After this, when Fabricius had taken the consulate, a person came with a letter to the camp written by the king's principal physician, offering to take Pyrrhus off by poison, and so end the war without further hazard to the Romans, if he might have a reward proportional to his service. Fabricius, despising the villany of the man, and disposing the other consul to the same opinion, sent despatches immediately to Pyrrhus to caution him against the treason. His letter was to this effect: "Caius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius, consuls of the Romans, to Pyrrhus the king, health. You seem to have made a bad judgement both of your friends and your enemies; you will understand by reading this letter sent to us, that you are at war with honest men, and trust villains and knaves. Nor do we disclose this out of any favor to you, but lest your ruin might bring a reproach upon us, as if we had ended the war by treachery because not able to do it by force." When Pyrrhus had read the letter, and made inquiry into the treason, he punished the physician, and as an acknowledgement to the Romans sent to Rome the prisoners without ransom. But they, regarding it as at once too great a kindness from an enemy, and too great a reward for not doing a mean act to accept their prisoners so, released in return an equal number of the Tarentines and Samnites, but would admit of no debate of alliance or peace until Pyrrhus had removed his arms and forces out of Italy, and sailed back to Epirus with the same ships that brought him over. FROM THE LIFE OF QUINTUS FABIUS MAXIMUS Hannibal was within five miles of Tarentum, when he was informed that the town had been taken by Fabius. He said openly, "Rome, then, has also got a Hannibal; as we won Tarentum, so have we lost it." And, in private with some of his confidants, he told them, for the first time, that he always thought it difficult, but now he held it impossible, with the forces he then had, to master Italy.