Pyrrhus: Warlord of Ancient Greece

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Speaker 1 It's 279 BC.

Speaker 1 On a large plain in southern Italy, near the town of Asculum, two armies line up against each other.

Speaker 1 On one side, you have the legions of the Roman Republic, a power that has been gradually expanding its control into southern Italy over the past few decades.

Speaker 1 Opposing them was the most formidable general the Romans had ever faced. A famous Greek warlord renowned for his charisma and his exceptional military skill.

Speaker 1 So much so that he was likened to Alexander the Great.

Speaker 1 This general had with him a powerful army, heavy pike-wielding infantry and shock cavalry feared throughout the Mediterranean, not to mention elephants, brought all the way from India.

Speaker 1 The general's name was Pyrrhus. He had come to southern Italy to stop the Romans in their tracks and to carve out his own empire.

Speaker 1 Yet it would be the outcome of this battle that would define his legacy.

Speaker 1 It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we are talking through the story of one of my favorite figures from ancient history.

Speaker 1 The Hellenistic warlord who I wrote my dissertation on, who challenged Rome in southern Italy and won a victory against them that was so costly that he is the figure from whom we get the term Pyrrhic victory, where you win a battle at such great cost that you lose the war.

Speaker 1 This is the incredible story of King Pyrrhus of Epirus. He fought Romans, Carthaginians, Sicilians, Greeks.

Speaker 1 He was related to Alexander the Great and highly regarded by many of his contemporaries, including the Romans.

Speaker 1 His story took him all across the Mediterranean world and he was obsessed with gaining great conquests.

Speaker 2 He was the definition of an ancient warlord.

Speaker 1 To talk through his story, I was delighted to head to Cardiff University to interview Dr. Louis Raulings.

Speaker 1 Louis has been on the podcast several times before, talking through the campaigns of Hannibal Barker against Rome. But Louis, he also has a big fascination with Pyrrhus.

Speaker 1 This is an episode I've been wanting to do since I started the Ancients four years ago. And well, better late than never.

Speaker 1 Louis, welcome back to the podcast.

Speaker 2 It has been too long. I know, I've really missed our conversations, Tristan.

Speaker 1 Our conversations have usually been about Hannibal, but when we've talked in the past, we've talked about this figure who I've been dying to do a podcast episode on since this whole podcast, since the ancients began some four years ago.

Speaker 1 One of my favourite figures, and one of your favourite figures too, Pyrrhus.

Speaker 2 Yes, indeed. Mainly because he's an inspiration to Hannibal and has a go at the Romans in the same kind of way.
So yes, I'm really looking forward to talking about him and talking with you about him.

Speaker 1 Well, let's set the scene first of all.

Speaker 2 Who was Pyrrhus? So Pyrrhus was king of Epirus. He was born in about 319 and passed away in 272 BC.

Speaker 2 He is a Molossian, so quite a small region of western Greece, which was effectively divided up between three tribes.

Speaker 1 And today, that's kind of like southern Albania and northwest Greece today, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. So we've got the Molossians in the middle and the Kaonians to the north and the Thesprotians to the south.
And sometime in the fourth century BC, these

Speaker 2 three tribes became unified as the kind of kingdom of Epirus under a dynasty of Aakids.

Speaker 1 Aya, what?

Speaker 2 Aakids. Yes.
So named after Aeachides, who was the first king, but this name recurs. So in fact, some generations down the line, Pyrrhus's father is, in fact, Aakidas as well.

Speaker 2 And so he's born into a royal family.

Speaker 2 It has an interesting relationship with the tribes in the sense that the kings sit above the tribes, even though they're ethnically Molossian and the kings were originally a Molossian dynasty.

Speaker 2 They sit above the tribes and they have to work with the tribes to get things done.

Speaker 2 And so they have fairly limited royal powers they are able to lead armies and conduct foreign policy but they're not able to mint coins for example that is the koine the commonality of the epirates who have that kind of authority so there's a devolution of of of roles between the king and the people and every year they have to swear an oath to each other to obey the laws in common And can we explore a bit more about Epirus itself, as you mentioned there?

Speaker 1 Because when someone mentions ancient Greece or a Greek kingdom, you might think of Athens or Sparta or Corinth and ultimately with Alexander the Great of the Macedonians.

Speaker 1 Epirus, you know, this kind of this kingdom that is formed by these three different tribes in northwest Greece, it feels a bit of an outlier.

Speaker 1 It's one that we haven't heard the name of as much as others. But is Pyrrhus a time when it does come to the fore?

