|
Dromo's Den
|
|
[Up] [Dromo's Den] Pyrrhus Biography PYRRHUS (c.318-272 B.C.). King of Epirus, son of Æacides and Phthia and a distant kinsman of Alexander the Great. According to one account he was a descendant of Neoptolemus (otherwise called Pyrrhus), son of Achilles. When Æacides was deposed by a faction of his people and driven from his Kingdom, Pyrrhus, who was then but an infant two years of age, was rescued by some faithful attendants of the King and carried to Glaucias, King of a tribe of the Illyrians. By him he was restored to his Kingdom when 12 years old, but in 302 was again driven out and took refuge with Demetrius Poliorcetes. After serving in the battle of Ipsus he went as a hostage for Demetrius to Egypt, where he married the stepdaughter of Ptolemy Soter. Thence returning to Epirus, he regained possession of his throne, and immediately directed his attention to the conquest of Macedonia. He obtained possession of the western part of that country and, when his former friend Demetrius became King, joined a coalition with several others to drive him out. He was successful, and in 287 B.C. the Kingdom was divided between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus. Pyrrhus reigned but a few months, however, and was then himself expelled in favor of Lysimachus. In 281 B.C. the people of Tarentum, a Greek colony in lower Italy, then at war with the Romans, sent an embassy to Pyrrhus, in the name of all the Greek colonies in Italy, offering him the command of all their troops against their enemies. Taking up their cause, Pyrrhus in 280 B.C. arrived at Tarentum with 25,000 troops and 20 elephants. The first battle between Pyrrhus and the Romans, who were commanded by the consul, M. Valerius Lævinus, took place at the river Siris in Lucania. Only through the help of the elephants, whose strange appearance and gigantic size excited a sudden panic among the Romans, did Pyrrhus win the victory. See PYRRHIC VICTORY. He now advanced into central Italy, on his way towards Rome, but, finding the city well defended, he withdrew to Tarentum and wintered there. In the following year (270 B.C. ) he was victorious over the Romans at Asculum in Apulia, but lost so heavily that, unable to follow up his victory, he withdrew to Tarentum. Having been invited by the Greeks of Sicily to assist them in their struggles with the Carthaginians and the Mamertines (q.v.), Pyrrhus effected a truce with Rome (278) and crossed into Sicily. His first exploits in that island were both brilliant and successful, so that the Carthaginians were confined to Lilybæum and the Mamertines to Messana. Then the Sicilians began to murmur at the burdens put upon them by Pyrrhus and to treat with the enemy, and in 276 B.C. Pyrrhus left the island and returned to Tarentum. On his way he fought the Carthaginian fleet off Syracuse and the Mamertine army near Rhegium. In the following year (275) he was completely defeated by Manius Curius Dentatus, near Beneventum, and in 274 he returned to Epirus, leaving Milo with a garrison at Tarentum. In 273 he once more invaded Macedonia, over which Antigonus Gonatas was King, and established himself a second time as ruler of that country. In 272, at the request of Cleonymus, the rightful but excluded King of Sparta, he led a force into the Peloponnesus. He attacked Sparta, but was repulsed, and then withdrew to Argos, to assist Aristeas, one of the leading citizens of the place, in his rivalries with Aristippus. Here he met Antigonus of Macedon, the champion of the opposite faction, and a fight took place in the streets of the city. Pyrrhus was thrown from his horse and stunned by a tile thrown from a housetop by the mother of the man whom he was about to kill, and was then killed by one of the soldiers of Antigonus. Consult the standard histories of Rome; also: J. G. Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus (2d ed., Gotha, 1877-78); Rudolf Schubert, Gcschichte des Pyrrhus (Konigsberg, 1894); J. P. Mahaffy, Alexander's Empire (New York, 1898): Carl Klotzsch, Epirotische Geschichte bis zum Jahre 280 vor Christus (Berlin, 1911). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 407-408. |