Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus (318?-272 bc), king of Epirus (307-272 bc), a district in ancient Greece. He succeeded to the throne in 307 bc, later lost it, but was restored as king in 295 bc. In the next ten years he increased his territories by the addition of the western parts of the neighboring kingdoms of Macedonia and Thessaly (Thessalia). He also helped to overthrow the Macedonian king Demetrius I Poliorcetes. Pyrrhus was driven out of his new territories, however, about 286 bc by his former ally Lysimachus, king of Thrace, who became king of all Macedonia.

In 281 bc the people of Tarentum (now Taranto), a Greek colony in southern Italy then at war with the Romans, requested the aid of Pyrrhus. Early in 280 bc he sailed for Tarentum with a force of 25,000 men and 20 elephants and in the same year defeated the Romans at Heraclea, in the Roman province of Lucania, but at great cost to his army; hence the expression Pyrrhic victory. In 279 bc Pyrrhus again defeated the Romans at excessive cost, at the Battle of Asculum, in the Roman province of Apulia.

Crossing over to Sicily, Pyrrhus aided the Sicilian Greeks in their struggle against the Carthaginians but aroused the ill will of the Greek people by his despotic attitude. He returned to Italy in 276 bc and the following year was defeated by the Romans under Manius Curius Dentatus in a great battle near Beneventum, in the Roman province of Samnium. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus with only one-third of his original force. In 273 bc, however, having attacked and defeated Antigonus II Gonatas, who had become king of Macedonia about 276 bc, he once more obtained possession of a large area of that country. In less than a year Pyrrhus was waging an unsuccessful war with the Spartans. He subsequently fled to Árgos, where he was killed.