026: Pyrrhus - The Wars in Italy, & a Pyrrhic Victory

Hello fellow explorers of the Hellenistic world, I'm Lantern Jack, host of the Ancient Greece Declassified podcast. What I love about Derek's show is that he dives into this understudied period of history and shows you how action-packed it really was. And that's what fascinates me about the Ancient Greek world in general, that from 800 to 100 BC, the Greeks went from being illiterate shepherds to the builders of astronomical calculators, steam-powered devices, and the biggest library the world would see until modern times. My podcast is dedicated to understanding why these rapid developments occurred, and I do that by interviewing world-class experts in ancient history and archaeology. Each episode investigates one topic that's not only of historical importance, but also relevant to today's world and today's challenges. If any of this piques your interest, then take a moment to check out Ancient Greece Declassified, wherever you get your podcasts. And now, your feature presentation. The Wars in Italy and a Pyrrhic Victory, 280-272 BC When we last left our narrative, Pyrrhus had taken his first steps upon the shores of Italy following a disastrous crossing whereby a great storm had wiped out almost 90% of his invasion fleet in the spring of 280. Instead of giving up, Pyrrhus took the remains of his army and marched to the city of Tarentum, who had been the ones to call the Molossian king in to protect them from the forces of the Roman Republic. Inside was Cannaeus, a commander and confidant serving under Pyrrhus, and was previously sent ahead to Italy to garrison Tarentum with about 3,000 men. And thankfully, this reserve more than doubled Pyrrhus' 2,000 or so sea-wrecked survivors. Still, it would be not enough. Pyrrhus, true to his nature, though not necessarily unreasonable, treated Tarentum like it was a military camp. The king immediately conscripted many of the male Tarentines to supplement his army, and to encourage a more masculine or militaristic mindset, he banned all sorts of recreational activities, ranging from drinking to the gymnasium and festivals, believing them to be not the sort of thing you should be doing when imminent danger is fast approaching. Despite being the ones to bring Pyrrhus in the first place, the Tarentines didn't take too kindly at the prospects of living such a rigid lifestyle, a product of excessive wealth and leisure, or so Plutarch would like to have you believe, and they grumbled under Pyrrhus' seemingly dictatorial rule. The Molossian himself was unflinching in his resolve, refusing to listen to Tarentine officials who tried to convince him to relax his restrictions, and so morale plummeted, with quite a number of residents leaving the city rather than be subjected to such harsh terms. I can't say that I blame Pyrrhus for this, given that he grew up in a military camp for most of his life, and trying to wrangle Greeks into being obedient military subordinates has been a challenge for commanders since Alexander the Great and Xenophon. Pyrrhus' landing also spread waves across the Italian peninsula. The notion of a pan-Hellenic champion to rescue Greek colonies from barbarian oppressors was attractive, and some cities had nominally pledged their support to the king, yet it appears that they were not ready or unwilling to send troops. It was also attractive to the non-Greeks as well, mainly the Italian tribes like the Lucanians, the Brutians, and above all else, the Samnites, who had fiercely opposed the Romans in a series of wars lasting almost 40 years up to the present. They pledged that they would assist Pyrrhus, and actually provided a healthy number of soldiers to be incorporated into the Epirotes army. Pyrrhus' presence also freaked out the Roman Republic, who had scrambled to amass enough manpower to protect Rome itself, even resorting to arming the poorest members of Roman society who would normally be exempt for such military service. One of the Roman consuls, Publius Valerius Lavinius, was in command of the army sent out to deal with this foreign king, and he believed that time was of the essence, better to catch and deal with Pyrrhus now rather than have the rebellious Italian tribes flock to his banner. As Lavinius approached Tarentum, Pyrrhus decided that he should dispatch an envoy with a message to the consul. