the nearest of those who disputed his passage, when his horse, struck in the body by a Cretan javelin, reared in the death-agony, and threw Pyrrhus to the ground.  He fell on a steep bank, and his fall caused such consternation among his followers that a timely charge of the Spartans drove them back.  Upon this he gave orders to put a stop to the assault, for he imagined that the Lacedaemonians would soon offer terms of surrender, as they were nearly all wounded, and had lost many men.  However, the good fortune of the city, which may have wished to test the Spartan courage to the utmost, or to prove its own power to save the city when all hope seemed lost, brought Ameinias the Phokian, one of the generals of Antigonus, with a body of mercenary troops to help the Spartans in this their darkest hour.  Shortly after they had received this reinforcement, their king, Areus, arrived from Crete with two thousand men.  The women now returned to their homes, not thinking it to be necessary any longer for them to take an active part in the war, while those old men too who had been forced by necessity to take up arms, were relieved by the new comers, who took their places in the line of battle against the enemy.

XXX.  These reinforcements piqued Pyrrhus into making several more attempts to take the city, in which however he was repulsed and wounded.  He now retired, and began to plunder the country, professing his intention to winter there.  But no man can resist his destiny.  There were in Argos two parties, one headed by Aristeas, and the other by Aristippus.  The latter was favoured by Antigonus, which induced Aristeas to invite Pyrrhus to Argos.  He was ever willing to embark on a new enterprise, because he regarded his successes merely as stepping-stones to greater things, and hoped to retrieve his failures by new and more daring exploits; so that he was rendered equally restless by victory or defeat.  Accordingly he set off at once for Argos.  Areus occupied the most difficult of the passes on the road with an ambuscade, and attacked the Gauls and Molossians who formed the rear-guard.  Pyrrhus had been warned by his soothsayers that the livers of the victims wanted one lobe, which portended the loss of one of his relatives, but at this crisis the disorder and confusion into which his army was thrown by the ambush made him forget the omen, and order his son Ptolemy to take his guards and go to the help of the rear-guard, while he himself hurried his main body on through the defile.  When Ptolemy came up a fierce battle took place.  The flower of the Lacedaemonian army, led by Eualkus, engaged with the troops immediately around Ptolemy, and while they fought, a Cretan named Oryssus, a native of Aptera, running forward on the flank, struck the young man, who was fighting bravely, with a javelin, and killed him.  His fall caused his troops to retreat, and they were hard pressed by the Lacedaemonians, who were so excited by their victory that they were carried by their ardour far into the