Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Antigonus used to compare him to a player with dice, who had
excellent throws, but knew not how to use them. He returned into
Epirus with eight thousand foot and five hundred horse, and for want
of money to pay them, was fain to look out for a new war to maintain
the army. Some of the Gauls joining him, he invaded Macedonia, where
Antigonus, son of Demetrius, governed, designing merely to plunder
and waste the country. But after he had made himself master of
several towns, and two thousand men came over to him, he began to
hope for something greater, and adventured upon Antigonus himself,
and meeting him at a narrow passage, put the whole army in disorder.
The Gauls, who brought up Antigonus's rear, were very numerous and
stood firm, but after a sharp encounter, the greatest part of them
were cut off, and they who had the charge of the elephants being
surrounded every way, delivered up both themselves and the beasts.
Pyrrhus, taking this advantage, and advising more with his good
fortune than his reason, boldly set upon the main body of the
Macedonian foot, already surprised with fear, and troubled at the
former loss. They declined any action or engagement with him; and
he, holding out his hand and calling aloud both to the superior and
under officers by name, brought over the foot from Antigonus, who,
flying away secretly, was only able to retain some of the seaport
towns. Pyrrhus, among all these kindnesses of fortune, thinking what
he had effected against the Gauls the most advantageous for his
glory, hung up their richest and goodliest spoils in the temple of
Minerva Itonis, with this inscription: --
Pyrrhus, descendant of Molossian kings,
These shields to thee, Itonian goddess, brings,
Won from the valiant Gauls when in the fight
Antigonus and all his host took flight;
'Tis not today nor yesterday alone
That for brave deeds the Aeacidae are known.
After this victory in the field, he proceeded to secure the cities,
and having possessed himself of Aegae, beside other hardships put
upon the people there, he left in the town a garrison of Gauls, some
of those in his own army, who, being insatiably desirous of wealth,
instantly dug up the tombs of the kings that lay buried there, and
took away the riches, and insolently scattered about their bones.
Pyrrhus, in appearance, made no great matter of it, either deferring
it on account of the pressure of other business, or wholly passing it
by, out of a fear of punishing those barbarians; but this made him
very ill spoken of among the Macedonians, and his affairs being yet
unsettled and brought to no firm consistence, he began to entertain
new hopes and projects, and in raillery called Antigonus a shameless
man, for still wearing his purple and not changing it for an ordinary
dress; but upon Cleonymus, the Spartan, arriving and inviting him to
Lacedaemon, he frankly embraced the overture. Cleonymus was of royal
descent, but seeming too arbitrary and absolute, had no great respect
nor credit at home; and Areus was king there. This was the occasion
of an old and public grudge between him and the citizens; but, beside
that, Cleonymus, in his old age, had married a young lady of great
beauty and royal blood, Chilonis, daughter of Leotychides, who,
falling desperately in love with Acrotatus, Areus's son, a youth in
the flower of manhood, rendered this match both uneasy and
dishonorable to Cleonymus, as there was none of the Spartans who did
not very well know how much his wife slighted him; so these domestic
troubles added to his public discontent. He brought Pyrrhus to
Sparta with an army of twenty-five thousand foot, two thousand horse,
and twenty-four elephants. So great a preparation made it evident to
the whole world, that he came not so much to gain Sparta for
Cleonymus, as to take all Peloponnesus for himself, although he
expressly denied this to the Lacedaemonian ambassadors that came to
him at Megalopolis, affirming he came to deliver the cities from the
slavery of Antigonus, and declaring he would send his younger sons to
Sparta, if he might, to be brought up in Spartan habits, that so they
might be better bred than all other kings. With these pretensions
amusing those who came to meet him in his march, as soon as ever he
entered Laconia, he began to plunder and waste the country, and on
the ambassadors complaining that he began the war upon them before it
was proclaimed: "We know," said he, "very well, that neither do you
Spartans, when you design anything, talk of it beforehand." One
Mandroclidas, then present, told him, in the broad Spartan dialect:
"If you are a god, you will do us no harm, we are wronging no man;
but if you are a man, there may be another stronger than you."
He now marched away directly for Lacedaemon, and being advised by
Cleonymus to give the assault as soon as he arrived, fearing, as it
is said, lest the soldiers, entering by night, should plunder the
city, he answered, they might do it as well next morning, because
there were but few soldiers in town, and those unprovided against his
sudden approach, as Areus was not there in person, but gone to aid
the Gortynians in Crete. And it was this alone that saved the town,
because he despised it as not tenable, and so imagining no defense
would be made, he sat down before it that night. Cleonymus's
friends, and the Helots, his domestic servants, had made great
preparation at his house, as expecting Pyrrhus there at supper. In
the night the Lacedaemonians held a consultation to ship over all the
women into Crete, but they unanimously refused, and Archidamia came
into the senate with a sword in her hand, in the name of them all,
asking if the men expected the women to survive the ruins of Sparta.
