[Quick set-up: Pyrrhus of Epirus, one of the most famous generals of antiquity, is in the middle of a war with Rome. Rome has suffered several crushing defeats by this point, and Pyrrhus sends one of his men, Cineas, to the Roman senate with a proposal for peace. The Senate is apparently debating the issue when Appius Claudius, an old man of great distinction, is helped into the Senate house to make a quintessentially Roman speech.]
And a little after raising up himself: “I bore,” said he, “until this time, the misfortune of my eyes with some impatience, but now while I hear these dishonourable motions and resolves of yours [talk of surrender], destructive to the glory of Rome, it is my affliction, that being already blind, I am not deaf too. Where is now that discourse of yours that became famous in all the world, that if he, the great Alexander, had come into Italy, and dared to attack us when we were young men, and our fathers, who were then in their prime, he had not now been celebrated as invincible, but either flying hence, or falling here, had left Rome more glorious? You demonstrate now that all that was but foolish arrogance and vanity, by fearing Molossians and Chaonians, ever the Macedonian’s prey, and by trembling at Pyrrhus who was himself but an humble servant to one of Alexander’s life-guard, and comes here, not so much to assist the Greeks that inhabit among us, as to escape from his enemies at home, a wanderer about Italy, and yet dares to promise you the conquest of it all by that army which has not been able to preserve for him a little part of Macedon. Do not persuade yourselves that making him your friend is the way to send him back, it is the way rather to bring over other invaders from thence, contemning you as easy to be reduced, if Pyrrhus goes off without punishment for his outrages on you, but, on the contrary, with the reward of having enabled the Tarentines and Samnites to laugh at the Romans.”
When Appius had done, eagerness for the war seized on every man, and Cineas was dismissed with this answer, that when Pyrrhus had withdrawn his forces out of Italy, then, if he pleased, they would treat with him about friendship and alliance, but while he stayed there in arms, they were resolved to prosecute the war against him with all their force, though he should have defeated a thousand Laevinuses.
It is said that Cineas, while he was managing this affair, mad it his business carefully to inspect the manners of the Romans, and to understand their methods of government, and having conversed with their noblest citizens, he afterwards told Pyrrhus, among other things, that the senate seemed to him an assembly of kings, and as for the people, he feared lest it might prove that they were fighting with a Lernaean hydra, for the consul had already raised twice as large an army as the former, and there were many times over the same number of Romans able to bear arms.
Source:
Plutarch, John Dryden, and Arthur Hugh Clough. "Pyrrhus." Plutarch's Lives. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 534. Print.
Further Reading:
Alexander III of Macedon / Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας (Alexander the Great)
No comments, yet...