Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus rated Fortune soundly because occasions for two great undertakings had come to him at one time, and thinking that the presence of both meant the loss of one, he wavered in his calculations for a long time. Then Sicily appeared to offer opportunities for greater achievements,

since Libya was felt to be near, and he turned in this direction, and forthwith sent out Cineas to hold preliminary conferences with the cities, as was his wont, while he himself threw a garrison into Tarentum. The Tarentines were much displeased at this, and demanded that he either apply himself to the task for which he had come, namely to help them in their war with Rome, or else abandon their territory and leave them their city as he had found it. To this demand he made no very gracious reply, but ordering them to keep quiet and await his convenience, he sailed off.

On reaching Sicily,[*](Early in the year 278 B.C.) his hopes were at once realized securely; the cities readily gave themselves up to him, and wherever force and conflict were necessary nothing held out against him at first, but advancing with thirty thousand foot, twenty-five hundred horse, and two hundred ships, he put the Phoenicians to rout and subdued the territory under their control. Then he determined to storm the walls of Eryx, which was the strongest of their fortresses and had numerous defenders.

So when his army was ready, he put on his armour, went out to battle, and made a vow to Heracles that he would institute games and a sacrifice in his honour, if the god would render him in the sight of the Sicilian Greeks an antagonist worthy of his lineage and resources; then he ordered the trumpets to sound, scattered the Barbarians with his missiles, brought up his scaling-ladders, and was the first to mount the wall.