Pyrrhus

He married Phthia, the daughter of Menon the Thessalian, a man who won high repute at the time of the Lamian war[*](323-322 B.C. See the Demosthenes, xxvii. 1.) and acquired the highest authority among the confederates after Leosthenes. Phthia bore to Aeacides two daughters, Deïdameia and Troas, and a son, Pyrrhus.

But factions arose among the Molossians, and expelling Aeacides they brought into power the sons of Neoptolemus.[*](A brother of Arybas, and therefore uncle of Aeacides.) The friends of Aeacides were then seized and put to death, but Pyrrhus, who was still a babe and was sought for by the enemy, was stolen away by Androcleides and Angelus, who took to flight. However, they were obliged to take along with them a few servants, and women for the nursing of the child,

and on this account their flight was laborious and slow and they were overtaken. They therefore entrusted the child to Androcleion, Hippias, and Neander, sturdy and trusty young men, with orders to fly with all their might and make for Megara, a Macedonian town; while they themselves, partly by entreaties and partly by fighting, stayed the course of the pursuers until late in the evening.

After these had at last been driven back, they hastened to join the men who were carrying Pyrrhus. The sun had already set and they were near their hoped-for refuge, when suddenly they found themselves cut off from it by the river which flowed past the city. This had a forbidding and savage look, and when they tried to cross it, proved altogether impassable. For its current was greatly swollen and violent from rains that had fallen, and the darkness made everything more formidable.