admit any king within their walls.[40] After this he made peace with Demetrius, but shortly after he was gone to Asia, Pyrrhus, at the instigation of Lysimachus, induced the Thessalians to revolt and join him, and began to besiege the fortresses on the Greek border, both because he found the Macedonians easier to manage when they were at war than when they were idle, and also because he himself was of a nature which could not endure inaction.  Finally however Demetrius was irretrievably ruined in Syria, and now Lysimachus, having nothing further to fear from him, at once attacked Pyrrhus.  He fell upon him suddenly near Edessa, defeated him, and reduced the troops under him to great distress for provisions.  Next he began to corrupt the leading Macedonians, reproaching them with having rejected a Macedonian who had been the friend and companion of Alexander, and chosen in his stead as their master a foreigner, and one, too, of a race that had always been subject to the Macedonians.  As many listened to these treacherous insinuations, Pyrrhus became alarmed, and withdrew with his Epirotes and the allied troops, thus losing Macedonia in the same way that he had gained it.  So that kings have but little reason for reproaching the common people for changing sides in an emergency, for in doing so they do but imitate the kings themselves, their teachers in the art of treachery and faithlessness, who think that those men gain the greatest advantages who take least account of justice and honour.

XIII.  Pyrrhus, now that he had lost Macedonia, might have spent his days peacefully ruling his own subjects in Epirus; but he could not endure repose, thinking that not to trouble others and be troubled by them was a life of unbearable ennui, and, like Achilles in the Iliad,

      “he could not rest in indolence at home,
    He longed for battle, and the joys of war.”

As he desired some new adventures he embraced the following opportunity.  The Romans were at war with the Tarentines; and as that people were not sufficiently powerful to carry on the war, and yet were not allowed by the audacious folly of their mob orators to make peace, they proposed to make Pyrrhus their leader and to invite him to be their ally in the war, because he was more at leisure than any of the other kings, and also was the best general of them all.  Of the older and more sensible citizens some endeavoured to oppose this fatal decision, but were overwhelmed by the clamour of the war party, while the rest, observing this, ceased to attend the public assembly.  There was one citizen of good repute, named Meton, who, on the day when the final decision was to be made, when the people were all assembled, took a withered garland and a torch, like a drunkard, and reeled into the assembly with a girl playing the flute before him.  At this, as one may expect in a disorderly popular meeting, some applauded, and some laughed, but no one stopped him.  They next bade the girl play,