Cyneas

, originally of Thessaly, the disciple of Demosthenes and minister of Pyrrhus, equally celebrated as a philosopher and as an orator, flourished in the 125th olympiad, about 280 B. C. Pyrrhus said of him, “that he had taken more towns by his eloquence, than he had by | his arms.” This prince sent him to Rome to solicit a peace, which was nearly granted him, when Appius Claudius and Fabricius, who were not to moved by the flowers of rhetoric, influenced the senate to adopt other measures. Cyneas, being returned to the camp of Pyrrhus, described Rome to him as a temple, the senate as an assembly of kings, and the Roman people as a hydra, which recruited its vigour as often as it was defeated. Pliny cites the memory of Cyneas as a prodigy, at least in remembering persons; for the day after his arrival at Rome, he saluted all the senators and knights by their several names. He abridged the book of Ericas the tactician, on the defence of places, which Casaubon published with a Latin version, in the Paris edition of Polybius, 1609, folio, and M. de Beausobre translated it into French, with comments, 1757, 4to. ¹