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Updated: June 28, 2025
The reality formed a sad contrast to these great promises. The army, whose chief command had been committed to Pyrrhus, had still to be created; and for the time being the main resources available for forming it were those of Tarentum alone. The king gave orders for the enlisting of an army of Italian mercenaries with Tarentine money, and called out the able-bodied citizens to serve in the war.
Caius Terentius Varro was sent as propraetor into Etruria, in order that Caius Hostilius might quit that province and go to Tarentum to that army which Titus Quinctius, the consul, had commanded, and that Lucius Manlius might go as ambassador across the sea, and observe what was going on there; and at the same time, as the games at Olympia, which were attended by the greatest concourse of persons of any solemnity in Greece, were about to take place that summer, that if he could without danger from the enemy, he might go to that assembly, in order that any Sicilians who might be there, having been driven away by the war, or any Tarentine citizens banished by Hannibal, might return to their homes, and be informed that the Roman people would restore to them every thing which they had possessed before the war.
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.
On the sixth day of the siege, the young Tarentine slips by night out of the town, and, having carefully observed the place where the Bruttian commander, according to agreement, was to admit the Romans, gave an account of the whole matter to Fabius; who thought it not safe to rely wholly upon the plot, but, while proceeding with secrecy to the post, gave order for a general assault to be made on the other side of the town, both by land and sea.
Quintus Claudius, who had his camps distributed through the towns of the Sallentine territory, had quitted his winter quarters on hearing of the enemy; and Hannibal, fearing on that account lest he should have to engage with two armies at once, decamped by night, and retired from the Tarentine to the Bruttian territory. Claudius turned his army to the Sallentine territory.
So that at last our Tarentine thought this Bruttian officer well enough prepared to receive the offers he had to make him; and that it would be easy for a mercenary man, who was in love, to accept, upon the terms proposed, the large rewards promised by Fabius. In conclusion, the bargain was struck, and the promise made of delivering the town.
But these obstacles might be surmounted by an energetic will; and both the contending parties construed the summons of the Tarentine envoys that they should desist from the strife as meant in earnest. The Samnites, as the weaker, showed themselves ready to comply with it; the Romans replied by hoisting the signal for battle.
As a rule, the word Budmouth meant fascination on Egdon. That Royal port and watering place, if truly mirrored in the minds of the heath-folk, must have combined, in a charming and indescribable manner, a Carthaginian bustle of building with Tarentine luxuriousness and Baian health and beauty.
Battle near Heraclea With a view to cover the Tarentine colony of Heraclea, the king had taken up a position with his own and the Tarentine troops between that city and Pandosia . The Romans, covered by their cavalry, forced the passage of the Siris, and opened the battle with a vehement and successful cavalry charge; the king, who led his cavalry in person, was thrown from his horse, and the Greek horsemen, panic-struck by the disappearance of their leader, abandoned the field to the squadrons of the enemy.
In 476 the consul Gaius Fabricius succeeded in inducing the considerable Tarentine settlement of Heraclea to enter into a separate peace, which was granted to it on the most favourable terms.
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