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has a long-winded speech between the two commanders, though likely it is fictitious, but in it, Pyrrhus offered the Romans a chance at an alliance or friendship between the Republic and the Epirote kingdom, on the provision that the Romans cease their plundering and conquering of his Italian allies, and from seeking further compensation from the Tarentines and the Greeks of Magna Graecia, until they had settled their dispute with a neutral mediator. It may have been a ploy to buy himself some time, but Pyrrhus, despite his reputation as a war-loving and tactical genius, was well aware of the value of diplomacy, believing it to be an essential component of any military commander, and, according to his now lost treatise on the art of war, it should be the main priority until no other options are available besides open combat. Unfortunately, standard Hellenistic policy didn't gel too well with the Roman commander, who angrily rejected the proposal and shot back at Pyrrhus that the king had no legal jurisdiction in Roman spheres of influence. Instead, the Romans aimed for battle. So, in the summer of 280, King Pyrrhus and the Consul Livinius had met with their armies near the city of Heraclea in southern Lucania. Our sources of the battle are fragmented, but we have a colorful description from Plutarch and the remnants of other chroniclers and strategists, like Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Unfortunately, we lack many details about the actual numbers involved. We know that the battle took place at the river Cyrus, with the Roman camp on one side of the riverbank and with the Epiota army on the other, though Pyrrhus' army held a more comfortable position, encamped upon a raised hill some distance from the river. The Romans held the advantage in numbers, operating with about 30,000 to 35,000 men, the standard operating size of a consular army, whereas Pyrrhus had maybe 25,000 to 30,000, but we aren't exactly sure. Pyrrhus relied on his corps of roughly 5,000 Epiota and Macedonian troops to strengthen his center, arming themselves in the traditional Macedonian phalanx system. The surrounding forces were comprised largely of Italian allies, who fought in their own native styles in a similar manner to the Romans, opting for a more loosely organized sword and shield technique. Along was a sizable body of roughly 3,000 heavy cavalry, various light skirmishers and levy pre-colonists, and, importantly, 1520 war elephants. Pyrrhus had yet never met the army fielded by the Roman Republic, at this point styled in the so-called Manipular or Polybian Legion. I went into great detail upon the makeup and structure of the legion in episode 23, with its emphasis on the flexibility of its individual soldiers and units of the Maniples. It was anything but the barbarian army that Pyrrhus expected to face. According to Plutarch, as Pyrrhus was inspecting the camp of the Romans, he was shocked at the well-ordered layout of the camp and the disciplined marches and formations of the troops inside. Pyrrhus turned to a nearby commander and remarked, quote, These may be barbarians, but there is nothing barbarous about their discipline. After which he paused and added, We shall see in action what it's worth. The Battle of Heraclea, as it soon would be called, had begun thanks to the eagerness of Consul Avinius. He had sought to prevent any more anti-Roman allies from reaching Pyrrhus' camp, and noticing that Greek guards were placed along the crossings of the river, in a moment of anxiety he ordered that the heavy infantry be sent to ford the Syrris River, while the Roman cavalry would be dispersed at multiple points and attack the paltry Greek force. Pyrrhus was well aware of this maneuver and ordered his infantry to take their positions, while he himself would deal with the Roman cavalry in order to buy his phalanxes some time. The two bodies of the horsemen smashed against each other, Pyrrhus fighting in the thick of it put his life on the line by personally dispatching several Roman and Italian horsemen. His marvelous armor and plumed helmet made himself apparent in the eyes of his men, bolstering the result. However, it made him an easy target, and one brave Italian named Oplax speared the king's horse from beneath him, originally aiming for Pyrrhus himself, but was dispatched by a Macedonian bodyguard named Leonatus. In the meanwhile, legion met phalanx for the first time in history. The bristling spear points kept the Romans at bay, despite the legionaries' determination and ferocity, and many young Roman men, soaked from the river and caked with mud, were gored while attempting to cut through the long Syrris' to get access to the phalangites, and many of them did, hacking their way into the Epirote and Macedonian line. The Samnites and Lucanians had scores to settle with the Romans, and there was no mercy from either side. Dominance of the field of battle changed hands at least seven times, until a great cry rose out from the battlefield, shouting that the king was dead, as a Roman legionary was wielding the bloody and tarnished purple and gold cloak belonging to the Molossian monarch. A near panic set into the Epirote line, but thankfully, a lone warrior wrote about the army, absent his helmet, chanting