A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

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368 The Early Republic
The
embassy of
Cineas.
Plutarch,
Pyrrhus, 14.
Greece, 220;
A ncient
World, 241.
needed and reenforcing those who seemed likely to give
way. (Pyrrhus won a hard-fought battle.)
There was a certain Cineas, a Thessalian, who was considered
a man of good judgment, and who having heard
Demosthenes the orator speak, was better able than any of
the speakers of his age to delight his hearers with an imitation
of the eloquence of that great master of rhetoric. He
was now in the service of Pyrrhus, and being sent about to
various cities, proved true the proverb of Euripides that
Plutarch,
Pyrrhus, 18.
Appius
Claudius
Caecus.
Plutarch,
Pyrrhus, 18 f.
All can be done by words
Which foemen wish to do with conquering swords.
Pyrrhus used to say that more cities were won for him
by Cineas with words than he himself won by force of
arms. . . . (Wishing to make peace with Rome,) Pyrrhus
sent Cineas as ambassador to conduct the negotiations.
He conversed with the leading men of Rome and offered
their wives and children presents from the king.
however, would accept the gifts, but all,
No one,
men and women
alike, replied that if peace were publicly made with the
king, they would then have no objection to regarding him
as a friend. And when Cineas spoke before the senate in a
winning and persuasive manner, he could make no impression
upon his audience. . . . The
common people, however,
were evidently eager for peace, because they had
been defeated in one great battle, and expected that they
would have to fight another,—against a larger force,
because
the Italian states would join Pyrrhus.
At this crisis Appius Claudius (Cascus), an illustrious
man, who had long been prevented by old age and blindness
from taking an active part in politics, hearing of the
proposals of Pyrrhus and learning that the question of
peace or war was about to be voted upon in the senate,