nerals of Antigonus, with a body of mercenary
troops to help the Spartans in this their darkest hour. Shortly after
they had received this reinforcement, their king, Areus, arrived from
Crete with two thousand men. The women now returned to their homes,
not thinking it to be necessary any longer for them to take an active
part in the war, while those old men too who had been forced by
necessity to take up arms, were relieved by the new comers, who took
their places in the line of battle against the enemy.

XXX. These reinforcements piqued Pyrrhus into making several more
attempts to take the city, in which however he was repulsed and
wounded. He now retired, and began to plunder the country, professing
his intention to winter there. But no man can resist his destiny.
There were in Argos two parties, one headed by Aristeas, and the other
by Aristippus. The latter was favoured by Antigonus, which induced
Aristeas to invite Pyrrhus to Argos. He was ever willing to embark on
a new enterprise, because he regarded his successes merely as
stepping-stones to greater things, and hoped to retrieve his failures
by new and more daring exploits; so that he was rendered equally
restless by victory or defeat. Accordingly he set off at once for
Argos. Areus occupied the most difficult of the passes on the road
with an ambuscade, and attacked the Gauls and Molossians who formed
the rear-guard. Pyrrhus had been warned by his soothsayers that the
livers of the victims wanted one lobe, which portended the loss of one
of his relatives, but at this crisis the disorder and confusion into
which his army was thrown by the ambush made him forget the omen, and
order his son Ptolemy to take his guards and go to the help of the
rear-guard, while he himself hurried his main body on through the
defile. When Ptolemy came up a fierce battle took place. The flower of
the Lacedaemonian army, led by Eualkus, engaged with the troops
immediately around Ptolemy, and while they fought, a Cretan named
Oryssus, a native of Aptera, running forward on the flank, struck the
young man, who was fighting bravely, with a javelin, and killed him.
His fall caused his troops to retreat, and they were hard pressed by
the Lacedaemonians, who were so excited by their victory that they were
carried by their ardour far into the plain, where their retreat was
cut off by Pyrrhus's infantry. Pyrrhus himself, who had just heard of
the death of his son, in an agony of grief now or