to his troops. Pyrrhus was alive, and he had changed out of his armor once he realized it made him a target, and his stand-in, his general Megacles, had been mistakenly cut down in the process. At word of Pyrrhus' survival, the Epirotes regained their courage, and the Roman jeers and war cries soon silenced, and turned to horror, as a great din of bestial trumpeting and the shaking of the earth was felt throughout the battlefield. The Roman cavalry reared up, throwing many of their riders off their backs in terror, unfamiliar with the great beasts that charged at them. Pyrrhus' elephants, saved from an emergency, were sent forth, and scattered the Roman cavalry. Gaius Minutius, a young Roman soldier, had attempted to buy time for his comrades by bravely charging and hacking at the trunk of one of the elephants, but the Romans were scattered. Pyrrhus would send his cavalry to run down the survivors. The day belonged to the Epirotes. At the dawn of the next day, King Pyrrhus was walking among the bodies in carnage, littered across the battlefield of Heraclea. After making his rounds with his officers, who were tallying up the dead, it was clear that Pyrrhus and his army were victorious over the Roman forces who opposed him. According to the sources, the Romans lost anywhere from 7,000 to 15,000 men, and the survivors were scattered across the countryside, and 2,000 were captured. An inscription of the battle still survives, excavated from Dodona in Epirus, listing the spoils taken from the Roman camp that had been dedicated to Zeus by Pyrrhus. The Epirotes may have been elated at their own success, but Pyrrhus, a keener mind when it came to the arts of war, preferred to remain silent and was not as pleased. It quickly became apparent that despite the far larger casualties on the Roman side, the Epirote army had also suffered grievous injuries. They had lost somewhere in the realm of 4,000 to 13,000 troops. The ferocity of the Republic's soldiers and its unwillingness to quit had almost overwhelmed Pyrrhus' phalanxes, and the veterans and trained officers, many who had served with Pyrrhus for years, received the brunt of the casualties. Many attribute this battle, though the later battles are also contenders as being the origin of what the ancients termed a Cadmian victory, better known to us as a Pyrrhic victory, where the costs of victory outweigh the benefits to the winning side. While the Romans lost a far greater amount of men, they could be replaced, thanks to the immense pool of manpower their alliance system had granted to them. Pyrrhus' casualties, on the other hand, were priceless, and further reinforcements would take time, time that he did not have, and that's assuming he could even get further support from Epirus or Macedon. Costly indeed, and the king was fully aware of this. Pyrrhus privately admitted to his confidants, one more such victory and we are utterly ruined. Word of Pyrrhus' success at Heraclius spread throughout southern Italy like wildfire. Many of the Italians had signed up to the Tarentine cause, which mildly annoyed Pyrrhus, believing that they were late for the fight at Heraclia, but early for the after battle celebrations. Still, he welcomed their assistance to refill his ranks. Since the Roman army was scattered, Pyrrhus could be free to march upon Rome. Like what Hannibal Barca would do almost 60 years later, the king had decided to peruse the Italian countryside. Some have criticized Pyrrhus' lack of inaction by not immediately proceeding to take on Rome, but it must be understood that Heraclia taught Pyrrhus an important lesson about the carnage that could be inflicted by the Roman legionaries, and it is likely that he had marched around the countryside of Latium, hoping to encourage the Latin allies and the Etruscans to join his side and add to his army. But, like Hannibal, he failed in his efforts, a testament to the skill of the Romans in securing the loyalties of their allies. Meanwhile, the Romans were in a state of absolute panic and quickly raised more legions, and the surviving consul Livinius had garrisoned some of the Latin cities to prevent Pyrrhus from properly taking them. In addition, the Romans managed to secure a peace treaty with the warring Italian tribes. With little chance of success, Pyrrhus had decided to retire back to Magna Graecia in order to make winter camp. As the year 280 came and melted into 279, Pyrrhus decided to try his hand again at diplomacy. Given that the king had shown himself master of the battlefield, he felt that he had held the strong side of the bargaining table. Pyrrhus arranged for a delegation to be sent to Rome, headed by his close confidant Cinaeus, a man considered the Demosthenes of his day in terms of oratory, along with a bundle of gifts to be dispensed among the Roman peoples to encourage