Speaker 2 I think... They're beginning to flex their muscles in the mid to late fourth century.

Speaker 2 They ally with Alexander the great's family so originally philip his father philip ii of macedon receives in marriage a molossian noblewoman the sister of alexander i the molossian who we'll come to a bit later on and her name is olympias and she's the mother of alexander the great so in terms of geopolitics although on one level Epirus is a bit of a backwater for most Greeks and you know I would imagine most Athenians would struggle to know where Epirus was.

Speaker 2 nevertheless in terms of the politics of the emerging macedonian kingdom and of course alexander's great conquests they are an important and integral part of the early empire building of philip ii and therefore they have this kind of relationship with macedon which is quite intricate and intimate but yes they're a geopolitical backwater essentially for most greeks The location,

Speaker 2 as you said, is sort of northern western Greece and southern Albania. They're surrounded by the Macedonians on their east.

Speaker 2 They have Illyrian tribes and a big Illyrian kingdom has emerged in the fourth century to the north. And to the south, they have the Greeks.

Speaker 2 And to the west, there is the island of Corfu, Corsaira, as it was known then, as well. So this is their mini-world, as it were.
Their geography is quite awkward.

Speaker 1 So Corsair, that's Corfu, isn't it? That ancient Corfu God.

Speaker 2 The geography of Epirus is quite complex in the sense that there is a big mountain range, the Pinaris Mountains, to the east.

Speaker 2 But this creates a series of north-south folds, and so which eventually flattens out to the sea.

Speaker 2 So it's quite awkward traveling west to east because the mountains get bigger and bigger as you kind of go over them. But it does mean that it's harder to invade Epirus.

Speaker 2 And so the Epirates benefit really from being quite secluded from the aggression of their neighbours.

Speaker 1 It's interesting. So if we go to the time of Pyrrhus's birth,

Speaker 1 I mean, first off, what does Zapirus look like by the time of Pyrrhus' birth? And what is the whole story behind Pyrrhus' birth? I'm guessing he is born into a high status.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, he's the son of the current king, Kidas, who succeeds Alexander the Molossian. We'll come back to him, I think, later on.
He is born into a world which is very volatile.

Speaker 2 Alexander has conquered the known world and then died.

Speaker 1 The Macedonian Alexander got the died.

Speaker 2 Yes, sorry, Alexander the the great has passed away and left an empire in disarray and his generals the diadokes are now competing with one another to carve up the empire of alexander and we therefore find that pyrrhus is born into a world in 319 where

Speaker 2 the Macedonians are tearing themselves apart essentially with huge armies and great wars of great generals that spread from from Epirus all the way across to Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 These are the wars of the successors. That's right.

Speaker 2 And so when Pyrrhus is born, he's born into a royal family which has connections with

Speaker 2 the Macedonian elite, but they're kind of, you know, they're bit players.

Speaker 2 They are aligned with Olympias, of course, the Molossian, and she is in competition with Cassander, one of Alexander's generals and regent in Macedonia, and the pair of those don't get on at all.

Speaker 2 And Aikidas sides with the wrong side. He backs Olympias, and in fact, Cassander comes out on top.
And so Aikides and his family have to flee and they flee to Illyria eventually.

Speaker 2 And there's a story that Pyrrhus is, as a little baby, he's only two when they have to flee the court.

Speaker 2 They're trying to get across a river to get into Illyria and it's overrun with, you know, it's swollen with floodwater. And so they shoot an arrow across with a...

Speaker 2 a letter wrapped around saying please come and help us and somebody wades across and the first person to wade across has the name achilles now why this is interesting is that this is seen as a sign that pyrrhus is destined for great things because pyrrhus actually is an alternative name for the son of achilles whose name was neoptolemus in some versions and pyrrhus in other versions so there's this connection already with a you know a savior achilles figure who is the father-like figure for pyrrhus and the royal family of Molossia trace their whole family line back to Neoptolemus and to Achilles eventually.

Speaker 2 And also they claim heroes.

Speaker 1 They love mythological connections.

Speaker 2 They love these mythological connections. But irritatingly, they also start naming each other after these people.

Speaker 2 So we will see that the person who replaces Achidas on the throne is called Neoptolemus. Not the hero Neoptolemus, but this Neoptolemus.
And he's a child king, a puppet of Cassander at this time.

Speaker 2 we find that Pyrrhus has enters the court of the Illyrian king.

Speaker 1 And Illyri, that's the region to the north, isn't it? That's kind of the Balkans area, a bit further north of Epirus.

Speaker 2 That's right. And the king is Glaucus.

