Page 39. — Apollonius was not the son of Molon, but Molon or Molo merely his own surname. Greek and Scholar, terms of reproach, are noticeable. Greek is in the original not Hellen, the proper national name, but Graikos, the Roman Grœcus, a name never used of themselves by those whom we, after the Roman usage, call Greeks. Scholar is scholasticos, the learned fool or pedant of the late Greek witticisms.
Page 40.—Cicero 'tells us himself, in his speech pro Plancio. Much had been said in praise of various good deeds done in the country by Laterensis, Plancius's opponent. "Very likely," says Cicero, "but at Rome so much is done, that one hardly knows what occurs in the provinces. I may be forgiven for speaking of my own quaestorship;" and he proceeds to mention the honors paid to him in Sicily. "I had done a good deal, and, I confess it frankly, I came away in the belief that all the talk at Rome was of nothing but my quaestorship. On my way home I visited Puteoli, where the best company is usually to be found, and here I was, I may say, struck to the earth when a friend accosted me with the inquiry, When I had left Rome, and what was the news? On my replying that I had just quitted my province, 'Oh, yes,' said he, 'Africa, I believe.' I began to be really offended, and said, a little scornfully, 'Sicily,' when one who stood by interposed, with the air of knowing every thing, 'Don't you know, he was quæstor at Syracuse?'"
Page 55.—As Cicero himself says,—not, it is said, in any of his extant writings.
Page 57.—They did live. "Vixerunt."
Page 60.—The remark in disparagement of Demosthenes is not to be found in any one of his letters now remaining; but it is mentioned, says Coray, by Quintilian.
Page 64.—He reared a race against Apollo's will is evidently a verse from a play on the subject of Œdipus; but nothing more is known of it.
Page 65.—Quadrantia in correct Latin is Quadrantaria.
Page 73.—The Greek texts continually vary in these names, Cæcilius and Cælius. But whether Plutarch wrote it so or not, Cælius undoubtedly is the person, for we have Cicero's letter to him, in which he gives this answer (Epist. ad Diversos II., 11).
Page 74.—The passage describing what he writes in his epistles is a sort of summary of what we read in the seventh, eighth, and ninth books of the letters to Atticus; the last phrase is directly from VII., 7, "Ego vero quem fugiam habeo, quem sequar, non habeo."
Page 75.—What a thing it is to have a Greek in command is a scoff of course at the rhetorical gifts of the Greek, who could put a good color upon any disaster. The point of the answer at the end of the paragraph (p. 76) may perhaps be, "The first result of this expedient, this trick, or stratagem, as the Greek is, of circulating idle predictions, has been the loss of our camp."
Page 77.—The speech pro Quinto Ligario ad Cæsarem is extant; the passage about the battle of Pharsalia is in the third chapter.
Page 78.—The passages in the Odyssey, describing the life of Laertes, are I., 190, XXIV., 226.
Page 80. — Amnesteia, the Greek original of amnesty, literally, an act of oblivion, a not-remembering, seems to have been a term first made for the occasion when Thrasybulus came back to Athens and the old democratic government was restored, after the expulsion of the thirty tyrants. Cicero expressly adduced the Athenian example, and suggested the Greek word. "Jeci fundamenta pacis, Atheniensiumque renovavi vetus exemplum; Græcum etiam verbum usurpavi, quo tum in sedandis discordiis erat usa civitas ilia, etc." Philippic, I., 1, quoted in Mr. Long's note.
Page 82.—The dream is described both by Suetonius and Dion Cassius, but is said by them to have been had by Catulus. Cicero, they say, dreamed he saw Jupiter letting down a youth (whom he afterwards, as in the other dream, recognized in Octavius) by golden chains from heaven, and putting into his hands a scourge.
Comparison, page 91.—The verse Soldier full-armed, terrific to the foe is a fragment of one of Æschylus's elegies. Plutarch quotes it in three other places, in the minor works. It is No. 464 in Hermann's edition. Demetrius, page 96.—For the words of Plato, that great natures produce great vices as well as great virtues, Coray refers to a passage in the Crito, "Would to heaven they were capable of accomplishing the greatest evils, as in this case, they might be capable of the greatest good!" (p. 44). But perhaps he alludes rather to the descriptions in the Republic, of the temptations and perils to which the best natures, the true philosophical, wisdom-loving minds are exposed—from these come, when perverted and corrupted, those who do the greatest mischiefs to states alike, and individuals: as also those that do the greatest benefits, if haply they take this direction, (de Republica, VI., ch. 8, p. 495).