talks of peace. Cinaeus had met with Roman Senate, an event heavily colorized by Roman propagandists, but it's a delightful image anyways, and he had delivered Pyrrhus' ultimatums. Freedom and autonomy for the Greeks of Magna Graecia, a withdrawal of Rome from the territories of the Samnites, Lucanians, and Magna Graecia, and a personal alliance with King Pyrrhus himself. Freedom and autonomy for the Greeks was a common rallying cry for many of the Macedonian kings, tracing back to Philip II and Alexander, and the notion that it was a personal alliance not to Epirus but to Pyrrhus himself is interesting. Yet, the second point, the withdrawal of Rome, would be a severe blow to the Roman sphere of influence that they had spent decades attempting to achieve. Still, allegedly, the Roman Senate was largely in favor of peace, then continued war with Pyrrhus' army. That is, until a blind old man named Appius Claudius Psychus, one of the eldest members of the Roman Senate, was led through the doors of the Senate by his servants. He learned of Pyrrhus' attempts at bribery with baubles of silver and gold, and upon hearing that the Senate was seriously considering peace, he had come to the Senate House to scold the other Senators. He called them cowards and admonished them for being afraid of a second-rate Alexander the Great, who, quote, spent most of his life dancing attendance on one or the other of Alexander's bodyguards. He further pushed that not only should the Romans reject the peace, but should demand that Pyrrhus turn back home and leave Italy forever. At the end of this rousing speech, the Roman Senate was now aiming for further war, and Cannaeus was kicked out of the city that very day, acknowledging that while Pyrrhus cut down many men at Heraclea, quote, there were many times this number of Romans who were able to bear arms. There were still the matters of the Roman captives. A man named Gaius Fabricius, a Roman of highest virtue but of low economic status, was chosen at the head of the delegation. Pyrrhus found Fabricius delightful. As a soldier at heart with little time for high education and culture, he was especially impressed by the Romans' resistance to bribes and for his cynical humor. Pyrrhus even offered him a chance to join his officer corps, but was rejected by Fabricius, who claimed that if the Epirotes under Pyrrhus knew of his character, they would rather have Fabricius as a king than Pyrrhus. Instead of taking offense, Pyrrhus just laughed and ordered that the Roman prisoners of war were to be released without ransom, preferring to face the Romans again in battle than to broker an unhappy peace. Epirote might would be tested again not long after, as the campaigning season fast approached. Pyrrhus' army was somewhere around 40,000, having been flooded with Italian and Greek allies, and was granted a suitable donation, quote-unquote, of thousands of talents of silver, technically a collective fund gathered from the wealthy sentiments of Magna Graecia to help Pyrrhus to pay the costs of the mercenaries he was hiring to fill his ranks. In total, it was calculated at somewhere around 11,000 talents of silver, an enormous amount of money, and a testament to the wealth of Italy and the seriousness in which the Greeks took the war against Rome. Pyrrhus took his newly reformed army and ravaged the territory of Apulia, and in the meanwhile, the combined forces of the two new consuls, Publius Sulpicius and Publius Decimus Mus, had converged with another Roman army of similar size near the town of Osculum along the eastern coast. The territory was completely unfavorable to Pyrrhus, heavily wooded and prevented him from being able to properly deploy his cavalry, and the nearby river was preventing the elephants from being effectively used. Despite this, Pyrrhus was able to brilliantly adapt the phalanx formation in response to more challenging terrain, and for two days the battle apparently raged on. The Romans, in a repeat of the carnage of Heraclea, threw themselves at the spear of the epaulet phalangites with little care for their own well-being. They did manage to overcome Pyrrhus' advantage of elephants with the deployment of specialized anti-elephant wagons, which had scythes on the side to hack at the poor beast as they approached. But in the end, the Romans once again fled the field of battle, and Pyrrhus was victorious. However, like Heraclea, the battle of Osculum was of enormous cost to Pyrrhus' army, 6,000 dead Romans versus 3,500 dead Epirus. But again, these were made of some of Pyrrhus' officers and crack veterans. Pyrrhus may have been able to overwhelm the Romans tactically, but struggled to keep up logistically. He needed some time apart to recover. But how could he get away? While events on the Italian mainland were not going in Pyrrhus' best interest, another