of Tarentum, and to prevent him and his forces from forming a junction with the Samnites and other south Italian levies that were in arms against Rome.  The Roman garrisons, that were placed in the Greek towns of Lower Italy, were intended temporarily to check the king’s progress.  But the mutiny of the troops stationed in Rhegium—­one of the legions levied from the Campanian subjects of Rome under a Campanian captain Decius—­deprived the Romans of that important town.  It was not, however, transferred to the hands of Pyrrhus.  While on the one hand the national hatred of the Campanians against the Romans undoubtedly contributed to produce this military insurrection, it was impossible on the other hand that Pyrrhus, who had crossed the sea to shield and protect the Hellenes, could receive as his allies troops who had put to death their Rhegine hosts in their own houses.  Thus they remained isolated, in close league with their kinsmen and comrades in crime, the Mamertines, that is, the Campanian mercenaries of Agathocles, who had by similar means gained possession of Messana on the opposite side of the straits; and they pillaged and laid waste for their own behoof the adjacent Greek towns, such as Croton, where they put to death the Roman garrison, and Caulonia, which they destroyed.  On the other hand the Romans succeeded, by means of a weak corps which advanced along the Lucanian frontier and of the garrison of Venusia, in preventing the Lucanians and Samnites from uniting with Pyrrhus; while the main force—­four legions as it would appear, and so, with a corresponding number of allied troops, at least 50,000 strong—­marched against Pyrrhus, under the consul Publius Laevinus.

Battle near Heraclea

With a view to cover the Tarentine colony of Heraclea, the king had taken up a position with his own and the Tarentine troops between that city and Pandosia (3) (474).  The Romans, covered by their cavalry, forced the passage of the Siris, and opened the battle with a vehement and successful cavalry charge; the king, who led his cavalry in person, was thrown from his horse, and the Greek horsemen, panic-struck by the disappearance of their leader, abandoned the field to the squadrons of the enemy.  Pyrrhus, however, put himself at the head of his infantry, and began a fresh and more decisive engagement.  Seven times the legions and the phalanx met in shock of battle, and still the conflict was undecided.  Then Megacles, one of the best officers of the king, fell, and, because on this hotly-contested day he had worn the king’s armour, the army for the second time believed that the king had fallen; the ranks wavered; Laevinus already felt sure of the victory and threw the whole of his cavalry on the flank of the Greeks.  But Pyrrhus, marching with uncovered head through the ranks of the infantry, revived the sinking courage of his troops.  The elephants which had hitherto been kept in reserve were brought up to meet the cavalry; the horses took