leave their city as he found it.  In answer to this demand he harshly bade them keep quiet, and wait till he was at leisure to attend to their affairs, and at once set sail for Sicily.  On his arrival there he found all his hopes realised, as the cities gladly delivered themselves into his hands.  At first he willingly acceded to their request, that he should wage war on their behalf, and with an army of thirty thousand foot, two thousand horse, and two hundred ships, he attacked the Carthaginians, totally defeated them, and overran the part of Sicily which was subject to them.  Eryx was the strongest of their fortresses, and was strongly garrisoned.  Pyrrhus, learning this, determined to assault it.  When his army was ready, he came forward, in complete armour, and vowed that he would hold public games and sacrifices in honour of Herakles, if he should prove himself that day, before all the Sikeliot Greeks, to be a worthy descendant of Achilles, and to deserve to command so great a force.  The trumpet then sounded the charge, the barbarians were driven from the walls by a shower of missiles, and the scaling ladders planted against them.  Pyrrhus was the first man to mount the wall, and there fought singly against a host, dashing some of them over the inner, and some over the outer edge of the wall, and wielding his sword with such terrible power that he soon stood on a pile of corpses.  He himself was quite unhurt, and terrified the enemy by his mere appearance, proving how truly Homer has told us that of all virtues courage alone is wont to display itself in divine transports and frenzies.  After the city was taken he made a magnificent sacrifice to the gods, and held gymnastic contests of all kinds.

XXIII.  He now turned his arms against the so-called Mamertines[45] of Messina, who troubled the Greek cities much, and had even made some of them tributary to themselves.  They were numerous and warlike; indeed, in Latin, their name means the “children of Mars.”  Pyrrhus seized and put to death any of them whom he found exacting tribute from the Greeks, and after defeating them in a pitched battle, took many of their outlying forts.  The Carthaginians now were inclined to come to terms with him.  They offered, if peace were concluded, to pay him tribute, and to supply a fleet for his use.  To these proposals Pyrrhus, dissatisfied with obtaining so little, answered that he would only make peace and friendship with them on one condition, which was that they would evacuate Sicily altogether, and regard the African sea as their frontier towards Greece.  Elated by the greatness of the force at his disposal, and the success which attended his enterprises, he now aimed at the realisation of the large hopes of conquest with which he left Greece, and meditated an attack on Libya.  He had a large fleet, but required many rowers to man it, and these he proceeded to obtain from the allied cities, not by gentle means, but by harsh, arbitrary, and despotic commands.