The Historians' History of the World 04

Sparta was saved by the women. It had been proposed to send them to Crete, a suggestion which roused their indignation. Archidamia, mother of Acrotatus and the richest heiress in Sparta, entered the senate, sword in hand, and protested in the name of the women against their being thought capable of surviving the ruin of their country. The walls raised in preceding wars left the town exposed at several points: the night was spent in digging a great ditch parallel with the enemy’s camp, and barricades were formed on each side by means of chariots with their wheels buried in the ground. The women undertook a third of the work and obliged those who were to fight next day to rest. In the morning they armed the young men and exhorted them to die under the eyes of their mothers. During the fight, which lasted all day, they kept close to them, handing them weapons, carrying them food and drink and tending the wounded. But as Rollin has pointed out, if the women of Sparta practised masculine virtues they sometimes forgot the virtues of their sex: seeing the young Acrotatus who had fought like a lion return covered with blood and dust, they envied the lot of Chelidonis. Plutarch adds a detail which shows how far the Spartans carried the sacrifice of the family to the city: the old men, he says, cried out: “Bravo, Acrotatus. Retain Chelidonis, and may she give the country children as brave as thou.” As to Chelidonis herself, not wishing to fall into the hands of her husband, she had prepared a rope to hang herself if the town were taken.

The combat began again the next day. The Macedonians endeavoured to fill up the trench with branches. Pyrrhus even succeeded in crossing it and galloped towards the town; but his horse was killed and threw him on a steep slope; his friends had great difficulty in rescuing him. Almost all the Spartans were killed or wounded, and the town was on the verge of being taken when a lieutenant of Antigonus brought help. Almost at the same time Areus arrived from Crete with two thousand Spartans. Pyrrhus decided to raise the siege. He turned in the direction of Argos, where one party had summoned him to oppose another faction supported by Antigonus. Areus pursued him as he retreated, harassing him in the defiles and destroying his rear-guard composed of Galatæ and Molossians. To avenge the death of his son Ptolemy, who had been killed in this fight, Pyrrhus destroyed almost the whole Spartan army and then continued his route towards Argos.

DEATH OF PYRRHUS

Antigonus was occupying the heights. Pyrrhus proposed to him to settle their quarrel in a single combat, but Antigonus answered that if Pyrrhus was weary of life he might find many roads to death. The Argives begged the two kings to withdraw and to permit them to remain friends of both. They consented to do so, but during the night the partisans of Pyrrhus admitted him into the town. The members of the opposite party immediately summoned Antigonus. At the same time Areus arrived with the relics of his army. Fighting went on in the streets all night in the midst of a general confusion. Pyrrhus would have retired, but his Galatæ, coming to his assistance, blocked the narrow streets. One of his elephants had fallen across the gateway, another whose driver was wounded was overturning friends and enemies indiscriminately. Pyrrhus received a blow from the javelin of an Argive soldier and turned against the man who had wounded him; the soldier’s mother, who, with some other women, was watching the fight from the top of the roofs, seeing her son in danger seized a tile and flung it at the king’s head. He fell from his horse. Though he had removed the plume from his helmet he was recognised: his head was cut off and taken to Antigonus. At this example of the mutability of fortune the latter was reminded of his father Demetrius and caused a search to be made for the body of Pyrrhus, which he burned, with the head, on a funeral pyre. He sent the ashes to Pyrrhus’ son Helenus who returned to Epirus (272).

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

[272-243 B.C.]