The Historians' History of the World 04

“When such begging missions are the deeds for which Athens both employed and recompensed her most eminent citizens, an historian accustomed to the Grecian world as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, feels that the life has departed from his subject, and with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close.”b

A kindred feeling seems to have actuated most of the other prominent historians of Greece, with the notable exception of Thirlwall. Yet from a slightly altered point of view, there is much of interest in the story of the later struggles of this wonderful people, against a seemingly predestined fate. Even were it not so, our present purpose, which regards Greece not as an isolated entity but as a part of the scheme of world history, requires that we should follow the tragic drama to its close.a

CHAPTER LXII. THE EXPLOITS OF PYRRHUS

We now approach that dramatic moment when Greek first met Roman in battle array. Into the tangled web of the history of this period there flashes the scarlet thread of the life of Pyrrhus of Epirus. Though a fuller account of his war against Italy must be deferred to the Roman history, it will be briefly sketched here, together with a short account of his country and his ancestors.a

Epirus, in spite of its distance from the chief centres of Greek thought and action, and the fact that its inhabitants were hardly regarded as other than barbarians, exerted even at an early period no small influence on Greece, by means more especially of the oracle of Dodona. One of the earliest and most flourishing settlements of the Greeks proper in Epirus was the Corinthian colony of Ambracia, which gave its name to the neighbouring gulf. The happy results of the experiment appear to have tempted other Greek states to imitate the example, and Elatria, Bucheta, and Pandosia bore witness to the enterprise of the people of Elis. Phœnice, still so called, was the wealthiest of all the native cities of Epirus, and after the fall of the Molossian kingdom the centre of an Epirotic league.

[ca. 360-288 B.C.]

The kings or rather chieftains of the Molossians, who ultimately extended their power over all Epirus, claimed to be descended from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who, according to the legend, settled in the country after the sack of Troy, and transmitted his kingdom to Molossus, his son by Andromache. The early history of the dynasty is very obscure; but Admetus, who lived in the fifth century B.C., has become famous for his hospitable reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the grudge that he must have harboured against the great Athenian, who had persuaded his countrymen to refuse the alliance tardily offered by the Molossian chief when their victory against the Persians was already secured. He was succeeded about 429 B.C. by his son or grandson, Tharymbas or Arymbas I, who being placed by a decree of the people under the guardianship of Sabylinthus, chief of the Atintanes, was educated at Athens, and thus became at a later date the introducer of a higher kind of civilisation among his subjects. Alcetas, the next king mentioned in history, was contemporary with Dionysius of Syracuse (about 385 B.C.) and was indebted to his assistance for the recovery of his throne. His son Arymbas II (who succeeded by the death of his brother Neoptolemus) ruled with prudence and equity, and gave encouragement to literature and the arts. To him Xenocrates of Chalcedon dedicated his four books on the art of governing; and it is specially mentioned that he bestowed great care on the education of his brother’s children. Troas, one of his nieces, became his own wife; and Olympias, the other, was married to Philip of Macedon, and had the honour of giving birth to Alexander the Great. On the death of Arymbas, his nephew Alexander, the brother of Olympias, was put in possession of the throne by the assistance of Philip, who was afterwards assassinated on occasion of the marriage of the youthful king with Philip’s daughter Cleopatra. Alexander was the first who bore the title of king of Epirus, and he raised the reputation of his country amongst foreign nations. His assistance having been sought by the Tarentines against the Samnites and Lucanians, he made a descent, 332 B.C., at Pæstum, near the mouth of the river Silarus, and reduced several cities of the Lucani and Bruttii; but in a second attack upon Italy he was surrounded by the enemy, defeated, and slain, near the city Pandosia, in the Bruttian territory.