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Bradantia Directory 09
Page 10
The following year (B.C. 274) closed the career of Pyrrhus in Italy. The Consul M'. Curius marched into Samnium, and his colleague into Lucania. Pyrrhus advanced against Curius, who was encamped in the neighborhood of Beneventum, and resolved to fight with him before he was joined by his colleague. As Curius did not wish to risk a battle with his own army alone, Pyrrhus planned a night-attack upon his camp. But he miscalculated the time and the distance; the torches burnt out, the men missed their way, and it was already broad daylight when he reached the heights above the Roman camp. Still their arrival was quite unexpected; but, as a battle was now inevitable, Curius led out his men. The troops of Pyrrhus, exhausted by fatigue, were easily put to the rout; two elephants were killed and eight more taken. Encouraged by this success, Curius no longer hesitated to meet the king in the open plain, and gained a decisive victory. Pyrrhus arrived at Tarentum with only a few horsemen. Shortly afterward he crossed over to Greece, leaving Milo with a garrison at Tarentum. Two years afterward he perished in an attack upon Argos, ingloriously slain by a tile hurled by a woman from the roof of a house.
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality--the story of an escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times--how to escape. The stories of Joseph, of Odysseus, of the prodigal son, of the Pilgrim's Progress, of the "Ugly Duckling," of Sintram, to name only a few out of a great number, they are all stories of escapes. It is the same with all lovestories. "The course of true love never can run smooth," says the old proverb, and love-stories are but tales of a man or a woman's escape from the desert of lovelessness into the citadel of love. Even tragedies like those of OEdipus and Hamlet have the same thought in the background. In the tale of OEdipus, the old blind king in his tattered robe, who had committed in ignorance such nameless crimes, leaves his two daughters and the attendants standing below the old pear-tree and the marble tomb by the sacred fountain; he says the last faint words of love, till the voice of the god comes thrilling upon the air: "OEdipus, why delayest thou?"
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