Pyrrhus of Epirus

• 1. Introduction

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  Pyrrhus of Epirus left the battlefield at Asculum with fewer than 3,500 of his best officers and soldiers dead, and he reportedly told his celebrating companions: "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." That single sentence, from a man born around 319 BC and dead by 272 BC, gave the world a phrase that outlasted every empire he fought for. Pyrrhus was king of the Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house, a general who was ranked by Hannibal himself as among the greatest commanders the world had ever seen. He fought Rome before Rome was Rome. He carved a kingdom out of Sicily. He dueled enemy generals in single combat and earned the nickname "Eagle" from his own troops. What made a king of such brilliance unable to hold any of his conquests? And how does a man born in a refugee camp end up shaping the fate of Carthage, Greece, and the entire Mediterranean world?

• 2. A Childhood in Exile

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  Aeacides, Pyrrhus's father, was prince of Epirus and a cousin of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great. That bloodline made Pyrrhus a second cousin to Alexander, a fact that would shadow his ambitions for the rest of his life. He was born around 319 BC to Aeacides and Phthia, a Thessalian noblewoman whose own father was the general Menon.

  When Pyrrhus was only two years old, his father marched to support Olympias in her war against Cassander. The soldiers mutinied. Aeacides released the troublemakers, but the damage was done. Back in Epirus, the mutineers sparked a rebellion that drove Aeacides from his own throne. Cassander sent a general named Lyciscus to act as regent, turning Epirus into a puppet kingdom. The family fled north to seek protection from Glaucias, king of the Taulantians, one of the largest Illyrian tribes.

  Glaucias's wife Beroea, herself a Molossian of the Aeacid dynasty, raised the young Pyrrhus. Cassander marched against Glaucias, defeated his forces, and captured Apollonia. He demanded the child be handed over. Glaucias refused. That refusal saved Pyrrhus's life. Years later, when Cassander's attention turned east toward the wars with Antigonus Monophthalmus, Aeacides returned to Epirus, raised an army, and was promptly defeated twice by Cassander's brother Philip. Wounded in the final battle, Aeacides died soon after. His son was still a child in Illyrian exile.

• 3. Throne, Exile, Throne Again

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  In 307 BC, Glaucias invaded Epirus and placed Pyrrhus on the throne. Pyrrhus was eleven years old. Guardians ruled in his name until he came of age, and he was deposed again while still a teenager, driven out when the Molossians rose in rebellion during a trip he made to attend a wedding at Glaucias's court. With no patron willing to fight for him this time, Pyrrhus went south and joined his brother-in-law Demetrius Poliorcetes, who had married his sister Deidamia and was campaigning against Cassander in the Peloponnese.

  At Ipsus in Phrygia in 302 BC, Pyrrhus fought alongside Demetrius in what sources describe as the largest and most important battle of the Wars of the Successors. Antigonus Monophthalmus, Demetrius's father, lost both the battle and his life. Pyrrhus reportedly fought with Demetrius on the right wing and distinguished himself enough that Antigonus himself had previously remarked that Pyrrhus would become the greatest general of his time, if he lived long enough.

  By 298 BC, Pyrrhus was sent to Alexandria as a hostage under a peace treaty between Demetrius and Ptolemy I Soter. There he married Antigone, Ptolemy's stepdaughter and a daughter of Berenice I of Egypt. Ptolemy, always seeking allies, decided in 297 BC to sponsor Pyrrhus's return. He provided men and funds, and Pyrrhus sailed back to Epirus. He agreed to co-rule with the incumbent king Neoptolemus, but when he was warned of a plot against his life, he invited Neoptolemus to dinner and had him killed. Epirus's nobility, apparently not displeased, remained loyal. Pyrrhus was now sole king at last.

• 4. Wrestling with Demetrius

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  In 295 BC, Pyrrhus moved the capital of Epirus to Ambracia. The following years brought a succession of wars, alliances, and betrayals with Demetrius that read like a chess match played across the entire Greek world.

