plain, where their retreat was cut off by Pyrrhus’s infantry.  Pyrrhus himself, who had just heard of the death of his son, in an agony of grief now ordered the Molossian cavalry to charge them.  He was the first to ride among the Lacedaemonians, and terribly avenged his son by cutting them down.  Pyrrhus in battle was always a terrific figure, whom none dared to resist, but on this occasion he surpassed himself in courage and fury.  At length he rode up to Eualkus, who avoided his charge, and aimed a blow at him with his sword which just missed Pyrrhus’s bridle hand, but cut through his reins.  Pyrrhus ran him through with his spear at the same moment, but fell from his horse, and, fighting henceforth on foot, slew all the chosen band commanded by Eualkus.  This was a severe loss to Sparta, incurred as it was unnecessarily, after the war was really over, from the desire of their generals to distinguish themselves.

XXXI.  Pyrrhus celebrated his son’s obsequies with splendid games.[50] His grief was partly satiated by the revenge which he had taken upon the enemy, and he now marched towards Argos.  Hearing that Antigonus was encamped upon one of the heights near the city, he himself pitched his camp at Nauplia.  On the next day he sent a herald to Antigonus with an insulting message, challenging him to come down upon the level ground and fight.  Antigonus answered that he should fight only when he chose, but that if Pyrrhus was weary of his life, he could find many other ways to die.  Ambassadors from Argos also came to each of them, begging them to withdraw their forces, and allow the city to remain independent and friendly to both, Antigonus accepted this offer, and handed over his son to the Argives as a hostage, while Pyrrhus agreed to retire, but, as he gave no pledge, was viewed with greater suspicion than before.  A strange portent also happened to Pyrrhus, for the heads of the oxen which had been sacrificed, when lying apart from their bodies, were observed to put out their tongues and lap their own gore; and in the city the priestess of Apollo Lykius rushed about in frenzy, crying out that she saw the whole city full of slaughtered corpses, and an eagle coming to the fight and then disappearing.

XXXII.  During the following night, which was very dark, Pyrrhus marched his troops up to the walls, found the gate called Diamperes opened to him by Aristeas, and was able to march his Gaulish troops into the city and seize the market-place unobserved:  but the elephants could not pass through the gate until their towers were taken off their backs.  The removal of these towers, in the darkness, and the replacing them when the elephants had passed through the gate, caused an amount of delay and confusion which at length roused the slumbering inhabitants; they ran together to the place called “the Shield,” and the other places of strength in the city, and sent messengers to call Antigonus to their aid.  He at once marched up close to the city, and remained