Page 99.—For the theory of Empedocles as to the elements of the world, compare Horace's phrase of the rerum discordia concors. Two verses, still remaining among the fragments of Empedocles, express this doctrine of attractions and repulsions.
"All things at one time in liking collect and combine into one thing.
All things again at another, divide and are severed in quarrel."
Page 106.—Adding flame to fire, Aristophanes, Equites, 382. Page 107.—The show of hospitable entertainment with which Ceres and Bacchus are received, when they were supposed to enter the city in procession in the times of their festivals. Philippides was a comic writer of great distinction. He is one of the six whom the grammarians selected as the standards of the third, or, as it is called, the New, Attic Comedy. The list is as follows: Philemon, Menander, Diphilus, Philippides, Posidippus, Apollodorus.
Page 109.—Natural or not, a man must serve where profit will be got, is from the Phœnissæ, 398.
Page 116.—The picture of Ialysus and his dog was still at Rhodes in Strabo's time, but was taken to Rome and placed, where Pliny saw it, and, no doubt, Plutarch also, in the Temple of Peace, built, after the end of the new civil wars, by Vespasian; and perished when the Temple was burnt in the reign of Commodus.
Page 120.—The description of the mockeries passed upon the other kings, Seleucus, Master of the Elephants, etc., appears to be taken from Phylarchus, the writer whom Plutarch follows in the life of Cleomenes. Athenæus (VI., p. 261) quotes it as from the tenth book of Phylarchus's histories. Lysimachus said he had never before seen a courtezan act a queen's part; the women's parts on the Greek stage were performed by men. This again is quoted by Athenæus (XIV., p. 614), from the sixth book of Phylarchus. Demetrius, sneering at the short and mean names of Lysimachus's courtiers and captains, said his court was like a comedy stage, there was not a single personage with three syllables to his name—contrasting Bithys and Paris, Lysimachus's friends, with his own Peucestes and Menelaus and Oxythemis, sounds worthy of the tragic stage. Lysimachus retorts, that he had never seen a harlot on the tragic stage, and Demetrius rejoins as in the text.
Page 129.—The saying of Plato, that the way to be rich is not to have more property, but fewer desires, is repeated in a variety of forms by both Greek and Roman moralists. Horace proposes (Odes, III. 16, 38) to enlarge his revenues by contracting his desires,—"Contracta melius parva cupidine Vectigalia porrigam." Cicero more than once recommends the affluence of frugality,—"Non intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal parsimonia." (Paradox. VI. 3.) Epicurus himself is recorded to have bidden his followers increase their incomes by curtailing their wishes, and add to their means by cutting down their wants. But I do not find where it occurs in Plato's extant writings.
Page 132.—The fragment from Æschylus, Thou liftest up, to cast us down again, from an unknown play, quoted also once elsewhere by Plutarch, is No. 312 in Hermann's edition. Page 141.—For Law, in Pindar's words, the King of all, see Boeckh, Fragmenta Incerta, 151, a famous and much debated passage quoted at greater length in Plato's Gorgias, p. 484, and in the Laws, pp. 690, 890. In Pindar's sense it is Enacted Law, making all things right by its own naturally appointed might. For Minos, the familiar friend of Jupiter, compare the life of Theseus, Vol. I. p. 13. The passage in Homer is in the Odyssey (XIX. 178), the land of Crete in the mid dark sea is beautiful and fat, with water flowing around it, full of people in great hosts, containing ninety cities...one of which is Gnossus, where Minos reigned nine years, the familiar friend of great Zeus,—and there is a reference also in both places to the comments of Socrates in Plato's Minos (p. 320), where, on the argument of Homer's phrase, Minos is pronounced the best of kings, and the story of the Minotaur and the labyrinth discarded as an Attic stage fable.