  In 292 BC, Pyrrhus invaded Thessaly while Demetrius was besieging Thebes. Demetrius left his son Antigonus Gonatas in charge of the siege and marched north with a large army; Pyrrhus, outnumbered, pulled back to Epirus. Then came a domestic blow. His second wife Lanassa, daughter of the self-proclaimed king of Sicily Agathocles of Syracuse, walked out. She declared she could no longer share a household with what she called barbarian women and sailed to Corcyra with her dowry, offering herself and the island to Demetrius, who accepted both.

  In 289 BC, while Demetrius was plundering Epirus, Pyrrhus met Demetrius's general Pantauchus in battle with an army estimated at 20,000-25,000 men against roughly 11,000. Pantauchus challenged Pyrrhus to single combat. They threw spears at each other, then fought with swords. Pyrrhus was wounded, but wounded Pantauchus twice, in the thigh and in the neck. Pantauchus's own bodyguards carried him from the field. The Epirotes, inspired by their king's performance, routed Pantauchus's force and took 5,000 prisoners. The army honoured Pyrrhus with the title "Eagle."

  In 288 BC, the allied kings Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Pyrrhus turned on Demetrius simultaneously. Pyrrhus struck western and southern Macedonia while Demetrius was distracted, and the Macedonians, exhausted by Demetrius's ambitions, deserted their king en masse and went over to Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus and Lysimachus divided Macedonia between them. By 285 BC, Lysimachus had outmaneuvered Pyrrhus diplomatically, marrying into the Ptolemaic family and buying the loyalty of the Aetolians. In 284 BC, Lysimachus invaded with a superior army and ran a propaganda campaign reminding Macedonian soldiers that Pyrrhus was a foreigner. The troops turned. Pyrrhus withdrew to Epirus. As Pausanias later recorded, "Pyrrhus was roaming around as usual."

• 5. The Pyrrhic War

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  In 282 BC, the Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy attacked Roman warships in the Tarentine Gulf and drove a Roman garrison out of the city of Thurii, igniting a crisis that required outside help. Rome was already positioned to subdue every Greek city in Magna Graecia. The Tarentines called on Pyrrhus, and the Oracle of Delphi encouraged him to go. Pyrrhus saw the possibility of an Italian empire.

  He arrived in Italy in 280 BC with 20,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, 2,000 archers, 500 slingers, and 20 war elephants loaned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Ptolemy also promised 9,000 soldiers and a further 50 elephants to defend Epirus in Pyrrhus's absence. At the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC, Pyrrhus defeated the Roman consul Publius Valerius Laevinus. The sources disagree on losses: Hieronymus of Cardia records about 7,000 Roman dead and 3,000 of Pyrrhus's men, while Dionysius puts the toll far higher at 15,000 Romans and 13,000 Epirotes. Either way, Pyrrhus's finest troops were among the fallen. Several peoples, including the Lucanians, Bruttii, Messapians, and the Greek cities of Croton and Locri, joined his side. He offered Rome a peace treaty, which Rome rejected.

  Pyrrhus marched toward Rome itself, found its defenses too strong, and pulled back to Tarentum for the winter. When he invaded Apulia in 279 BC, the two armies clashed at Asculum. The Romans under Publius Decius Mus were defeated but came close to destroying the Epirote army. Six thousand Romans died and 3,500 Epirotes, including many officers. It was after this battle that Pyrrhus made his famous remark about one more such victory leading to total ruin. The term "Pyrrhic victory" traces directly to that reported exchange.

• 6. The Sicilian Interlude

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  In 278 BC, two offers arrived at once. The Greek cities of Sicily wanted Pyrrhus to expel Carthage. The Macedonians, whose king Ptolemy Keraunos had just been killed by invading Gauls, wanted Pyrrhus to take their throne. He chose Sicily.

  Shortly after landing, he lifted the Carthaginian Siege of Syracuse and was proclaimed king of Sicily. His ambitions for the island were dynastic: he planned to leave Sicily to his son Helenus and Italy to his son Alexander. In 277 BC, he captured Eryx, the strongest Carthaginian fortress on the island. The remaining Carthaginian-controlled cities defected to him. He was close to driving Carthage from Sicily entirely.

