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The Tarentine allies promised three hundred and fifty thousand infantry and twenty thousand cavalry to support him. The Romans strained every nerve to meet him before these forces could be collected and organized. They marched with a force of fifty thousand men, larger than a consular army, under Lævinius and Æmilius. They met the enemy on the plain of Heraclea.
Pyrrhus, perceiving with the sharp eye of a soldier the advantages of the Roman manipular organization, had on the wings substituted for the long front of his phalanxes an arrangement by companies with intervals between them in imitation of the cohorts, and perhaps for political no less than for military reasons had placed the Tarentine and Samnite cohorts between the subdivisions of his own men.
The townsmen were spared; but in order to insure this, he instructed the Tarentine youths, when they saw any of their friends at a distance, to bid them be quiet and silent, and be of good courage. The tumult and clamour was now such as usually takes place in a captured city, but no man knew for certain what was the occasion.
The Roman consul indeed, as soon as he saw the soldiers of Milo taking the field against him instead of the Tarentine militia, had abandoned the attack on Tarentum and retreated to Apulia; but, with the exception of the territory of Tarentum, the Romans virtually ruled all Italy.
He was very angry to be disturbed: "And was it for this reason," said he, "that we chose the most private place in the ship; that none but your self might disturb us: or what will it signifie if I tell you, that one Lycas a Tarentine owns her, and is carrying one Tryphoena to Tarentum?"
Of these about thirteen noble Tarentine youths formed a conspiracy, the chief of whom were Nico and Philemenus. Concluding that it would be right to confer with Hannibal before they took any step, they went to him, having been allowed to go out of the city by night on pretence of hunting.
This was one reason why Tarentum, the rich and prosperous Dorian city on the Tarentine Gulf, had been a spectator of the contest in which it had abundant occasion to feel a deep interest. Rome had given up to the Lucanians the non-Dorian Greek cities in that region.
The Messapians, upon whose coast he had been thrown, now assembled from the neighboring villages and offered their help, while some of the ships which had outlived the storm appeared, bringing a few horsemen, about two thousand foot, and two elephants. With these Pyrrhus marched to Tarentum; Cineas, as soon as he heard of his arrival, bringing out the Tarentine army to meet him.
Several of these perpetual alliances, such as that with the Hernican communities, passed over to a footing of complete equalization with the Latin. Others, in which this was not the case, such as those with Neapolis , Nola , and Heraclea , granted rights comparatively comprehensive; while others, such as the Tarentine and Samnite treaties, may have approximated to despotism.
But when the Roman fleet, on its voyage from the Tyrrhene to the Adriatic sea, now arrived in the Tarentine waters and cast anchor in the harbour of the friendly city, the long, cherished resentment at length overflowed. Old treaties, which prohibited the war-vessels of Rome from sailing to the east of the Lacinian promontory, were appealed to by popular orators in the assembly of the citizens.
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