It was next resolved to draw a trench in a line directly over against
the enemy's camp, and, here and there in it, to sink wagons in the
ground, as deep as the naves of the wheels, that, so being firmly
fixed, they might obstruct the passage of the elephants. When they
had just begun the work, both maids and women came to them, the
married women with their robes tied like girdles round their
underfrocks, and the unmarried girls in their single frocks only, to
assist the elder men at the work. As for the youth that were next
day to engage, they left them to their rest, and undertaking their
proportion, they themselves finished a third part of the trench,
which was in breadth six cubits, four in depth, and eight hundred
feet long, as Phylarchus says; Hieronymus makes it somewhat less.
The enemy beginning to move by break of day, they brought their arms
to the young men, and giving them also in charge the trench, exhorted
them to defend and keep it bravely, as it would be happy for them to
conquer in the view of their whole country, and glorious to die in
the arms of their mothers and wives, falling as became Spartans. As
for Chilonis, she retired with a halter about her neck, resolving to
die so rather than fall into the hands of Cleonymus, if the city were
taken.
Pyrrhus himself, in person, advanced with his foot to force through
the shields of the Spartans ranged against him, and to get over the
trench, which was scarce passable, because the looseness of the fresh
earth afforded no firm footing for the soldiers. Ptolemy, his son,
with two thousand Gauls, and some choice men of the Chaonians, went
around the trench, and endeavored to get over where the wagons were.
But they, being so deep in the ground, and placed close together, not
only made his passage, but also the defense of the Lacedaemonians
very troublesome. Yet now the Gauls had got the wheels out of the
ground, and were drawing off the wagons toward the river, when young
Acrotatus, seeing the danger, passing through the town with three
hundred men, surrounded Ptolemy undiscerned, taking the advantage of
some slopes of the ground, until he fell upon his rear, and forced
him to wheel about. And thrusting one another into the ditch, and
falling among the wagons, at last with much loss, not without
difficulty, they withdrew. The elderly men and all the women saw
this brave action of Acrotatus, and when he returned back into the
town to his first post, all covered with blood, and fierce and elate
with victory, he seemed to the Spartan women to have become taller
and more beautiful than before, and they envied Chilonis so worthy a
lover. And some of the old men followed him, crying aloud, "Go on,
Acrotatus, be happy with Chilonis, and beget brave sons for Sparta."
Where Pyrrhus himself fought was the hottest of the action, and many
of the Spartans did gallantly, but in particular one Phyllius
signalized himself, made the best resistance, and killed most
assailants; and when he found himself ready to sink with the many
wounds he had received, retiring a little out of his place behind
another, he fell down among his fellow-soldiers, that the enemy might
not carry off his body. The fight ended with the day, and Pyrrhus,
in his sleep, dreamed that he threw thunderbolts upon Lacedaemon, and
set it all on fire, and rejoiced at the sight; and waking, in this
transport of joy, he commanded his officers to get all things ready
for a second assault, and relating his dream among his friends,
supposing it to mean that he should take the town by storm, the rest
assented to it with admiration, but Lysimachus was not pleased with
the dream, and told him he feared, lest as places struck with
lightning are held sacred, and not to be trodden upon, so the gods
might by this let him know the city should not be taken. Pyrrhus
replied, that all these things were but idle talk, full of
uncertainty, and only fit to amuse the vulgar; their thought, with
their swords in their hands, should always be
The one good omen is king Pyrrhus' cause,
and so got up, and drew out his army to the walls by break of day.
The Lacedaemonians, in resolution and courage, made a defense even
beyond their power; the women were all by, helping them to arms, and
bringing bread and drink to those that desired it, and taking care of
the wounded. The Macedonians attempted to fill up the trench,
bringing huge quantities of materials and throwing them upon the arms
and dead bodies, that lay there and were covered over. While the
Lacedaemonians opposed this with all their force, Pyrrhus, in person,
appeared on their side of the trench and the wagons, pressing on
horseback toward the city, at which the men who had that post calling
out, and the women shrieking and running about, while Pyrrhus
violently pushed on, and beat down all that disputed his way, his
horse received a shot in the belly from a Cretan arrow, and, in his
convulsions as he died, threw off Pyrrhus on slippery and steep
ground. And all about him being in confusion at this, the Spartans
came boldly up, and making good use of their missiles, forced them
off again. After this Pyrrhus, in other quarters also, put an end to
the combat, imagining the Lacedaemonians would be inclined to yield,
as almost all of them were wounded, and very great numbers killed
outright; but the good fortune of the city, either satisfied with the
experiment upon the bravery of the citizens, or willing to prove how
much even in the last extremities such interposition may effect,
brought, when the Lacedaemonians had now but very slender hopes left,
Aminias, the Phocian, one of Antigonus's commanders, from Corinth to
their assistance, with a force of mercenaries; and they were no
sooner received into the town, but Areus, their king, arrived there
himself, too, from Crete, with two thousand men more. The women upon
this went all home to their houses, finding it no longer necessary
for them to meddle with the business of the war; and they also were