  The siege of Lilybaeum, the powerful Carthaginian fortress at the western end of the island, broke that momentum. Two months of assaults failed to take it, and Pyrrhus realized he needed a fleet to blockade it from the sea as well. He demanded money and manpower from the Sicilians. When they resisted, he imposed compulsory contributions and installed military garrisons across the island, declaring what amounted to a military dictatorship. Sicilian opinion turned sharply against him. The same Greeks he had come to liberate were now willing to side with Carthage.

  When Samnite and Tarentine envoys arrived to tell him that only Tarentum had not yet fallen to Rome, Pyrrhus made his decision and left. As his ship pulled away from shore, he turned to his companions and said: "What a wrestling ground we are leaving, my friends, for the Carthaginians and the Romans." The Carthaginians destroyed most of his fleet at the Battle of the Strait of Messina on the crossing, sinking or disabling 98 of his 110 warships.

• 7. The Final Years

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  At Beneventum in 275 BC, the Roman consul Manius Curius Dentatus held a fortified camp while Pyrrhus attempted a night march to surprise him. Dense vegetation delayed the march. His men arrived at daybreak, tired and visible. The Romans repulsed the attack. When Pyrrhus launched his elephants in a second phase, the Romans reportedly frightened them with flaming arrows, turning the animals against the Epirotes. Pyrrhus withdrew and, with no gains left to protect in Italy, sailed home. Only Tarentum remained under Epirote control.

  Back in Epirus, his treasury and army depleted, Pyrrhus turned on Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon. He raised Epirote garrison troops, Gallic mercenaries, and soldiers returned from Italy, won an easy victory at the Battle of the Aous, and took most of Macedon. Antigonus held a handful of coastal cities and waited. Pyrrhus, meanwhile, allowed his Gallic troops to plunder the tombs of the Macedonian kings at Aegae, making himself intensely unpopular with the very people he had just conquered.

  In 272 BC, a Spartan royal named Cleonymus, hated by his fellow Spartans, persuaded Pyrrhus to attack Sparta and install him in power. The assault was repulsed. On the retreat, Pyrrhus lost his eldest son Ptolemy, who commanded the rearguard. He was immediately drawn into a street battle at Argos, where a civic dispute had flared and where Antigonus Gonatas was also converging. In the confusion of the narrow city streets, while Pyrrhus was fighting an Argive soldier, the soldier's elderly mother threw a tile from a rooftop. It struck Pyrrhus and broke part of his spine. A Macedonian soldier named Zopyrus, frightened by the look on the unconscious king's face, hesitantly beheaded him. Plutarch recorded the story in his Life of Pyrrhus. Antigonus cremated the body with full honors and sent Pyrrhus's surviving son Helenus back to Epirus. That same year, the Tarentinians surrendered to Rome.

• 8. Legacy and the Name That Stuck

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  Plutarch recorded that Hannibal ranked Pyrrhus as the greatest commander who had ever lived, though in another passage Plutarch gives Hannibal's ranking as second after Alexander the Great, an account confirmed by Appian. The discrepancy between the two Plutarch passages has never been fully resolved, but the point stands: Hannibal, Rome's most dangerous enemy, placed Pyrrhus at or near the very top.

  Pyrrhus also wrote memoirs and several books on the art of war, all of which have since been lost. Plutarch reports that Hannibal studied them, and Cicero praised them.

  Pliny the Elder recorded an unusual belief about Pyrrhus: that the great toe on his right foot could cure diseases of the spleen by touch alone, and that the toe could not be burned. When his body was cremated, the toe was placed in a coffer and kept at a temple.

  The conquest of Magna Graecia that followed Pyrrhus's departure put Rome in direct competition with Carthage, producing the First Punic War. Rome's victory in that war transformed it from a regional power into a Mediterranean one. The failure of the Greek kingdoms to unite against Rome played out over the following century and a half: by 197 BC Macedonia and many southern Greek city-states had become Roman clients; by 188 BC the Seleucid Empire was forced to cede most of Asia Minor; in 146 BC Rome destroyed Corinth and reorganized Greece as the Roman province of Macedonia; in 63 BC Pompey Magnus finished off the remaining Seleucid territories; in 30 BC Egypt was annexed as Roman Egypt. Pyrrhus had seen the opening of that long sequence. His parting words at Sicily named the exact two contestants who would fight it out. When he departed, he left the field to them.