Page 144.—What was the play of Sophocles, to which the passage belongs, is unknown. This fragment (No. 713 in Dindorf) is only preserved to us by Plutarch, who quotes a part of it in two other places.
Page 145.—The verses, Humbled to man, are from the beginning of the Bacchæ (4), spoken by Bacchus. Page 146.—They called Antigonus the blind old man, since, as Plutarch himself records in the beginning of the life of Sertorius, he had lost one eye. There is a story in one of Plutarch's minor works which turns upon his being called a Cyclops.
Life of Antony, page 160. — The passage of Cicero in his Philippics is in the twenty-second chapter of the famous second Philippic;—"Ut Helena Trojanis, sic iste huic reipublicæ causa belli, causa pestis atque exitii fuit."
Page 175.—Antony's reply, Not very large but extremely ruinous, is meant for a jest in the manner which the Greeks called a surprise,—rather a favorite piece of pleasantry with them. Antony begins in the tone of compliment, The building certainly could not be called large, but it was exceedingly—beautiful, he seemed to be going to say, and for this he substitutes rotten or ruinous. The Senate in the next sentence must, I think, be the Senate, or Council, of Delphi.
Page 176.—The City in Sophocles is Thebes in the time of the pestilence, described at the beginning of the Œdipus Tyrannus.
Page 189.—The mischief that thus long had lain still or slept has a metrical run in the Greek, and sounds like a tragic fragment. Plato's restive and rebellious horse is depicted in the Phsedrus about the middle of the dialogue (pp. 254–256). Pages 190 to 205.—It may add interest to the details of Antony's Parthian campaign to know that they are very likely taken from the narrative of an eye-witness. Strabo (XI. p. 523) tells us, that a history of the campaign was drawn up by Antony's friend and officer, Dellius, who served in it himself, and Plutarch, a little further on, speaks of Dellius as the historical writer, so that it is certain that he knew of his history. This is apparently the same Dellius who before (p. 179) was sent to summon Cleopatra to appear before Antony, and gave her the advice to go to Cilicia in her best attire. He deserted Antony before the battle of Actium, and he is generally identified with the moriture Delli, addressed in the third ode of the second book by Horace as a rich man living at his ease.
Page 224.—Two passages are extant in the comedies of Aristophanes in which Timon is mentioned,—the 1549th line of the Birds, in which Prometheus calls himself a Timon, a sort of god-misanthrope among the deities, and lines 805–820 of the Lysistrata, where his solitary, man-hating life is briefly depicted. Plato, the comic poet, was another contemporary. So also was Phrynichus, a fragment of whom, describing Timon's habits, is preserved by a grammarian. But it seems to have been in the next century by Antiphanes, one of the two great leaders of the second or Middle Attic Comedy (quoted by Plutarch, Vol. V. p. 10, as ridiculing Demosthenes), that Timon was elevated to be the ideal of the misanthrope, and made the vehicle for general invective on mankind. Antiphanes wrote a play called Timon. This passage in Plutarch is the most historical account that we have of Timon, though it is from Lucian's dialogue in the century following Plutarch that the modern representations have been chiefly derived. Some have thought that Lucian probably copied Antiphanes, but this is quite conjectural.
Page 239.—Ahenobarbus, in the second line, is the son of Domitius who deserted before Actium (p. 216), and is the father of Ahenobarbus in the ninth line. The stem, showing the three emperors of Antony's race, is as follows:— Mark Antony = Octavia, sister of the Emperor Augustus.
Antonia = L. Domitius Ahenobarbus Antonia = Drusus, brother of the Emperor Tiberius. Agrippina (I.) daughter of Agrippa nad Julia daughter of Augustus. = Germanicus.
The Emperor Claudius.
Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus = Agrippina (II) The Emperor Caligula.
Lucius Domitius, the Emperor Nero.
Comparison, page 242.—The quotation from Euripides, the minister of the unpriestly or unhallowed Mars, is an uncertain fragment, No. cxii. in Matthiæ. A second Taphosiris (tomb of Osiris) is distinguished by Strabo from the more important inland town of the same name, and described as a rocky place on the coast, and a favorite resort for pleasure parties from Alexandria.
