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Updated: June 3, 2025
Pyrrhus, not yet seeing his drift, answered: "Close to it Sicily invites us, a noble and populous island, and one which is very easy to conquer; for, my Cineas, now that Agathocles is dead, there is nothing there but revolution and faction and the violence of party spirit." "What you say," answered Cineas, "is very probably true.
Cineas appears to have gone once more to Rome, and Carthage seems to have been seriously apprehensive that Rome might come to terms. But the senate remained firm, and repeated its former answer.
He is, however, better known in history as Ptolemy Physcon, or bloated, a nickname which was afterwards given to him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from the diseases of luxury. Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the young Euergetes; and in their alarm they proposed to send the foreign ambassadors to meet the invader on his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace.
The battle over, Pyrrhus surveyed the field, strewn thickly with the dead of both armies, his valiant soul moved to a new respect for his foes. "If I had such soldiers," he cried, "I could conquer the world." Then, noting the numbers of his own dead, he added, "Another such victory, and I must return to Epirus alone." He sent Cineas, his wise counsellor, to Rome to offer terms of peace.
At supper, amongst all sorts of things that were discoursed of, but more particularly Greece and the philosophers there, Cineas, by accident, had occasion to speak of Epicurus, and explained the opinions his followers hold about the gods and the commonwealth, and the object of life, placing the chief happiness of man in pleasure, and declining public affairs as an injury and disturbance of a happy life, removing the gods afar off both from kindness or anger, or any concern for us at all, to a life wholly without business and flowing in pleasures.
Before hostilities were resumed, however, the Romans sent a messenger to the camp of Pyrrhus to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. The name of this embassador was Fabricius. Fabricius, as Pyrrhus was informed by Cineas, was very highly esteemed at Rome for his integrity and for his military abilities, but he was without property, being dependent wholly on his pay as an officer of the army.
I am not inquiring how great a memory Simonides may be said to have had, or Theodectes, or that Cineas who was sent to Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus; or, in more modern times, Charmadas; or, very lately, Metrodorus the Scepsian, or our own contemporary Hortensius : I am speaking of ordinary memory, and especially of those men who are employed in any important study or art, the great capacity of whose minds it is hard to estimate, such numbers of things do they remember.
Speech of Appius Claudius. Effect of his speech on the senate. Cineas makes report of his mission. Fabricius sent to Pyrrhus. His reception. The elephant concealed in the tent. Pyrrhus makes great offers to Fabricius. The Roman armies advance. The two generals. The armies encamp in sight of each other. His military honors. Story of Decius Mus. The vision. Extraordinary alternative proposed.
If Cineas were now to go round the city with his presents, he would find numbers of women standing in the public streets to receive them. There are some passions, the causes or motives of which I can no way account for.
Pyrrhus had employed him in embassies and negotiations of various kinds from time to time, and Cineas had always discharged these trusts in a very able and satisfactory manner.
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