Pyrrhus made enquiry, put the physician to death, and by way of acknowledgment released the captives, trying again to make peace; but the Romans would accept no terms save that he should give up the Tarentines and go back in the same ships.  A battle was fought in the wood of Asculum.  Decius Mus declared he would devote himself like his father and grandfather; but Pyrrhus heard of this, and sent word that he had given orders that Decius should not be killed, but taken alive and scourged; and this prevented him.  The Romans were again forced back by the might of the elephants, but not till night fell on them.  Pyrrhus had been wounded, and hosts of Greeks had fallen, among them many of Pyrrhus’ chief friends.

He then went to Sicily, on an invitation from the Greeks settled there, to defend them from the Carthaginians; but finding them as little satisfactory as the Italian Greeks, he suddenly came back to Tarentum.  This time one of the consuls was Marcus Curius—­called Dentatus, because he had been born with teeth in his mouth—­a stout, plain old Roman, very stern, for when he levied troops against Pyrrhus, the first man who refused to serve was punished by having his property seized and sold.  He then marched southward, and at Beneventum at length entirely defeated Pyrrhus, and took four of his elephants.  Pyrrhus was obliged to return to Epirus, and the Roman steadiness had won the day after nine years.

Dentatus had the grandest triumph that had ever been known at Rome, with the elephants walking in the procession, the first that the Romans had ever seen.  All the spoil was given up to the commonwealth; and when, some time after, it was asserted that he had taken some for himself, it turned out that he had only kept one old wooden vessel, which he used in sacrificing to the gods.

The Greeks of Southern Italy had behaved very ill to Pyrrhus and turned against him.  The Romans found them so fickle and troublesome that they were all reduced in one little war after another.  The Tarentines had to surrender and lose their walls and their fleet, and so had the people of Sybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, for they were so lazy that they were said to have killed all their crowing-birds for waking them too early in the morning.  All the peninsula of Italy now belonged to Rome, and great roads were made of paved stones connecting them with it, many of which remain to this day, even the first of all, called the Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, which was made under the direction of the censor Appius Claudius, during the Samnite war.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.

264-240.