Life of Dion, page 245.—Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, takes the verse of Simonides in quite a different sense. The Corinthians, he says, thought Simonides meant it to their disparagement, as if those could have little worth whom their enemies did not think it worth while to complain of. Thirteen letters professing to be Plato's have come down to us, almost all relating to these more eventful passages of his life, and addressed to Dion, Dion's friends, and Dionysius himself. It is of course highly probable that letters of this description would be fabricated,—it is more probable, perhaps, that any extant compositions of the kind should be fictitious, than that they should be genuine. These which we have are not what we should expect Plato's letters to be, and yet, on the other hand, are not what we should expect to have been written for him. Plutarch quotes the fourth and seventh; and some critics have considered these to be, not Plato's own, but early compositions by some immediate disciples, written in his name, as a defence of his conduct. Mr. Grote appears to treat the whole collection as genuine.
Life of Brutus, pages 325, 326.—Letters of Brutus to Cicero and to Atticus, in which the phrases quoted by Plutarch occur, have come down to us in a series from Cicero to Brutus (Epist. ad Brutum, I. 16, 17). But this whole collection also is regarded with suspicion. Page 329.—Plutarch discusses the nature of this ravenous or famishing ox-hunger (as the Greek word is), in the Symposiac Questions (VI. 8).
Page 339.—Favonius might very aptly quote the whole passage from Homer: Ah me, truly great grief to the land of Achaia is coming, Truly would Priam be glad and all the children of Priam, And every Trojan else be greatly rejoiced in his spirit, Should he be told the news of you contending together, Who are in counsel best of the Danaans, and in the battle.
Be persuaded; you are, both of you, younger than I am.
I have consorted ere this with men much greater than you are — etc.
Page 358.—Punish, great Jove, Euripides, Medea, 332. It has been thought that by the verse which Volumnius says he forgot we may understand two which Dion Cassius gives. "Alas, poor Virtue, you were, it seems, a mere word. I practised you as a reality, but you were the slave of fortune." This, however, was a very well-known commonplace on the subject, and Dion's statement must be considered quite doubtful.
Page 365.—A real likeness, i.e., an iconic statue; compare the first note on the Life of Lysander, Vol. III., p. 104, Appendix. Life of Aratus, page 367.—The quotation from Pindar is from the eighth Pythian ode, line 44.
Page 381.—A year after, being again elected general. Not one year after, but eight, as we find from Polybius. Plutarch's phrase is a little ambiguous; it is possible that the word eight has slipped out.
Page 411.—The fragment of Simonides is only known by this mention of it. It is probably confined to the words sweet and something excusable.
Life of Artaxerxes, page 451.—The verse from Sophocles is an uncertain fragment, No 57; 714 in Dindorf.
Life of Galba, page 464.—Mauriscus, both really and in reputation one of the best of the city, is probably Julius Mauricus, mentioned with honor both by Tacitus and Pliny. (Tacit. Hist. IV. 40; Agricola, 45; Plin. Ep. IV. 22.) He was exiled under Domitian. He appears (Plin. Ep. I. 5) to have been the brother of Arulenus Rusticus, Plutarch's auditor at Rome, for whom see the Life of Plutarch, Vol. I., p. ix. x.
Page 491.—The line from Hesiod is 366 in the Works and Days.
Life of Otho, page 501.—Mestrius Florus is also mentioned as a consular by Suetonius (Vespasian, 22). Vespasian made a witty retort to him. The lives of Galba and Otho recall us to that of Plutarch himself. There can be little question that they are his genuine work; any difference in tone may be easily accounted for by difference in subject, and we feel perhaps the effects of his having been studying Tacitus. The visit to Bedriacum may accordingly be added to the brief sum of Plutarch's recorded Italian experiences.
Among the notable people with whom he came into connection should have been mentioned, perhaps, Dio Chrysostom, the eloquent speaker, to whom in the catalogue of his writings he is said to have dedicated one of his minor works, and king Philopappus, so well known by the monument to him remaining on the Museum Hill at Athens; who appears as resident in Athens at the time of one of the scenes in the Symposiac Questions.
