of the free state of Rhodes, the leading representative of the policy of commercial neutrality in Greece and in consequence the universal medium of intercourse in an age of perpetual wars, which about 448 concluded a treaty with Rome —­a commercial convention of course, such as was natural between a mercantile people and the masters of the Caerite and Campanian coasts.  Even in the supply of mercenaries from Hellas, the universal recruiting field of those times, to Italy, and to Tarentum in particular, political relations—­such as subsisted, for instance, between Tarentum and Sparta its mother-city—­exercised but a very subordinate influence.  In general the raising of mercenaries was simply a matter of traffic, and Sparta, although it regularly supplied the Tarentines with captains for their Italian wars, was by that course as little involved in hostilities with the Italians, as in the North American war of independence the German states were involved in hostilities with the Union, to whose opponents they sold the services of their subjects.

The Historical Position of Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was himself simply a military adventurer.  He was none the less a soldier of fortune that he traced back his pedigree to Aeacus and Achilles, and that, had he been more peacefully disposed, he might have lived and died as “king” of a small mountain tribe under the supremacy of Macedonia or perhaps in isolated independence.  He has been compared to Alexander of Macedonia; and certainly the idea of founding a Hellenic empire of the west—­which would have had as its core Epirus, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, would have commanded both the Italian seas, and would have reduced Rome and Carthage to the rank of barbarian peoples bordering on the Hellenistic state-system, like the Celts and the Indians—­was analogous in greatness and boldness to the idea which led the Macedonian king over the Hellespont.  But it was not the mere difference of issue that formed the distinction between the expedition to the east and that to the west.  Alexander with his Macedonian army, in which the staff especially was excellent, could fully make head against the great-king; but the king of Epirus, which stood by the side of Macedonia somewhat as Hesse by the side of Prussia, could only raise an army worthy of the name by means of mercenaries and of alliances based on accidental political combinations.  Alexander made his appearance in the Persian empire as a conqueror; Pyrrhus appeared in Italy as the general of a coalition of secondary states.  Alexander left his hereditary dominions completely secured by the unconditional subjection of Greece, and by the strong army that remained behind under Antipater; Pyrrhus had no security for the integrity of his native dominions but the word of a doubtful neighbour.  In the case of both conquerors, if their plans should be crowned with success, their native country would necessarily cease to be the centre