Ab urbe condita

He fell from his horse, and his lifeless body with the weapon sticking in it was carried down by the current to that part of the bank where the enemy were stationed. There it was horribly mutilated.

After cutting it through the middle they sent one half to Consentia and kept the other to make sport of . Whilst they were pelting it at a distance with darts and stones a solitary woman ventured among the rabble who were showing such incredible brutality and implored them to desist. She told them amid her tears that her husband and children were held prisoners by the enemy and she hoped to ransom them with the king's body however much it might have been disfigured.

This put an end to the outrages. What was left of the limbs was cremated at Consentia by the reverential care of this one woman, and the bones were sent back to Metapontum;

from there they were carried to Cleopatra, the king's wife, and Olympias, his sister, the latter of whom was the mother, the former the sister of Alexander the Great.

I thought it well to give this brief account of the tragic end of Alexander of Epirus, for although Fortune kept him from hostilities with Rome, the wars he waged in Italy entitle him to a place in this history.

[*](Commencement of the Second Samnite War —Alliance with the Lucanians and Apulians.) A laetisternium [*](Lectisternium.See note 2 to Book VII.) took place this year (326 B.C.>, the fifth since the foundation of the City, and

the same deities were propitiated in this as in the former one. The new consuls, acting on the orders of the people, sent heralds to deliver a formal declaration of war to the Samnites, and made all their preparations on a much

greater scale for this war than for the one against the Greeks. New and unexpected succours were forthcoming, for the Lucanians and Apulians, with whom Rome had up to that time established no relations, came forward with offers to make an

alliance and promised armed assistance; a friendly alliance was formed with them. Meantime the operations in Samnium were attended with success, the towns of Allifae, Callifae, and Rufrium passed into the hands of the Romans, and ever since the consuls had entered the country the rest of the territory was ravaged far and wide.