tes will hold these
doctrines as long as they are at war with us.'

This filled Pyrrhus with such admiration of his high spirit and
character that he was more anxious than before to be on terms of
friendship instead of hostility with the Romans, and he privately
urged Fabricius to arrange a peace and to take service with him
and live as the first of all his comrades and generals. It is said
that he quietly replied, 'O king, you would gain nothing; for
these very men who now honour and admire you will prefer my rule
to yours if they once get to know me.' Such were his words; and
Pyrrhus did not receive them with anger or in a spirit of offended
majesty, but he actually told his friends of the nobility of
Fabricius and gave him sole charge of the prisoners on the
understanding that, if the Senate refused the peace, they should
be sent back after greeting their friends and keeping the festival
of Saturn. As it happened, they were sent back after the festival,
the Senate ordaining the penalty of death for anyone who stayed
behind.

Plutarch, xxx. 20.

He was yet more deeply impressed by the strength of the Roman character
a little later. When he found that none of the Latins were going to join
him Pyrrhus sent an ambassador to the Senate, offering terms of peace.
This ambassador was loaded with costly presents for the leading Romans
and their wives. All these gifts were refused. Then Pyrrhus's envoy came
before the Senate, to see whether eloquence could not do what bribes had
failed to effect. He had been a pupil of the great Demosthenes, the most
wonderful orator of Greece, and his golden words moved many of the
senators; they thought it would be wise to make terms. But old Appius
Claudius, one of the most distinguished men in Rome, the builder of the
great military road known as the Appian way, had been carried into the
Senate House by his sons and servants, for he was very old and nearly
blind. He now rose to his feet and his speech made these senators
ashamed of themselves. 'Hitherto', he cried, 'I have regarded my
blindness as a misfortune; but now, Romans, I wish I had been deaf as
well as blind, for then I should not have heard these shameful counsels.
Who is there who will not despise you and think you an easy conquest, if
Pyrrhus not only escapes unconquered but gains Tarentum as a reward for
insulting the Romans?' His words stirred the senators deeply. They voted
as one ma