There were, apparently, lives of both the Scipios; and the elder perhaps, not the younger (as stated in Vol. I., p. 1), was compared with Epaminondas. The most complete summary of all the notices of Plutarch's life and circumstances to be found both in his own works and elsewhere is in the preface by Westermann to the edition of the Greek text by Bekker, published by Bernhard Tauchnitz. This I had not seen until after the Preface in Vol. I. had been printed.
PYRRHUS.
PYRRHUS.
Of the Thesprotians and Molossians after the great inundation, the first king, according to some historians, was Phaethon, one of those who came into Epirus with Pelasgus. Others tell us that Deucalion and Pyrrha, having set up the worship of Jupiter at Dodona, settled there among the Molossians. In after time, Neoptolemus, Achilles's son, planting a colony, possessed these parts himself, and left a succession of kings, who, after him, were named Pyrrhidæ; as he in his youth was called Pyrrhus, and of his legitimate children, one born of Lanassa, daughter of Cleodæus, Hyllus's son, had also that name. From him, Achilles came to have divine honors in Epirus, under the name of Aspetus, in the language of the country. After these first kings, those of the following intervening times becoming barbarous, and insignificant both in their power and their lives, Tharrhypas is said to have been the first, who by introducing Greek manners and learning, and humane laws into his cities, left any fame of himself. Alcetas was the son of Tharrhypas, Arybas of Alcetas, and of Arybas and Troas his queen, Æacides: he married Phthia, the daughter of Menon, the Thessalian, a man of note at the time of the Lamiac war, and of highest command in the confederate army next to Leosthenes. To Æacides were born of Phthia, Deidamia and Troas daughters, and Pyrrhus a son.
The Molossians, afterwards falling into factions, and expelling Æacides, brought in the sons of Neoptolemus, and such friends of Æacides as they could take were all cut off; Pyrrhus, yet an infant, and searched for by the enemy, had been stolen away and carried off by Androclides and Angelus; who, however, being obliged to take with them a few servants, and women to nurse the child, were much impeded and retarded in their flight, and when they were now overtaken, they delivered the infant to Androcleon, Hippias, and Neander, faithful and able young fellows, giving them in charge to make for Megara, a town of Macedon, with all their might, while they themselves, partly by entreaty, and partly by force, stopped the course of the pursuers till late in the eyening. At last, having hardly forced them back, they joined those who had the care of Pyrrhus; but the sun being already set, at the point of attaining their object they suddenly found themselves cut off from it. For on reaching the river that runs by the city they found it looking formidable and rough, and endeavoring to pass over, they discovered it was not fordable; late rains having heightened the water, and made the current violent. The darkness of the night added to the horror of all, so that they durst not venture of themselves to carry over the child and the women that attended it; but, perceiving some of the country people on the other side, they desired them to assist their passage, and showed them Pyrrhus, calling out aloud, and importuning them. They, however, could not hear for the noise and roaring of the water. Thus time was spent while those called out, and the others did not understand what was said, till one recollecting himself, stripped off a piece of bark from an oak, and wrote on it with the tongue of a buckle, stating the necessities and the fortunes of the child, and then rolling it about a stone, which was made use of to give force to the motion, threw it over to the other side, or, as some say, fastened it to the end of a javelin, and darted it over. When the men on the other shore read what was on the bark, and saw how time pressed, without delay they cut down some trees, and lashing them together, came over to them. And it so fell out, that he who first got ashore, and took Pyrrhus in his arms, was named Achilles, the rest being helped over by others as they came to hand.
Thus being safe, and out of the reach of pursuit, they addressed themselves to Glaucias, then king of the Illyrians, and finding him sitting at home with his wife, they laid down the child before them. The king began to weigh the matter, fearing Cassander, who was a mortal enemy of Æacides, and, being in deep consideration, said nothing for a long time; while Pyrrhus, crawling about on the ground, gradually got near and laid hold with his hand upon the king's robe, and so helping himself upon his feet against the knees of Glaucias, first moved laughter, and then pity, as a little humble, crying petitioner. Some say he did not throw himself before Glaucias, but catching hold of an altar of the gods, and spreading his hands about it, raised himself up by that; and that Glaucias took the act as an omen. At present, therefore, he gave Pyrrhus into the charge of his wife, commanding he should be brought up with his own children; and a little after, the enemies sending to demand him, and Cassander himself offering two hundred talents, he would not deliver him up; but when he was twelve years old, bringing him with an army into Epirus, made him king. Pyrrhus in the air of his face had something more of the terrors, than of the augustness of kingly power; he had not a regular set of upper teeth, but in the place of them one continued bone, with small lines marked on it, resembling the divisions of a row of teeth. It was a general belief he could cure the spleen, by sacrificing a white cock, and gently pressing with his right foot on the spleen of the persons as they lay down on their backs, nor was any one so poor or inconsiderable as not to be welcome, if he desired it, to the benefit of his touch. He accepted the cock for the sacrifice as a reward, and was always much pleased with the present. The large toe of that foot was said to have a divine virtue; for after his death, the rest of the body being consumed, this was found unhurt and untouched by the fire. But of these things hereafter.
