rled from the Macedonian throne, it was voluntarily
proffered by them to his chivalrous opponent, a kinsman of the
Alexandrid house (467). No one was in reality worthier than Pyrrhus
to wear the royal diadem of Philip and of Alexander. In an age of
deep depravity, in which princely rank and baseness began to be
synonymous, the personally unspotted and morally pure character of
Pyrrhus shone conspicuous. For the free farmers of the hereditary
Macedonian soil, who, although diminished and impoverished, were
far from sharing in that decay of morals and of valour which the
government of the Diadochi produced in Greece and Asia, Pyrrhus
appeared exactly formed to be the fitting king, --Pyrrhus, who,
like Alexander, in his household and in the circle of his friends
preserved a heart open to all human sympathies, and constantly
avoided the bearing of an Oriental sultan which was so odious to the
Macedonians; and who, like Alexander, was acknowledged to be the first
tactician of his time. But the singularly overstrained national
feeling of the Macedonians, which preferred the most paltry Macedonian
sovereign to the ablest foreigner, and the irrational insubordination
of the Macedonian troops towards every non-Macedonian leader, to which
Eumenes the Cardian, the greatest general of the school of Alexander,
had fallen a victim, put a speedy termination to the rule of the
prince of Epirus. Pyrrhus, who could not exercise sovereignty over
Macedonia with the consent of the Macedonians, and who was too
powerless and perhaps too high spirited to force himself on the nation
against its will, after reigning seven months left the country to its
native misgovernment, and went home to his faithful Epirots (467).
But the man who had worn the crown of Alexander, the brother-in-law
of Demetrius, the son-in-law of Ptolemy Lagides and of Agathocles
of Syracuse, the highly-trained tactician who wrote memoirs and
scientific dissertations on the military art, could not possibly end
his days in inspecting at a set time yearly the accounts of the royal
cattle steward, in receiving from his brave Epirots their customary
gifts of oxen and sheep, in thereupon, at the altar of Zeus, procuring
the renewal of their oath of allegiance and repeating his own
engagement to respect the laws, and--for the better confirmation of
the whole--in carousing with them all night long. If there was no
place for him on the throne of Macedonia, there was no abiding i