Speaker 2 And there's another story that when the baby turns up, you know, Glaucus is worried about Cassandra, but the baby crawls out of his little robes and either comes up and tugs at Glaucus'

Speaker 2 costume and his throat. His robes, yeah.
Yeah, his robes, or he goes over to an altar and sort of supplicates a god. You know, there's two-year-olds just kind of crawling around and stuff.

Speaker 2 Anyway, Glaucus's heart melts and he gives him over to his wife to raise as one of his own sort of foster children, really.

Speaker 2 And so for the next few years, Pyrrhus is raised in the court of Illyria as an Illyrian prince, essentially, and makes lots of connections with the Illyrian royal family and

Speaker 2 is raised to be a typical kind of Hellenistic Illyrian noble, Greek noble.

Speaker 1 A Hellenistic Illyrian because Illyrians are normally seen as quite barbarian, but they're also very warlike and warriors.

Speaker 1 And also this kind kind of time following Alexander the Great's death where to be a warlord, to be a leader, you're almost, you're meant to be someone who leads from the front at the same time.

Speaker 1 So I guess this, even though in the past the Illyrians and the Greeks are seen, they distance themselves from each other, one's barbarians in Greek eyes, the others, you know, they see themselves as civilized.

Speaker 1 I guess at that time for Pyrrhus being raised in that court,

Speaker 1 perhaps, you know, those, those, those lines are a bit more skewed now because what is expected of a leader at that time is someone who can fight, who can be a warrior, who's not afraid to put their life on the line in the front ranks with their soldiers.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 So the warrior culture of northern Greece is really coming to the fore and those kind of civic values of the Athenians and, you know, Corinthians and Argives, those are sort of becoming less important in the grand scheme of things because these men are, these boys are raised to become leaders and kings of nations.

Speaker 2 You know, the Illyrians are there a kingdom the pirates epirus is a kingdom macedonia is a kingdom these are different kind of structures to what the greeks had experienced oh so called like democracy or oligarchy exactly so so to be a good king you need to be a good war leader and essentially as we'll see the position of a ruler is based entirely on his capacity to keep it in fact there's a story that pyrrhus is asked

Speaker 2 or his sons, when he has sons later on, when he grows up, he's asked which of his sons is going to succeed. And he says, whichever one keeps his sword sharpest.

Speaker 1 Makes it half difficult for the succession of all and kind of making sure that there will be a bloody succession crisis, but that is a story from another day.

Speaker 1 We are ultimately talking about the successor wars in our chapter too. I mean, this is something, those Titanic wars after Alexander the Great.

Speaker 1 Now, Pyrrhus himself, when he's pretty young, he's drawn into those too, isn't he?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so he, interestingly, he's restored to his throne at the age of 11 by Glaucius, who moves and displaces Neptolemus.

Speaker 2 But six years later, it's Cassander who comes back and essentially throws Pyrrhus out and he's forced to flee again. And Neoptolemus is restored.

Speaker 2 And Pyrrhus then has to go and find something else to do, or find somewhere else to be.

Speaker 1 And Pyrrhus's dad, Eacides, he's dead by this point.

Speaker 2 Well, he dies in 313.

Speaker 2 Eacides has died in 313. So he's essentially, Pyrrhus is essentially an orphan.
He's relying quite a lot on Glaucus.

Speaker 2 And so in 307, when he's 11, glaucius puts him on the pirate throne but by 302 he's out again and he goes to the husband of his sister he has two sisters and one of them is married to demetrius who is the son of one of alexander's oldest and greatest generals antigonus the one-eyed love

Speaker 2 but demetrius is going to become demetrius the pesieger so he's a famous figure in his own right and commands huge armies and holds greece for Antigonus.

Speaker 2 And he joined, Epirus joins Demetrius, his brother-in-law, and the pair of them go off to fight in the successor wars. And they fight the great battle of Ipsus in 301,

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 we don't know whether Pyrrhus actually had a command, but he certainly fought incredibly bravely in that battle.

Speaker 2 He was probably with Demetrius on the right, where the cavalry of Demetrius swept all before it, but then was unable to come back because elephants blocked the way.

Speaker 2 And Antigonus himself, the one-eyed, is killed in this battle and falls. So, this is a defeat for Demetrius.

Speaker 2 The point I want to make is that Pyrrhus is exposed to these huge battles with 70,000-plus men.

