The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire (27 page)

As the years passed, though, Pyrrhus remained a man of promise
rather than of accomplishment. Like his ancestor Achilles, he could not stand idleness, and, as Homer writes,

ate his heart away

remaining there, and pined for war-cry and battle.

He was in his late thirties when, not a moment too soon, the opportunity of his lifetime finally presented itself. An embassy from the city of Tarentum (today’s Taranto), a Greek foundation on the heel of Italy, traveled to Epirus and laid before the king an extremely interesting proposition.

TARENTUM WAS ONE
of the wealthiest cities of the Greek world. Founded in 706 in Apulia, on the instep of the Italian boot, it stood on an island between a large inland lagoon and a bay, which was itself protected from the open sea by another island and a spit of land.
The city was “leafy” and the climate delightful, with “
mild winters and long lingering springs.” To the poet Horace, the surrounding countryside was:

To me the bonniest square miles

In all the world, a coast of smiles,

Where bees make honeycombs so sweet

Hymettus has to own defeat,

And even the olives vie with those

That silvery-green Venafrum grows.

Tarentum enjoyed a thriving cultural life; it was a center for the philosophy of Pythagoras and manufactured high-quality decorated pottery and a beautiful silver coinage. The city was especially famous for the purple dye it made from the murex, a marine mollusk. It also had a thriving wool industry and sold figs and salt. Politically, it was a democracy and was dominated for thirty years
in the middle of the fourth century by a certain Archytas, whom we would call today a Renaissance man. He is believed to have been the founder of mathematical mechanics, and designed a bird-shaped flying machine, probably propelled by steam power. Archytas had known Plato personally and attempted to rescue him from his difficulties with the tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius II. The Athenian philosopher may have seen in him a model of the philosopher king he recommended in his
Republic
as the ideal ruler of a state.

Archytas was also a successful field commander against continual incursions by the Sabellian tribes that ringed the city from their mountain fastnesses. The Tarentines could field an
army of more than thirty thousand men and deployed a powerful fleet. However, in more recent times they seemed to have lost their edge. According to the geographer Strabo:

Later, because of their prosperity, luxury prevailed to such an extent that the public festivals celebrated every year were more in number than the days of the year; and in consequence of this they were poorly governed. One evidence of their bad policies is the fact that they employed foreign generals … to lead them in their war[s].

The Sabellians were not the only threat. For a long time, the Tarentines watched the growth of Roman power with concern, and then alarm. They had no
locus
in the Second Samnite War and at one point
offered their services as neutral mediators between the warring parties, but in truth they were pro-Samnite non-belligerents. They could see that sooner rather than later the expanding Republic would interest itself in the affairs of southern Italy. This was particularly worrying for the democratic government of Tarentum, for Roman practice with its defeated “allies” was to support the local aristocrats, who tended to welcome external support in order to maintain their rule.

It was not that the Romans were actively looking for trouble. As already noted, they believed in the principle of a just war, at least in theory, and wished to avoid the displeasure of the gods brought on by acting aggressively without due cause. However, a due cause duly presented itself in 285, when Thurii, another port in the Gulf of Tarentum, appealed to Rome for protection against Sabellian attacks, and some help was apparently provided. One might have thought Thurii would apply to its bigger neighbor Tarentum, but Thurii was an oligarchy and there was little love lost between the two of them. A curse of the political culture on the Greek mainland was the inability of small city-states, such as Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, to get on with one another. Those colonists who migrated to Italy brought the bad habit with them.

Three years later, another request came from Thurii. From the Republic’s point of view, the timing was extremely inconvenient. The Romans had recently been defeated by a Celtic force from the north, and the Samnites had risen once more against their overlords. However, it was decided to respond favorably and a consular army was sent south to beat back the Sabellians and to garrison Thurii. Some other Greco-Italian, or Italiote, cities came into alliance with Rome. The Senate was coming to understand that, as Italy’s dominant power, it would be unwise not to develop a rational policy for Magna Graecia.

