Pyrrhus

Again, in Ambracia there was a fellow who denounced and reviled him, and people thought that Pyrrhus ought to banish him. Let him remain here, said Pyrrhus, and speak ill of us among a few, rather than carry his slanders round to all mankind. And again, some young fellows indulged in abuse of him over their cups, and were brought to task for it. Pyrrhus asked them if they had said such things, and when one of them replied, We did, O King; and we should have said still more than this if we had had more wine. Pyrrhus laughed and dismissed them.[*](The story is found also in Plutarch’s Morals, p. 184 d, and in Val. Max. 5, 1, ext. 3.)

In order to enlarge his interests and power he married several wives after the death of Antigone. He took to wife, namely, a daughter of Autoleon, king of the Paeonians; Bircenna, the daughter of Bardyllis the lllyrian; and Lanassa, the daughter of Agathocles of Syracuse, who brought him as her dowry the city of Corcyra, which had been captured by Agathocles. By Antigone he had a son Ptolemy, Alexander by Lanassa, and Helenus, his youngest son, by Bircenna.

He brought them all up to be brave in arms and fiery, and he whetted them for this from their very birth. It is said, for instance, that when he was asked by one of them, who was still a boy, to whom he would leave his kingdom, he replied: To that one of you who keeps his sword the sharpest. This, however, meant nothing less than the famous curse of Oedipus in the tragedy;[*](Euripides, Phoenissae, 68.) that

with whetted sword,

divide the house.

After this battle Pyrrhus returned to his home rejoicing in the splendour which his fame and lofty spirit had brought him; and when he was given the surname of Eagle by the Epeirots, Through you, he said, am I an eagle; why, pray, should I not be? It is by your arms that I am borne aloft as by swift pinions. But a little while after, learning that Demetrius was dangerously sick, he suddenly threw an army into Macedonia, intending merely to overrun and plunder some parts of it.

Yet he came within a little of mastering the whole country and getting the kingdom without a battle; for he marched on as far as Edessa without opposition from anyone, and many actually joined his forces and shared his expedition. And now Demetrius himself was roused by the peril to act beyond his strength, while his friends and commanders in a short time collected many soldiers and set out with zeal and vigour against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus, however, had come more for plunder than anything else, and would not stand his ground, but fled, losing a part of his army on the march, under the attacks of the Macedonians.