opportunity came to the king's tent. Recent events had left the wealthy island of Sicily, and in particular the city of Syracuse, in a state of perpetual chaos for almost ten years. The death of the strongman tyrant Agathocles, formerly the father-in-law of Pyrrhus, had resulted in a number of despots, one as incompetent as the other. This political vulnerability had attracted the attention of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage, who had long envied and fought with the Greeks for possession of the bountiful wheat supplies that the island could provide. The subsequent despotism of the most recent tyrant and the incoming war with Carthage had left the citizens of Syracuse desperate for any sort of outside help. So, they went to Pyrrhus, hearing of the general's exploits against the Roman Republic. In addition, Pyrrhus had a legitimate claim in the form of his son, Alexander, who was born to Agathocles' daughter, Lenasa, prior to her abandonment of Pyrrhus in favor of Demetrius Polyarchides. In addition, the supplies from Sicily would greatly aid in his war against Rome, and he needed time to recover. At the same time, however, another delegation was sent to Tarentum as well. If my listeners remember from episode 20, in the year 279, Macedon and Greece were completely overrun by an invasion force of Celts, killing the Macedonian king, Ptolemy Karinus. The messengers begged Pyrrhus to return back to Macedonia to help protect the people from further Celtic attack. Nothing like a paralysis of choice to make your life easier. Either deal with the mercenary force of Carthage and reclaim some of the wealthiest and most fertile land outside of Egypt and have an access point to the wealth of North Africa, or head back home to a war-torn wasteland to fight with barbarians. Also, the Carthaginians were attempting to keep Pyrrhus occupied in Italy by supplying the Romans with warships and alliances. The answer was obvious. So, sending Cannaeus to start diplomacy with the Sicilian cities, Pyrrhus began to gather his forces to prepare to sail to new prospects. Understandably, the Tarentines were a bit concerned about Pyrrhus just up and abandoning ship and asked him to either go away or finish the job. The Molossian told him just to keep quiet and he'd be back soon to clean up affairs. And so, in the summer of 278, Pyrrhus landed upon the island of Sicily with about 30,000 infantry, 2,500 cavalry, and of course, his elephants. He made his rounds to the various cities, given a hero's welcome by every ruling body, granted treasure to pay his army and additional citizen levies to bolster his ranks. In addition, Pyrrhus had amassed a generously sized fleet of about 200 ships to support his mission. Throughout 278 and 277, city by city, Pyrrhus managed to expel the Carthaginian garrisons with great success, taking at least 22 settlements by sword and diplomacy. At one point, there was a suggestion that he was declared king of Sicily by his residents and therefore, as a legitimate successor to Agathocles, Pyrrhus had declared his son Alexander as heir to the kingdom of Sicily. Things were finally going Pyrrhus' way since starting this whole Italian expedition. Imagine how foolish he would have been if he took the offer to head back to the cold mountains of Macedon and the Balkans to fight giant barbarians, when he could settle for manhandling the North African merchants who stood in his way of an easy kingship for his sons. Well, fortune changes yet again. Initially, the Greeks who invited Pyrrhus were perfectly acceptable with making themselves subordinate to the Molossian monarch if they were going to defeat the Carthaginians. Bit by bit, though, the goodwill towards Pyrrhus slowly faded away, since they were not too thrilled by his excessive conscription nor his high levels of taxation to fill his war chest. In addition, Pyrrhus was suffering logistical challenges in besieging the heavily fortified Carthaginian city of Lillibaea, modern Marsala, on the westernmost coast of the island. He believed that the next best tactic would be to take the war directly to the shores of Africa, but this wasn't what the Sicilians wanted to hear. Pyrrhus had also prematurely raided the estates of Agathocles and apparently distributed it to some of his epitocronies, who had been corrupted by the wealth and luxury of the region, forming an intense cultural and ethnic enmity with the local Greeks. The final straw came when Pyrrhus, believing that certain leading figures of Sicily were actually hampering the war effort and were secretly carrying pro-Carthaginian sentiments, had a number of them arrested, given a mock trial, and then executed. These launched the Sicilian Greeks into a state of near-uprising, and they demanded that the Molossian leave. Once again, lady luck had turned its ugly head on