Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Makers of History Pyrrhus BY JACOB ABBOTT WITH ENGRAVINGS NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1901 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. [Illustration: PYRRHUS VIEWING THE ROMAN ENCAMPMENT.] PREFACE. In respect to the heroes of ancient history, who lived in times antecedent to the period when the regular records of authentic history commence, no reliance can be placed upon the actual verity of the accounts which have come down to us of their lives and actions. In those ancient days there was, in fact, no line of demarkation between romance and history, and the stories which were told of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Romulus, Pyrrhus, and other personages as ancient as they, are all more or less fabulous and mythical. We learn this as well from the internal evidence furnished by the narratives themselves as from the researches of modern scholars, who have succeeded, in many cases, in disentangling the web, and separating the false from the true. It is none the less important, however, on this account, that these ancient tales, as they were originally told, and as they have come down to us through so many centuries, should be made known to readers of the present age. They have been circulated among mankind in their original form for twenty or thirty centuries, and they have mingled themselves inextricably with the literature, the eloquence, and the poetry of every civilized nation on the globe. Of course, to know what the story is, whether true or false, which the ancient narrators recorded, and which has been read and commented on by every succeeding generation to the present day, is an essential attainment for every well-informed man; a far more essential attainment, in fact, for the general reader, than to discover now, at this late period, what the actual facts were which gave origin to the fable. In writing this series of histories, therefore, it has been the aim of the author not to _correct_ the ancient story, but to repeat it as it stands, cautioning the reader, however, whenever occasion requires, not to suppose that the marvelous narratives are historically true. CONTENTS. Chapter Page I. OLYMPIAS AND ANTIPATER 13 II. CASSANDER 40 III. EARLY LIFE OF PYRRHUS 64 IV. WARS IN MACEDON 86 V. WAR IN ITALY 111 VI. NEGOTIATIONS 134 VII. THE SICILIAN CAMPAIGN 159