ounced arbitrary sentences of confiscation,
banishment, or death, even against those who had been most active
in promoting his coming thither; he placed garrisons in the towns,
and ruled over Sicily not as the leader of a national league, but
as a king. In so doing he probably reckoned himself according to
oriental-Hellenistic ideas a good and wise ruler, and perhaps he
really was so; but the Greeks bore this transplantation of the system
of the Diadochi to Syracuse with all the impatience of a nation that
in its long struggle for freedom had lost all habits of discipline;
the Carthaginian yoke very soon appeared to the foolish people more
tolerable than their new military government. The most important
cities entered into communications with the Carthaginians, and even
with the Mamertines; a strong Carthaginian army ventured again to
appear on the island; and everywhere supported by the Greeks, it made
rapid progress. In the battle which Pyrrhus fought with it fortune
was, as always, with the "Eagle"; but the circumstances served to show
what the state of feeling was in the island, and what might and must
ensue, if the king should depart.

Departure of Pyrrhus to Italy

To this first and most essential error Pyrrhus added a second; he
proceeded with his fleet, not to Lilybaeum, but to Tarentum. It was
evident, looking to the very ferment in the minds of the Sicilians,
that he ought first of all to have dislodged the Carthaginians wholly
from the island, and thereby to have cut off the discontented from
their last support, before he turned his attention to Italy; in that
quarter there was nothing to be lost, for Tarentum was safe enough for
him, and the other allies were of little moment now that they had been
abandoned. It is conceivable that his soldierly spirit impelled him
to wipe off the stain of his not very honourable departure in the year
476 by a brilliant return, and that his heart bled when he heard the
complaints of the Lucanians and Samnites. But problems, such as
Pyrrhus had proposed to himself, can only be solved by men of iron
nature, who are able to control their feelings of compassion and even
their sense of honour; and Pyrrhus was not one of these.

Fall of the Sicilian Kingdom--
Recommencement of the Italian War

The fatal embarkation took place towards the end of 478. On the
voyage the new Syracusan fleet had to sustain a sharp engagement with
that of Carthage, in which it lost a conside