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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.
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 wrote memoirs and several books on the art of war. These have since been lost, although, according to Plutarch, Hannibal was influenced by them, [4] and they received praise from Cicero. [55] Pyrrhus was married five times: his first wife Antigone bore him a daughter called Olympias and a son named Ptolemy in honour of her stepfather.
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.
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 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 ...
Pyrrhus, who was waging war on the Roman Republic in Southern Italy at the time, accepted. The reputation of Pyrrhus as liberator of the Greeks from barbarian threats would have been damaged if Syracuse were to be conquered by Carthage. [3] Also, Sicily offered the opportunity for a possible invasion of Libya, [4] like Agathocles had done ...
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.