Pyrrhus. But further prompting would come in the form of messengers. The situation in mainland Italy had taken a turn for the worst, since although Pyrrhus had left the region with a sizable garrison and a trusted officer, the Romans were using the tactic of divide and conquer to pacify the rebellious Italian tribes like the Samnites and Lucanians, before turning their attention to the Epirote forces still occupying Italy. With this news and his unwelcome presence in Sicily, Pyrrhus would leave the island to return to the mainland in 276, once again left with plenty ventured and nothing gained. When the prodigal son returned to he was shocked at the state of affairs. The Romans appeared stronger than ever, while his former allies were left broken and unwilling to offer further troops and supplies to the Epirote army. Additionally, the trip home had caused quite a number of troops' lives after being intercepted by a Carthaginian fleet and attacks from the Mamertines, who would later play an important role in the outbreak of the First Punic War. So, Pyrrhus was in desperate need of more men and money. Looking to refill his coppers, Pyrrhus would plunder the temple at Persephone at the town of Locri. This act would nearly be political suicide with the resident Greeks, who saw the act as a complete sacrilege and a betrayal of their trust. Concern for divine wrath didn't seem to bother the king at the time, but apparently a great storm would sink the vessel transporting some of the treasure, forcing the spooked Pyrrhus to return the remaining amount back to the temple, making the whole affair utterly pointless economically while severely damaging his reputation. The Roman consuls, having built up a sufficiently large force, were determined to bring this Greek interloper to heel. The leading commander of this anti-Pyrrhic force would be Manius Curius Dentatus, Dentatus likely being a jab since it means toothy or of the buck teeth. Name calling aside, Dentatus was different from the commanders who had faced Pyrrhus from before. The consul believed that to decisively defeat Pyrrhus, the Romans were going to have to be more tactful than throwing their bodies into a mass of spears. Pyrrhus picked up word of the Roman army's plundering of Samni and sought to pursue another open battle. However, Dentatus decided to make the battle on his terms by encamping near the town of Malventum and simply hole up on top of a large hill and wait. Pyrrhus had attempted to perform an ambitious night attack on the hill for a vacation, but when you're attacking with large and noisy elephants and need torches to see in the dark along a densely forested path, subtlety is not the operating word I'd use. With a tired and weary army, Pyrrhus had to make a quick decision once his scouts had located a suitable path to attack the camp in the morning. Probably not the best decision, but the anxiety of his men would probably not stay still for long, nor could they wait for the Romans to catch this opportunity and close it up. Unfortunately, the Romans found out. With the art of surprise lost and with an army that was up all night and into the morning, Pyrrhus' phalanxes shakily moved up the elevated terrain, quickly falling into large gaps, which the Romans noticed, and swarmed towards like army ants in the hinges of a great armored beetle. The Epirote army was being torn apart, and the elephants were now even less useful, with the Romans driving the beasts mad with javelins and arrows, and according to Dionysius, the Romans used the gruesome tactic of covering pigs with pitch and tar and setting them ablaze and squealing down the hill towards the elephants, who were understandably terrified by this nightmarish sight. While the Romans did suffer tremendous losses themselves, they managed to remain in rank, and used Pyrrhus' elephants against him, wounding a young elephant calf and sending the herd into a frenzy amongst the Epirote forces. Pyrrhus himself would order retreat, not that the troops weren't already fleeing for their lives, and he returned to Tarentum in defeat. Finally, the Pyrrhic victory had turned into a Pyrrhic defeat, and the Romans considered the Battle of Beneventum to be one of their greatest military achievements. Wait, Beneventum? I thought it was called Malventum. Well, the Romans used to think that Malventum was a cursed place, hence the name Mal, meaning bad. Well, it turns out that Malventum was actually a lucky place, and so they decided to rename the town Beneventum, Bene meaning good. Well, can't argue with that logic. This was humiliating to Pyrrhus, a complete and utter disaster. In a single battle, his army was completely ravaged, and his hopes for an Italian kingdom was now pretty much in ashes. Pyrrhus would immediately take a ship back to Epirus, and despite leaving a small force and