The Tarentines were furious, and a chance opportunity of displaying their displeasure soon arose. In breach of an old treaty agreement not to sail in the Gulf of Tarentum, a squadron of ten Roman warships unexpectedly appeared in the harbor, hoping to anchor there. One tradition suggests that it was merely on a sightseeing expedition, but not surprisingly, the Tarentines guessed at a more sinister intention. They feared a plot to overthrow their democracy or, at least, some kind of hostile naval reconnaissance.

As luck would have it, a festival in honor of the god Dionysus was being held that day and a large, inebriated audience sat in the
city’s open-air theater watching a show. Soon there was news of the squadron’s arrival, tempers rose, and an enraged mob rushed out to the quayside. An attack was launched on the intruders. Four Roman vessels were sunk, the commander was killed, and a fifth was captured with its crew; the others were hard put to make their escape.

As far as Thurii was concerned, Tarentum acted quickly and decisively. Its army marched on the city and expelled not only the ruling élite but also the Roman garrison. In its view, Thurii was doubly to be damned: it had preferred Rome to fellow Greeks, and an oligarchic form of government to a democracy.

These were serious provocations, but the Senate responded with a cool head and merely dispatched an embassy led by a former consul, Lucius Postumius Megellus, to seek an explanation. It probably calculated that Rome did not need another declared enemy at this point and could turn a blind eye if Tarentum agreed to maintain its ostensible neutrality. However, if the delegation expected anything approaching an apology it was to be disappointed.

Tarentum being a Greek-style direct democracy, all important decisions were taken by its citizens in full assembly.
Postumius was invited to attend a meeting in the theater. The Tarentines happened to be celebrating another festival and, doubtless fueled by alcohol again, were in high good humor. They looked on the envoys as figures of fun, ridiculing their heavy and elaborate togas and slips Postumius made when speaking Greek. The Romans were unamused, which only made the Tarentines laugh the louder.

Postumius demanded the release of their sailors and ship, and required the Tarentines to surrender Thurii, pay compensation, and hand over for punishment those who had ordered the attack on the Roman fleet. When their presentation was over, the former consul and his colleagues made their way out of the theater, pursued by catcalls. At the exit, a well-known local drunk planted himself in Postumius’s way, turned his back on him, bent over, lifted his tunic, and evacuated his bowels over the Roman’s toga. This feat was greeted with laughter and applause.

“Laugh while you can,” shouted Postumius. “You will soon be weeping for a very long while.” Noticing that his threat infuriated some in the crowd, he went on, “Just to make you even angrier, let me say this. This toga will be washed clean with much blood.”

Romans regarded ambassadors as sacrosanct and did not expect this kind of treatment. Taken by surprise, Postumius had handled the incident maladroitly, but he understood how to exploit the humiliation and inflame opinion in Rome. He kept the soiled toga just as it was and, once he was back home, put it on display as evidence of the insults he had endured. Although Rome’s armies were fully stretched elsewhere, the Senate voted for war at once, and the Assembly ratified the decision.

This incident may have been somewhat enhanced in the telling, but it exposed an important truth. At this stage in its history, Rome was regarded by civilized opinion in the Greek world as a provincial semi-barbarous backwater; its representatives were good for a laugh and hardly to be taken seriously.

THE SMILES WERE
wiped from their faces when the Tarentines witnessed the rapid arrival of a Roman army outside their walls, which proceeded methodically to ravage their delightful countryside, before withdrawing for the winter of 281/80 to a
colonia
at Venusia, where it could keep an eye on the Samnites and on the southern Sabellian tribes. They cautiously appointed a pro-Roman general who might be able to negotiate an early peace.