Being now about seventeen years old, and the government in appearance well settled, he took a journey out of the kingdom to attend the marriage of one of Glaucias's sons, with whom he was brought up; upon which opportunity the Molossians again rebelling, turned out all of his party, plundered his property, and gave themselves up to Neoptolemus. Pyrrhus, having thus lost the kingdom, and being in want of all things, applied to Demetrius the son of Antigonus, the husband of his sister Deidamia, who, while she was but a child, had been in name the wife of Alexander, son of Roxana, but their affairs afterwards proving unfortunate, when she came to age, Demetrius married her. At the great battle of Ipsus, where so many kings were engaged, Pyrrhus, taking part with Demetrius, though yet but a youth, routed those that encountered him, and highly signalized himself among all the soldiery; and afterwards, when Demetrius's fortunes were low, he did not forsake him then, but secured for him the cities of Greece with which he was intrusted; and upon articles of agreement being made between Demetrius and Ptolemy, he went over as an hostage for him into Egypt, where both in hunting and other exercises, he gave Ptolemy an ample proof of his courage and strength. Here observing Berenice in greatest power, and of all Ptolemy's wives highest in esteem for virtue and understanding, he made his court principally to her. He had a particular art of gaining over the great to his own interest, as on the other hand he readily overlooked such as were below him; and being also well-behaved and temperate in his life, among all the young princes then at court, he was thought most fit to have Antigone for his wife, one of the daughters of Berenice by Philip, before she married Ptolemy.
After this match, advancing in honor, and Antigone being a very good wife to him, having procured a sum of money, and raised an army, he so ordered matters as to be sent into his kingdom of Epirus, and arrived there to the great satisfaction of many, from their hate to Neoptolemus, who was governing in a violent and arbitrary way. But fearing lest Neoptolemus should enter into alliance with some neighboring princes, he came to terms and friendship with him, agreeing that they should share the government between them. There were people, however, who, as time went on, secretly exasperated them, and fomented jealousies between them. The cause chiefly moving Pyrrhus is said to have had this beginning. It was customary for the kings to offer sacrifice to Mars, at Passaro, a place in the Molossian country, and that done to enter into a solemn covenant with the Epirots; they to govern according to law, these to preserve the government as by law established. This was performed in the presence of both kings, who were there with their immediate friends, giving and receiving many presents; here Gelo, one of the friends of Neoptolemus, taking Pyrrhus by the hand, presented him with two pair of draught oxen. Myrtilus, his cup-bearer, being then by, begged these of Pyrrhus, who not giving them to him, but to another, Myrtilus extremely resented it, which Gelo took notice of, and, inviting him to a banquet, (amidst drinking and other excesses, as some relate, Myrtilus being then in the flower of his youth,) he entered into discourse, persuading him to adhere to Neoptolemus, and destroy Pyrrhus by poison. Myrtilus received the design, appearing to approve and consent to it, but privately discovered it to Pyrrhus, by whose command he recommended Alexicrates, his chief cup-bearer, to Gelo, as a fit instrument for their design, Pyrrhus being very desirous to have proof of the plot by several evidences. So Gelo being deceived, Neoptolemus, who was no less deceived, imagining the design went prosperously on, could not forbear, but in his joy spoke of it among his friends, and once at an entertainment at his sister Cadmea's, talked openly of it, thinking none heard but themselves. Nor was any one there but Phænarete the wife of Samon, who had the care of Neoptolemus's flocks and herds. She, turning her face towards the wall upon a couch, seemed fast asleep, and having heard all that passed, unsuspected, next day came to Antigone, Pyrrhus's wife, and told her what she had heard Neoptolemus say to his sister. On understanding which Pyrrhus for the present said little, but on a sacrifice day, making an invitation for Neoptolemus, killed him; being satisfied before that the great men of the Epirots were his friends, and that they were eager for him to rid himself of Neoptolemus, and not to content himself with a mere petty share of the government, but to follow his own natural vocation to great designs, and now when a just ground of suspicion appeared, to anticipate Neoptolemus by taking him off first.
