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Updated: May 21, 2025
II. V. Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private Rights II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League II. IV. South Etruria Roman Struggle of the Italians against Rome Wars between the Sabellians and Tarentines Archidamus Alexander the Molossian While the Romans were fighting on the Liris and Volturnus, other conflicts agitated the south-east of the peninsula.
Pyrrhus determined at once to embark in the enterprise, and he commenced making preparations for it on a very magnificent scale; for, notwithstanding the assurance which the Tarentines had given him that they had a very large body of men already assembled, Pyrrhus seems to have thought it best to take with him a force of his own.
Alexander had at first the advantage; he wrested Heraclea from the Tarentines, restored Thurii, and seems to have called upon the other Italian Greeks to unite under his protection against the Tarentines, while he at the same time tried to bring about a peace between them and the Sabellian tribes.
Before deciding to comply with the request of the Tarentines that he would come to their aid, Alexander sent to a celebrated oracle in Epirus, called the oracle of Dodona, to inquire whether it would be safe for him to undertake the expedition.
Reason and honour dictated to the Tarentines the propriety of now following up the haughty injunction of their envoys by a declaration of war against Rome; but in Tarentum neither reason nor honour characterized the government, and they had simply been trifling in a very childish fashion with very serious matters.
The victorious Tarentine promptly boarded the ship, which was all in confusion from the loss of the commander, and when he had driven the enemy back, and the Tarentines had got possession of the prow, the Romans, who had formed themselves into a compact body, with difficulty defending the stern, suddenly another trireme of the enemy appeared at the stern.
When his secretary asked him what he wished to be done with the statues of their gods, which are of immense size and represented as fighting, each having his peculiar habit, he gave orders that their angry gods should be left in the possession of the Tarentines. After this, the wall which separated the city from the citadel was razed and demolished.
But the attempt to preserve peace failed, whether through the opposition of those Tarentines who recognized the necessity of meeting the aggressions of Rome, the sooner the better, by a resort to arms, or merely through the unruliness of the city rabble, which with characteristic Greek naughtiness subjected the person of the envoy to an unworthy insult.
The Tarentines agreed with him; but were of opinion, that "he who gave the advice ought also to assist in carrying it into execution; for if the Carthaginian ships were brought there from Sicily, they would be able to effect it; but by what means could their own ships, shut up as they were in a confined harbour, the mouth of which was in the command of the enemy, be brought out into the open sea."
How much more nourishing was Italy, how much greater its strength, with so many commanders, so many armies unimpaired, which the Punic war afterwards consumed, when Pyrrhus attacked and shook it, and advanced victorious almost to the Roman capital! and not the Tarentines only, and the inhabitants of that tract of Italy which they call the greater Greece, whom you may suppose to have been led by the similarity of language and name, but the Lucanian, the Bruttian, and the Samnite revolted from us.
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