The commanding consul offered the Tarentines the same terms as Postumius had, or all-out war if they were rejected. As the historian Appian puts it, “
This time they did not laugh.” At a rowdy public meeting, the debate on what to do next was evenly balanced, but eventually it was agreed to send for the Molossian king to come over from Epirus with an expeditionary force and make war on the Romans. The idea of recruiting a foreign general was not a new one. In the past, feeling themselves too weak to fight on their own, the Tarentines had invited a succession of condottieri to provide
military support against Sabellian incursions, albeit without great success: one of them had been Pyrrhus’s uncle Alexander the Molossian, Olympias’s brother and a previous occupant of the Molossian throne. He had died campaigning for the city. The present crisis provoked a surprising entente with Tarentum’s aggressive neighbors, who found that they disliked Rome even more than they did Italiotes.

When the embassy arrived at Pyrrhus’s court, it presented the king with gifts and assured him of a military coalition of the Sabellians, the Tarentines, and—a great prize, this—the Samnites. The envoys gave him a ludicrously inflated estimate of the number of troops that would be awaiting his arrival, but they were good judges of their man. A potential opportunity was opening up for Pyrrhus to regain the Macedonian throne, but he took the bait without hesitation, although his senior adviser, a Thessalian intellectual named Cineas, tried to dissuade him.

According to
a famous anecdote of Plutarch’s, Cineas asked the king, “What will you do when you have beaten the Romans?” We would take Italy was the reply. “What then?” Sicily would be a rich prize, the king opined, not seeing the trap. “And then?” Carthage and Libya would be too tempting to resist. Cineas concluded his interrogation: “After that, it’s obvious that we will have no trouble taking back Macedonia and Greece.”

Pyrrhus said, smiling, “Why then, we will be able to live a life of leisure and spend our days drinking and in private conversation.” “What is stopping us from doing that
now
?” Cineas inquired.

The king was somewhat cast down, for he could see that he was inviting a world of trouble, but he was unable to renounce his high hopes. The Elysian shades of Alexander and Achilles expected nothing less of him.

THE VALLEY WAS
remote, cold, and barren, with a craggy backdrop of snow-capped mountains. At the foot of a hill stood an oak
tree inside a walled enclosure. There was a small, very basic stone temple. This was Dodona, the most ancient of Hellenic oracles and sacred to the king of the gods, Zeus, and his consort, Dione, usually called Hera (Rome’s Jupiter and Juno). Three priestesses, known as “doves,” interpreted the rustlings of the oak tree’s leaves in the breeze for those with questions about their future.

Despite its great age, Dodona was not as well known as the sanctuary at Delphi and was used mainly by ordinary people to help them solve the difficulties of daily life, rather as today we seek the advice of a lawyer or a doctor. Anyone who consulted the oracle was required to submit his or her questions to the two gods in writing, scratched onto lead tablets. These were then put into a pot and studied by one of the priestesses.
Archaeologists have discovered some of the tablets (ranging from throughout the oracle’s long history): suppliants included not only local peasants but travelers from across the Mediterranean world.

Among them are Eubandros and his wife, who ask to what god, hero, or spirit (
daimon
) they must pray and sacrifice if they and their household are to be prosperous “for all time.” A man named Socrates wants to know how he can trade most profitably for himself and his family. Agis inquires about his mattresses and pillows, which have been lost: Has some foreigner stolen them?

From time to time, celebrities consulted the divinities of Dodona. Homer has Achilles pray to “
Lord Zeus, Dodonean, Pelasgian Zeus, you that live far away and rule over wintry Dodona” that his lover, Patroclus, come back victorious and alive from battle with the Greeks on the plain of Troy. Typically, the god gives with one hand and takes with the other. Homer adds, “Zeus the Counselor heard Achilles’ prayer and granted him half of it but not the rest.” Patroclus drives back the Trojans but is killed.

The oracle was perfectly capable of unscrupulous subterfuge.
During the great war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century, the Athenians were advised to colonize Sicily. Without considering
what the oracle really meant, they felt encouraged to mount their disastrous Sicilian invasion. In fact, what the doves were referring to was a hillock of that name near Athens.