In memory of Berenice and Ptolemy, he named his son by Antigone, Ptolemy, and having built a city in the peninsula of Epirus, called it Berenicis. From this time he began to revolve many and vast projects in his thoughts; but his first special hope and design lay near home, and he found means to engage himself in the Macedonian affairs under the following pretext. Of Cassander's sons, Antipater, the eldest, killed Thessalonica his mother, and expelled his brother Alexander, who sent to Demetrius entreating his assistance, and also called in Pyrrhus; but Demetrius being retarded by multitude of business, Pyrrhus, coming first, demanded in reward of his service the districts called Tymphæa and Parauæa in Macedon itself, and, of their new conquests, Ambracia, Acarnania, and Amphilochia. The young prince giving way, he took possession of these countries, and secured them with good garrisons, and proceeded to reduce for Alexander himself other parts of the kingdom which he gained from Antipater. Lysimachus, designing to send aid to Antipater, was involved in much other business, but knowing Pyrrhus would not disoblige Ptolemy, or deny him any thing, sent pretended letters to him as from Ptolemy, desiring him to give up his expedition, upon the payment of three hundred talents to him by Antipater. Pyrrhus, opening the letter, quickly discovered the fraud of Lysimachus; for it had not the accustomed style of salutation, "The father to the son, health," but "King Ptolemy to Pyrrhus, the king, health;" and reproaching Lysimachus, he notwithstanding made a peace, and they all met to confirm it by a solemn oath upon sacrifice. A goat, a bull, and a ram being brought out, the ram on a sudden fell dead. The others laughed, but Theodotus the prophet forbade Pyrrhus to swear, declaring that Heaven by that portended the death of one of the three kings, upon which he refused to ratify the peace.
The affairs of Alexander being now in some kind of settlement, Demetrius arrived, contrary, as soon appeared, to the desire and indeed not without the alarm of Alexander. After they had been a few days together, their mutual jealousy led them to conspire against each other; and Demetrius taking advantage of the first occasion, was beforehand with the young king, and slew him, and proclaimed himself king of Macedon. There had been formerly no very good understanding between him and Pyrrhus; for besides the inroads he made into Thessaly, the innate disease of princes, ambition of greater empire, had rendered them formidable and suspected neighbors to each other, especially since Deidamia's death; and both having seized Macedon, they came into conflict for the same object, and the difference between them had the stronger motives. Demetrius having first attacked the Ætolians and subdued them, left Pantauchus there with a considerable army, and marched direct against Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus, as he thought, against him; but by mistake of the ways they passed by one another, and Demetrius falling into Epirus wasted the country, and Pyrrhus, meeting with Pantauchus, prepared for an engagement. The soldiers fell to, and there was a sharp and terrible conflict, especially where the generals were. Pantauchus, in courage, dexterity, and strength of body, being confessedly the best of all Demetrius's captains, and having both resolution and high spirit, challenged Pyrrhus to fight hand to hand; on the other side Pyrrhus, professing not to yield to any king in valor and glory, and esteeming the fame of Achilles more truly to belong to him for his courage than for his blood, advanced against Pantauchus through the front of the army. First they used their lances, then came to a close fight, and managed their swords both with art and force; Pyrrhus receiving one wound, but returning two for it, one in the thigh, the other near the neck, repulsed and overthrew Pantauchus, but did not kill him outright, as he was rescued by his friends. But the Epirots exulting in the victory of their king, and admiring his courage, forced through and cut in pieces the phalanx of the Macedonians, and pursuing those that fled, killed many, and took five thousand prisoners.