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Pyrrhus - Museo della Civilta, Rome
King of Hellenistic Epirus whose costly military successes against
Macedonia and Rome gave rise to the phrase �Pyrrhic victory.� His
Memoirs and books on the art of war were quoted and praised by many
ancient authors, including Cicero. He was the nephew and successor of
Alexander 'the Molossian' and had also married a daughter of Agathocles
of Syracuse, and seems to have regarded himself as a predestined
successor to both.
{short description of image}Upon becoming ruler at the age of 12,
Pyrrhus allied himself with Demetrius, son of Antigonus I Monophthalmus
of Macedonia. Dethroned by an uprising in 302, Pyrrhus fought beside
Demetrius in Asia and was sent to Alexandria as a hostage under the
treaty between Ptolemy I Soter and Demetrius. Ptolemy befriended
Pyrrhus and in 297 restored him to his kingdom.
At first Pyrrhus reigned with a kinsman, Neoptolemus, but soon he had
his colleague assassinated. In 294 he exploited a dynastic quarrel in
Macedonia to obtain the frontier areas of Parauaea and Tymphaea, along
with Acarnania, Ampholochia, and Ambracia. Corcyra and Leucas were
given to him in a marriage dowry. Next, he went to war against his
former ally, now Demetrius I Poliorcetes of Macedonia. Pyrrhus took
Thessaly and the western half of Macedonia and relieved Athens from
Demetrius' siege, but was driven back into Epirus by Lysimachus (who
had supplanted Demetrius) in 284.
In 281 Tarentum (in southern Italy) asked for Pyrrhus' assistance
against Rome. He crossed to Italy with about 25,000 men, and in 280 won
a complete, if costly, victory over a Roman army at Heraclea. In 279
Pyrrhus, again suffering heavy casualties, defeated the Romans at
Ausculum (Ascoli Satriano) in Apulia.
He then crossed to Sicily (278) and, as �king of Sicily,� conquered
most of the Punic province except Lilybaeum (Marsala). However, his
despotic methods provoked a revolt of the Greek Sicilians, and in 276
(or early 275) he returned to Italy. In 275 he suffered heavy losses in
a battle against Rome at Beneventum (Benevento).
The next year he invaded Macedonia, drove out Antigonus II Gonatas to
Thessalonica, and took over the defecting Macedonian army. Suddenly
abandoning Macedonia, however, he launched an unsuccessful attack on
Sparta to restore Cleonymus (272). Violations of royal tombs by a
garrison of Gauls at Aegae offended people, and Pyrrhus went south to
invade the Peloponnese, leaving his son Ptolemy in charge. Antigonus
Gonatas regained control of Macedonia and conveyed an army by sea to
Corinth against Pyrrhus, whose son Ptolemy was killed in an ambush by
the forces of King Areus of Sparta. At Argos Pyrrhus was trapped
between the armies of the Macedonians and the Spartans and killed by a
tile thrown from a rooftop in 272 BC, supposedly by an old woman seeing
him fighting her son sword to sword in the street below. Other sources
read that he was assassinated by a servant. |
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