PYRRHUS. 31

several of them under contribution. These being numer- ous and valiant (from whence they had their name, equivalent in the Latin tongue to warlike*), he first inter- cepted the collectors of the contribution money, and cut them off, then beat them in open fight, and destroyed many of their places of strength. The Carthaginians being now inclined to composition, and offering him a round sum of money, and to furnish him with shipping, if a peace were concluded, he told them plainly, aspiring still to greater things, there was but one way for a friend- ship and right understanding between them, if they, wholly abandoning Sicily, would consent to make the African sea the limit between them and the Greeks. And being elevated with his good fortune, and the strength of his forces, and pursuing those hopes in pros- pect of which he first sailed thither, his immediate aim was at Africa ; and as he had abundance of shipping, but very ill equipped, he collected seamen, not by fair and gentle dealing with the cities, but by force in a haughty and insolent way, and menacing them with punishments. And as at first he had not acted thus, but had been unu- sually indulgent and kind, ready to believe, and uneasy to none ; now of a popular leader becoming a tyrant by these severe proceedings, he got the name of an ungrate- ful and a faithless man. However, they gave way to these things as necessary, although they took them very ill from him ; and especially when he began to show sus- picion of Thoenon and Sosistratus, men of the first posi- tion in Syracuse, who invited him over into Sicily, and when he was come, put the cities into his power, and were most instrumental in all he had done there since his arrival, whom he now would neither suffer to be about

• Mamers being another and Campanian or Oscan mercenaries,

older form for Mars. . The Mam- speaking a language almost identi- ertines were the descendants of cal with Latin.