all his family, except his little two-year-old son,
named Pyrrhus, who was saved by some faithful servants. They fled
towards the city of Megara, on the border of Macedon, but they only
reached it late at night, and there was a rough and rapid river between,
swelled by rains. They called to the people on the other side, and held
up the little child, but the rushing of the river drowned their voices,
and their words were not understood. At last one of them peeled off a
piece of bark from an oak tree, and scratched on it with the tongue of a
buckle an account of their distress, and, fastening it to a stone, threw
it over. The Megarians immediately made a sort of raft with trees, and,
floating over, brought little Pyrrhus and his friends across; but finding
Macedon not safe, since Cassander had been the enemy of AEacides, they
went on to Illyria, where they found the king, Glaucias, sitting with his
queen. Putting the child on the ground, they began to tell their story.
At first the king was unwilling to grant him shelter, being afraid of
Cassander; but the little fellow, crawling about, presently came near,
and, laying hold of his leg, pulled himself upon his feet, and looked up
in his face. The pretty, unconscious action of a suppliant so moved
Glaucias that he took him up in his arms, and gave him into those of the
queen, bidding her have him bred up among their own children; and though
Cassander offered 200 talents, he would not give up the boy.

When Pyrrhus was twelve years old, Glaucias sent an army to restore him
to his throne, and guarded him there. He was high-spirited, brave, and
gracious, but remarkable-looking, from his upper teeth being all in one,
without divisions. When he was seventeen, while he was gone to Illyria
to the wedding of one of Glaucias' sons, his subjects rose against him,
and made one of his cousins king. He then went to Demetrius, who had
married his elder sister, and fought under him at the battle of Ipsus;
after which Demetrius sent him as a hostage to Alexandria, and his grace
and spirit made him so great a favourite with Ptolemy that he gave him
his step-daughter Berenice in marriage, and helped him to raise an army
with which he recovered his kingdom of Epirus.

He had not long been settled there before the Macedonians, who had begun
to hate Demetrius, heard such accounts of Pyrrhus' kindness as a man and
skill as a warrior, that the next time a war broke out they all deserted