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The Pyrrhic War (/ ˈ p ɪr ɪ k / PIRR-ik; 280–275 BC) was largely fought between the Roman Republic and Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, who had been asked by the people of the Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy to help them in their war against the Romans.
The Tarentines asked Pyrrhus to lead their war against the Romans. [6] [34] Pyrrhus was encouraged to aid the Tarentines by the Oracle of Delphi. He recognized the possibility of carving out an empire for himself in Italy. He made an alliance with Ptolemy Keraunos, King of Macedon and his most powerful neighbor, and arrived in Italy in 280 BC. [35]
The siege of Lilybaeum was a military operation of the Pyrrhic War in 278 BC, when an Epirote-Syracusian army led by Pyrrhus of Epirus attempted to capture the strategically important port city of Lilybaeum held by the Carthaginian Empire.
Pyrrhus gathered an army of 25,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 24 war elephants and invaded the Peloponnese under the ruse of attacking Antigonid garrisons in southern Greece. He then marched his army through allied country all the way to the south of Sparta and tried to take the city.
The Battle of Beneventum (275 BC) was the last battle of the Pyrrhic War. It was fought near Beneventum, in southern Italy, between the forces of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in Greece, and the Romans, led by consul Manius Curius Dentatus. The result was a Roman victory (possibly strategic) and Pyrrhus was forced to return to Tarentum, and later to ...
Map depicting the campaigns of Pyrrhus in southern Italy and Sicily and the location of the Kingdom of Epirus in Greece. Following entreaties from the Greek polis of Tarentum in 281 BC, Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus in northern Greece, invaded Italy with an army of 25,500 and 20 war elephants. [1]
Pyrrhus features in the player's speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2) where his killing of Priam is described; The Second Part of the Iron Age, the final play in the Ages series by Thomas Heywood; Pyrrhus is a leading character in Andromaque (1667), a play by Jean Racine; Astianatte (1725), an opera by Leonardo Vinci
Pyrrhus then received two embassies from Syracuse. After a long civil war between Thinion and Sosistratus, the city was powerless against the Carthaginian invasion, and both generals sought the support of Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus' strategic decision to march on Sicily has been debated in historiography, as it meant the opening of a new military front ...