We learn this as well from the
internal evidence furnished by the narratives themselves as from the
researches of modern scholars, who have succeeded, in many cases, in
disentangling the web, and separating the false from the true. It is
none the less important, however, on this account, that these ancient
tales, as they were originally told, and as they have come down to us
through so many centuries, should be made known to readers of the
present age. They have been circulated among mankind in their
original form for twenty or thirty centuries, and they have mingled
themselves inextricably with the literature, the eloquence, and the
poetry of every civilized nation on the globe. Of course, to know what
the story is, whether true or false, which the ancient narrators
recorded, and which has been read and commented on by every succeeding
generation to the present day, is an essential attainment for every
well-informed man; a far more essential attainment, in fact, for the
general reader, than to discover now, at this late period, what the
actual facts were which gave origin to the fable.

In writing this series of histories, therefore, it has been the aim of
the author not to _correct_ the ancient story, but to repeat it as it
stands, cautioning the reader, however, whenever occasion requires,
not to suppose that the marvelous narratives are historically true.




CONTENTS.


 Chapter                                                    Page

    I. OLYMPIAS AND ANTIPATER                                 13

   II. CASSANDER                                              40

  III. EARLY LIFE OF PYRRHUS                                  64

   IV. WARS IN MACEDON                                        86

    V. WAR IN ITALY                                          111

   VI. NEGOTIATIONS                                          134

  VII. THE SICILIAN CAMPAIGN                                 159

 VIII. THE RETREAT FROM ITALY                                188

   IX. THE FAMILY OF LYSIMACHUS                              210

    X. THE RECONQUEST OF MACEDON                             235

   XI. SPARTA                                                249

  XII. THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF PYRRHUS                          268




ENGRAVINGS.


                                                            Page

 THE ROMAN ENCAMPMENT                            _Frontispiece_.

 MAP--EMPIRE OF PYRRHUS                                       12

 EURYDICE IN PRISON                                           57

 MAP--GRECIAN EMPIRE                                         110

 THE TROPHIES                                                132

 THE ELEPHANT CONCEALED                                      145

 THE ASSAULT                                                 177

 THE ROUT                                                    206

 THE FALLEN ELEPHANT                                         223

 THE CHARGE                                                  283

 THE DEATH OF PYRRHUS                                        300




[Illustration: MAP--EMPIRE OF PYRRHUS.]




PYRRHUS.




CHAPTER I.

OLYMPIAS AND ANTIPATER.

B.C. 336-321

Situation of the country of Epirus.--Epirus and Macedon.--Their
political connections.--Olympias.--Her visits to
Epirus.--Philip.--Olympias as a wife.--She makes many
difficulties.--Alexander takes part with his mother in her
quarrel.--Olympias is suspected of having murdered her
husband.--Alexander's treatment of his mother.--His kind
and consider