The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: where Pyrrhus himself engaged with extraordinary courage; but they
were most carried away by the overwhelming force of the elephants,
not being able to make use of their valor, but overthrown as it were
by the irruption of a sea or an earthquake, before which it seemed
better to give way than to die without doing anything, and not gain
the least advantage by suffering the utmost extremity, the retreat to
their camp not being far. Hieronymus says, there fell six thousand
of the Romans, and of Pyrrhus's men, the king's own commentaries
reported three thousand five hundred and fifty lost in this action.
Dionysius, however, neither gives any account of two engagements at
Asculum, nor allows the Romans to have been certainly beaten, stating
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