a commander behind, he was ultimately leaving the greats to their fates under eventual Roman domination. After six years of fighting, Pyrrhus was back in Epirus and had little to show for his efforts. His army was roughly 8,000 strong, but lost all of their plunder and booty acquired over the campaign, and they demanded their back pay. Yet, Pyrrhus was not deterred from his dreams of acquiring an even larger kingdom, and in an effort to both expand his domain and acquire booty for his irritable troops, the king would once again invade Macedon. Pyrrhus likely thought that his charisma and personal valor would lead the Macedonian acceptance of his rule. However, he failed to take into account that on the throne wasn't a boy king, a flamboyant pomp like Demetrius, nor an oppressive usurper like Ptolemy Charonus. The current king was Antigonus Gonatas, the savior of Macedon and Greece from the attacks of the Celts, and so was held in high respect by his subjects. Never mind that Pyrrhus was actually employing Gauls as mercenaries in his armies, who apparently ravaged the tombs of Macedonian kings in Agiai for booty in their journey. But still, Pyrrhus was a superior general and managed to defeat Gonatas on the field of battle. However, yet another opportunity came to Pyrrhus in the form of an exiled Spartan prince named Cleonemus, who was kicked out of Sparta because of a domestic dispute, and he had requested Pyrrhus to return him and reinstall him as a designated heir. The Molossian didn't care about the Spartan's troubled love life, but what he did care about was taking control of the Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece, and an opportunity to strike at Antigonus' base of power in the process was an excellent idea. Besides, the Spartans were no longer the great powerhouses of the Peloponnesian War and the Persia. What could go wrong? Well, plenty went wrong. In 272, Pyrrhus besieged Sparta, but was surprised at the level of tenacity of its citizens. Every man, woman, and child was employed in the defense of Sparta, digging massive trenches and anti-elephant repellents, and when the fighting broke out proper, the citizens of Sparta performed admirably, repelling the swarming troops as everyone took part to defend their homeland. The siege was ultimately a failure for Pyrrhus, who lost several troops and his own son Ptolemy in the fighting, and he had to withdraw to Argos, where Antigonus was waiting nearby. But instead of dealing with Antigonus directly, Pyrrhus vented his rage against the city of Argos, who, despite being nominally neutral, had been engaging in talks with the Antigonid king. Pyrrhus besieged and eventually broke into the city. Unfortunately, his army had made it into the inner walls at night, but quickly lost their momentum, and had faced the wrath of the angry Argive citizens, who fought the Epirotes with such a fury that the Epirote forces were essentially trapped inside the agora and marketplace. Pyrrhus tried to rally his men in vain, attempting to sound a retreat. Unfortunately, one of the elephants that was brought into the city had got stuck at the gate, and created a crush of men, unable to get out of Argos. As the chaos swarmed around him, Pyrrhus whipped off his helmet and tried to fight his way out, cutting down the Argives who'd gotten his way, until a spear point pierced his breastplate, wounding him. In a rage, Pyrrhus turned to see his attacker, a young peasant boy shakily wielding a spear. Observing all of this from the rooftop of her home was an old woman, the mother of the Argive boy, and upon the sight of her son standing face to face with one of the greatest warriors of the age, she instinctively picked up the nearest thing to her, a ceramic roof tile, and hurled it at the Molossian king. Pyrrhus didn't know what hit him, literally, as the tile conked him at the base of his neck, likely shattering his vertebrae and knocking him out cold. One of the Antigonid troops defending the city had came upon the unconscious body of Pyrrhus, recognizing him, and was going to make the killing blow before the king suddenly woke up with a severe stare, draining the nerves of the soldier and screwing up his swing, messily beheading Pyrrhus at the mouth. The head and the body were handed over to Antigonus, who reportedly cremated the Molossian king with full honors and returned his ashes to his sons. And so was the ignominious end of one of the greatest military men of the age, Pyrrhus, the Molossian king of Epirus. He was 46 years old. In many ways, the reception of Pyrrhus of Epirus had his character as a curious mixture. In terms of how those in antiquity viewed him, his skill and tactical prowess had left a mark on the commanders and thinkers of the classical world. He was hailed as a military genius, above all else, by Hannibal Barca, who, in