Speaker 1 This is the Titanic battle, he said. Elephants, horses, infantry, more than 100,000 soldiers for him to be there and on the losing side.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's quite a baptism of fire into the military workplace.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for a 17-year-old, it's just incredible, isn't it? And

Speaker 2 by all accounts, by this time, he's already acquired the skills either either in illyrio or when he's growing up in a pirus as and has a regent and he's and he's kind of a young king he's acquired all the skills of war all the arts of combat to fight bravely to fight distinguishedly i think physiologically he's quite a strong powerful individual anyway he's got a he's got seems to be you know very very buff to put it lightly And you know, his appearance is supposedly more terrible than kingly in terms of how he inspires his men.

Speaker 2 So he learns at this battle, I think,

Speaker 2 how to manage huge armies. And after Demetrius is defeated and survives, Demetrius carries on the wars of the successors, but leaves Pyrrhus in Greece to look after his possessions there.

Speaker 2 But despite being a loyal ally of Demetrius and holding and garrisoning in Greece, when Demetrius cuts a deal with one of the other successors, Ptolemy I of Egypt, he is part of the collateral.

Speaker 2 He becomes a hostage and he's offered as a hostage to Ptolemy

Speaker 2 and goes to Alexandria.

Speaker 1 That familial loyalty didn't stretch very far, did it? Entirely.

Speaker 2 I mean, in a way, you know, it's flattering because it means that Demetrius is Pyrrhus is regarded as important to Demetrius, is an important asset to be given over as a guarantee in this peace treaty.

Speaker 2 But obviously, usually the fate of hostages is

Speaker 2 when the peace breaks down, these hostages are dealt with you know so it's almost a death sentence for him potentially if things go badly but he impresses the court at alexandria in egypt a sort of flourishing town it's quite new it's it was established by alexander the great himself alexandria this is yes alexandria and ptolemy the first has kind of turned it into a kind of northern capital for him and flooding with greek culture and greek thinkers.

Speaker 2 There's a story actually that Pyrrhus gets involved in a debate about which philosopher he prefers over two philosophers and presumably this happens in Alexandria and he turns around and goes well I prefer Polypercon who is in fact a general so he kind of that's where his interests lie he's not very academic he does study the art of war and he's known to have read a lot about the art of war and really studied it intensely probably got a lot of benefit in the library of alexandria from that although I'm speculating here.

Speaker 2 But he was quite learned and he wrote his own memoirs and he wrote his own work work on tactics in later life. So he is a man of letters to a certain extent, but only when it comes to war.

Speaker 2 He's not really interested in philosophy and other stuff like that. He impresses the court of Ptolemy with his hunting prowess and his riding skills as well.

Speaker 2 I think that's something they must have done in Epirus on a rainy afternoon, you know, when nothing much is happening in the kingdom.

Speaker 2 These Macedonian kings are extremely proficient riders and hunters and users of spears and things like that because they impart martial qualities.

Speaker 2 So he impresses everyone in court and in particular he impresses Berenike who is the wife of Ptolemy and she's so impressed that she actually proposes a marriage with her daughter by another husband and so she marries off one of her daughters to Pyrrhus which is a great mark of respect and puts Pyrrhus ahead of the other princes in the court.

Speaker 2 And with this connection, he's then able to persuade Ptolemy to restore him to the throne of Epirus. And Ptolemy backs him with an army and troops and money.
And so he returns in 297 BC to Epirus.

Speaker 2 Fortunately, Cassander's dead by now. And so that is the opening because Macedon falls into disarray and Cassander's sons are competing against one another.
He then takes the throne.

Speaker 2 But rather than throwing Neoptolemus out, because these two have been oscillating backwards and forwards, and we know that essentially Neoptolemus would have gone to another king and tried to persuade him.

Speaker 1 Tries to get their support.

Speaker 2 Yeah, to restore him, he cuts a deal and they co-rule for a little while. Unfortunately, they don't really get on.
They've never got on.

Speaker 2 Neoptolemus and the Molossians and the Epirates don't seem to like their kings all that much. So they kind of tolerate them.

Speaker 2 they'd already removed Aicidas, Pyrrhus's father, when he was off on a campaign. They just went, right, we've had enough of him.
he's really unpopular. And so they just got rid of him.

Speaker 2 And Neoptolemus was kind of brought in by Cassander. And now Neoptolemus is out of favour with the Molossians.
And so Pyrrhus seeing this and also learning of a conspiracy to poison him,

Speaker 2 which Pyrrhus gets witnesses for and confirms. And he's then able to infiltrate the conspiracy and then invite Neoptolemus to a party on a sacrifice day and just kill him at his house.

