When all the troops and transport-vessels were assembled, which had come from Tarentum, the king hastened to embark, although the stormy season of the year was not yet over: and scarcely had the fleet set sail, when a storm broke out from the north, which cast most of the ships upon the wide sea, drove many upon the beach, and sunk several. Pyrrhus himself scarcely escaped alive from the shipwreck, and arrived at Tarentum with an insignificant force. Now the king allowed the Tarentines to act as they pleased, until the ships which the storm had spared, were collected near Tarentum: but when his troops were assembled, he laid claim to dictatorial power, without which the objects of those Greeks could be no more attained, than he himself could exist with his honour and his army. It was not the Tarentines alone who refused to engage in military service, but all the inhabitants of the Greek towns of that time did the same, since it had for more than a hundred years become the calling of the soldiery: and if, which rarely happened, a civic militia was employed, things went on lamentably: but in the phalanx every one was useful who had strong limbs; if Pyrrhus was to make any use of the population of Tarentum for the infantry, it was necessary to have them levied and enrolled among his foot-soldiers, and he had to fill up immediately the gaps which had arisen in consequence of the shipwreck.