an anecdote I relayed to you at the very beginning of this series, claimed that he was the greatest general only behind Alexander the Great. And Pyrrhus' Tritian warfare became well known to many readers, including Hannibal, who consulted it and emulated many of Pyrrhus' actions before his own campaigning in Italy during the Second Punic War. To many of the Macedonians in Epirus, Pyrrhus was the second coming of Alexander in terms of his prowess on the battlefield and his personality, preferring to display his skills of combat rather than take the pomp of rulership. Plutarch claimed that, compared to all the other diadohoi and successors of Alexander, it was Pyrrhus who most resembled the dead king. The Romans considered their victory over Pyrrhus as one of their greatest achievements, viewing the Molossian king as a worthy adversary and the closest they ever came to fighting Alexander the Great. At the same time, Pyrrhus is not to be considered perfect. Plutarch himself admits that Pyrrhus was a man consumed with the fires of war, the constant need for glory in combat, which would not let him settle down. Potentially, if Pyrrhus decided to remain in Macedon in Epirus, he could have united the fragmented bits of Alexander's former empire by acting as a defender of Greece from the attack of the Gauls, and we might have seen a Pyrrhic dynasty on the throne of Macedon instead of the Antigonids. It's also curious that Pyrrhus was regarded so highly in antiquity because ultimately he failed in every venture he partook in. He couldn't keep control of Macedon, he couldn't overcome the Roman Republic, nor the Carthaginians in Sicily, leading to his rather disgraceful death in Greece. Some scholars also take a dim view of his abilities as anything but a general, pointing to his inflexibility as a politician when it came to his treatment of the citizens of Tarentum in Sicily. He didn't know how to play nice according to the rules of wherever he was. In my own opinion, I think many of these criticisms are a bit strong. Pyrrhus was certainly capable of being politically astute, knowing how to wield diplomacy and propaganda as effectively as any other of the Diadohoi. He is also remarkable in his unwillingness to quit, despite being dealt a really poor hand time and time over. From being forced to run for his life from his home as an infant to the losses of his invasion fleet in the disastrous crossing of the Adriatic Sea to Italy, Pyrrhus was often subject to strokes of misfortune that could have easily happened to a figure like Alexander the Great. Yet, he could nearly always come back through sheer force of will, cleverness, and personal charisma that won the hearts of great commanders like Ptolemy I and the subordinates that served under him. He was humble, personally valiant, and extremely capable, transforming a backwater nation into the premier powerhouse of the Balkans and Greece. Perhaps if he had that same level of luck as Alexander, we might have seen Pyrrhus turn into one of the great figures of classical antiquity on the level of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. However, he was a warlord through and through, fixated in the Molossian form of kingship that demands constant war and personal endangerment. His final years almost seemed like angry flailing, failing to take into consideration the developments that had occurred in Greece and Macedon while he was gone in Italy. He also failed to learn the importance of a helmet. And unlike Alexander, he did not have the luck to avoid the perils of personal combat, dying ingloriously thanks to an old woman looking to protect her son. And so, we conclude our look at the life of Pyrrhus of Epirus. Some of the main secondary sources I've been using are the Cambridge Ancient History, which has helped tremendously in piecing together the fragmented account of Pyrrhus' invasion of Italy. And also for the battle accounts, I've relied on Joseph Piotrkowski's The Great Battles of the Hellenistic World. For the study of Epirus in general, I have been using Epirus by N. G. L. Hammond. Further information on the sources can be found on my website in the show notes, which I'll provide the link to in the podcast description. In any case, thank you all for listening to the show. If you like what you've been listening to, please consider heading on iTunes and leaving a five-star review or sharing the show with friends to get the word out. I also encourage you to check out the Ancient Greece Declassified podcast by Lantern Jack, who did the introduction for the show, and goes into depth about the various aspects of the classical and ancient Greek world. The next episode will be the first of a two-part look at the lives and roles of women in the Hellenistic Age. So, until next time, you've been listening to The Hellenistic Age Podcast.