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Pontiac Directory 05
Page 03
On September 27th we started once more quite early, after a hearty breakfast--notwithstanding the pain which I always had whenever I ate, especially a stabbing pain in my heart which was almost unbearable at times. We crossed several streamlets, one fairly large, all of which flowed into the Secundury. Rain, which came down in torrents, greatly interfered with our march that day, the new man I had employed worrying me all the time, saying that he did not like to march in wet clothes. Benedicto and I could not help laughing at him, as we had not been dry one moment since the beginning of July, and we were now at the end of September. Wet or not wet, I made the man come along. Finding the forest comparatively clean, we covered another 20 kil. that day. We had a most miserable night, rain coming down in sheets upon us. I was suffering from high fever, chiefly from exhaustion and the effects of over-eating, most injurious to my internal arrangements, which had got dried up during the long sixteen days' fast. I shivered with cold the entire night.
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.
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