Pyrrhus of Epirus

A victory bought at ruinous cost is still called "Pyrrhic" after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in north-western Greece, who fought Rome in southern Italy between 280 and 275 BCE. A restless and gifted commander in the wars that followed Alexander the Great's death, he won and lost Macedonia, Sicily and a share of Italy, and died in a street fight at Argos in 272 BCE. Much of his story comes from Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus, written some four centuries later.

Pyrrhus was born around 319 BCE, son of Aeacides, one of the joint kings of the Molossians of Epirus, and a second cousin of Alexander the Great through Alexander's mother Olympias. While he was still an infant his father was overthrown, and the family took refuge with Glaucias, king of the Illyrian Taulantians. Glaucias put the boy on the Epirote throne around 307 or 306 BCE, when he was about 11 to 13, but a few years later, while he was away at a wedding, the Molossians rose against him and he lost his crown.

The young exile joined his brother-in-law Demetrius Poliorcetes and fought beside him at Ipsus in Asia Minor, the great battle among Alexander's successors. He was then sent as a hostage to Alexandria, where he married a stepdaughter of Ptolemy I. With Ptolemy's men and money he returned home in 297 BCE, shared power with his rival Neoptolemus and soon had him killed.

Pyrrhus made Ambracia his capital and spent the next decade fighting Demetrius, by then king of Macedon. In 288 BCE he and Lysimachus invaded Macedon together; Demetrius's army deserted, and the two kings split the country. For a time Pyrrhus ruled Epirus, half of Macedonia and Thessaly, but in 284 BCE Lysimachus turned the Macedonian troops against their foreign king and drove him out.

After clashing with Rome in 282 BCE, the Greek city of Tarentum appealed to him for help. Pyrrhus landed in Italy in 280 BCE with, by one count, 20,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, archers, slingers and 20 war elephants. His phalanx, cavalry and elephants beat the Romans at Heraclea that year, though ancient figures for the dead vary widely, and several Italian peoples joined him. He marched towards Rome but withdrew, and Rome refused his peace terms. At Asculum in 279 BCE he won again but lost thousands of men and many officers. He is said to have remarked that one more such victory would ruin him.

In 278 BCE the Greek cities of Sicily invited him to expel Carthage. He relieved Syracuse, was hailed as king of Sicily and took the Carthaginian stronghold of Eryx, but failed to capture Lilybaeum. His heavy demands for ships and money turned the Sicilians against him. As he left, he is reported to have called the island a wrestling ground he was leaving for Rome and Carthage, as indeed it became. A Carthaginian fleet wrecked most of his ships on the crossing.

Back in Italy, Pyrrhus attacked the consul Manius Curius near Beneventum in 275 BCE; a night march went wrong, his elephants panicked, and he withdrew. He sailed home, leaving only a garrison in Tarentum. In 274 BCE he seized most of Macedonia from Antigonus Gonatas, then in 272 BCE attacked Sparta and failed, losing his eldest son. Drawn into a quarrel at Argos, he was trapped in the streets; according to Plutarch an old woman threw a roof tile that stunned him, and a soldier cut off his head. Tarentum surrendered to Rome the same year.

Ancient writers reported that Hannibal ranked Pyrrhus among the greatest generals, second only to Alexander in one version. His failure left Rome master of southern Italy and set it on course for its wars with Carthage.

Our 300 BCE map shows the small Roman Republic and the Carthage of his Sicilian war, beside the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire of Alexander's successors. By the 200 BCE map, after the first of the Punic Wars, the Roman Republic has grown far larger. See also Alexander the Great and Hannibal.