nsome as it
might be, by the help of a foreign dynast. Venusia, although now
wholly surrounded by enemies, adhered with unshaken steadfastness to
Rome. Pyrrhus proposed to the prisoners taken on the Siris, whose
brave demeanour the chivalrous king requited by the most honourable
treatment, that they should enter his army in accordance with
the Greek fashion; but he learned that he was fighting not with
mercenaries, but with a nation. Not one, either Roman or Latin,
took service with him.

Attempts at Peace

Pyrrhus offered peace to the Romans. He was too sagacious a soldier
not to recognize the precariousness of his footing, and too skilled a
statesman not to profit opportunely by the moment which placed him in
the most favourable position for the conclusion of peace. He now
hoped that under the first impression made by the great battle on the
Romans he should be able to secure the freedom of the Greek towns in
Italy, and to call into existence between them and Rome a series of
states of the second and third order as dependent allies of the new
Greek power; for such was the tenor of his demands: the release of all
Greek towns--and therefore of the Campanian and Lucanian towns in
particular--from allegiance to Rome, and restitution of the territory
taken from the Samnites, Daunians, Lucanians, and Bruttians, or in
other words especially the surrender of Luceria and Venusia. If a
further struggle with Rome could hardly be avoided, it was not
desirable at any rate to begin it till the western Hellenes should
be united under one ruler, till Sicily should be acquired and perhaps
Africa be conquered.

Provided with such instructions, the Thessalian Cineas, the
confidential minister of Pyrrhus, went to Rome. That dexterous
negotiator, whom his contemporaries compared to Demosthenes so far as
a rhetorician might be compared to a statesman and the minister of a
sovereign to a popular leader, had orders to display by every means
the respect which the victor of Heraclea really felt for his
vanquished opponents, to make known the wish of the king to come to
Rome in person, to influence men's minds in the king's favour by
panegyrics which sound so well in the mouth of an enemy, by earnest
flatteries, and, as opportunity offered, also by well-timed gifts--in
short to try upon the Romans all the arts of cabinet policy, as they
had been tested at the courts of Alexandria and Antioch. The senate
hesitated; to many it seemed