CHAPTER IX. THE COMPLETION OF THE ITALIAN CONQUEST Through a long series of struggles, Rome had now become mistress of central Italy, with growing power in the north, and almost complete subjugation of the Greek cities of the south. There were a few of the latter, however, that still held out against the Roman influence. Pre-eminent among these was Tarentum, and it was through a conflict with this city that the Romans were threatened by the first important invasion of an armed force from the east. This force came under the guidance of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, a relative of Alexander the Great, who sought to emulate the deeds of that great hero. Pyrrhus was not precisely another Alexander, but he was quite the foremost warrior of his time. Doubtless he had the aspiration to make Epirus the centre, and himself the master, of the world. His ambition was not to be realised; but he was able, for a time, to challenge the power of Rome, and more cogently to threaten its overthrow than any one before him had done, since the invasion of the Gauls, or than any one after him was able to do, with the single exception of Hannibal, until a late period of imperial history. The invasion of Pyrrhus, quite aside from the personal ambitions of the invader, had the widest and most world-historic importance, for it was a struggle of the old East against the new West--a repetition in some sense of that earlier struggle in which the Persians had sought to overthrow the growing power of Greece. Pyrrhus brought with him the famed Macedonian phalanx. He was met by the Roman legion, which, in its time, was to become even more famous, and with even better reason. Whether for the moment phalanx or legion would have proved the more formidable it is difficult to say, but in addition Pyrrhus brought with him a troop of war elephants, and it was this factor, largely, which turned the scale at first in his favour. Up to this time no elephant, probably, had ever been landed on the peninsula of Italy, and the sight of these beasts advancing in line of battle was enough to bring terror to the heart of the most hardened veterans.