Speaker 2 So Pyrrhus overthrows Neoptolemus at that point, having judged that the Epirates weren't in favor of their older king.

Speaker 2 So he then seizes power and becomes absolute ruler of Epirus right down to his death in 272. So from 295, he's effectively unchallenged king of Epirus.

Speaker 1 It's a really interesting rise for this figure, isn't it? And I mean, just highlighting a bit more that

Speaker 1 exile, well, being a hostage in Alexandria of all places in Egypt, this new kind of growing capital.

Speaker 1 As you mentioned, you've got like the opening stages, the very beginnings of the Library of Alexandria.

Speaker 1 Ptolemy's bringing all these philosophers and people in and Pyrrhus being interested in the military treaties and all of that.

Speaker 1 And sometimes we think of hostages being, you know, kept in a jail cell or somewhere dark and dingy. But back in that time, yes, there were dangers if the deal broke down.

Speaker 1 But they would be in the court. They would be...
with royal figures. They had a good chance to try and impress themselves.

Speaker 1 And evidently, Pyrrhus really impressed himself because of then what you explained.

Speaker 1 That lays the foundations for him to go back, to be supported by an army that goes across the Mediterranean to Rapirus in northwest Greece, instates him on the throne.

Speaker 1 Then he can overthrow his co-ruler. And then he now has a strong army there, strong support.

Speaker 1 And it all stems from that time in exile, from that time when he's been away and now come back more powerful than ever.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and absolutely. And you have to remember that hostages are given as guarantors of peace, but actually they're assets, they're political assets.

Speaker 2 You take somebody off the board for one player and you lend it to another player, as it were.

Speaker 2 And so it's often the case that you find that the hostages become more pro-the captors, as it were, or they're, you know, the people who are now holding them than the people who originally they were serving and allied to.

Speaker 2 And the Romans do this, don't they?

Speaker 2 They take hostages from various tribes and then they Romanize them and they become, you know, therefore advocates for the Romans when they go back to their communities.

Speaker 2 So this is an old geopolitical game, and we can see it at play here in the Hellenistic period. And

Speaker 2 in the period of the successes, there are lots of these people moving about, hostages being given all over the place, and people living in other people's courts.

Speaker 2 And it's amazing how Pyrrhus stays alive, even to get to 17, because

Speaker 2 he's been thrown out. twice and from his own kingdom.

Speaker 2 And either time he could have been killed, and some of his supporters and friends are, but he's able to fall on his feet, landing with the Illyrians, then, you know, then Demetrius, then Ptolemy.

Speaker 2 And his relationship with Ptolemy remains very strong throughout his reign,

Speaker 2 even in the shifting patterns of the geopolitics of the successor wars, where everyone turns on everyone else. To a certain extent, you know, that relationship between Ptolemy and Pyrrhus remains.

Speaker 2 In fact, his wife, the daughter of Berenike and Tigone, he even names a city after her and

Speaker 2 founds Apollis, a sort of Greek-style city in Epirus, and he names it after her as well. So he's got this kind of affection, I think, for the Ptolemies and for his time in Egypt.

Speaker 1 Now, I want to get towards, I mean, quite quickly, I'd like to get towards Pyrrhus's war with Rome, because he fights a number of wars before that.

Speaker 2 And let's briefly...

Speaker 1 cover them now so as not to get into too much detail because I know that they're quite a few in quick succession they get quite complicated don't they and the this kind of tail end of the successor wars but but before we get to him on his italian venture it seems that it's not long before he decides he needs to show his prowess in war once again and there are opportunities there on the greek mainland for him to do that yeah so he's fallen out with demetrius who

Speaker 2 after a brief kind of moment is able to seize the throne of macedon and then pyrrhus

Speaker 2 essentially wages war from about 294 down to about 288 with Demetrius. Now, Demetrius is,

Speaker 2 Greece is just, and Macedon is just one of the things that he's involved in. He's one of the really big players.

Speaker 2 So he's involved in wars in Asia and he gathers troops together for another big attempt to kind of unify Alexander's empire.

Speaker 2 And so Epirus is a bit of an irritant, but he has to kind of keep facing off against Pyrrhus.

Speaker 2 By the time we get to 289, he's provoked Demetrius so much that Demetrius launches a major invasion with two columns into Epirus heading north from sort of the southern part of northern Greece.

Speaker 2 So he's heading up one of the valleys that I mentioned into Epirus and Pyrrhus is coming the other way to meet him, but they go down a different valley and he in fact meets ships in the night coming.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And he meets the other column of Demetrius's force.
In fact, he kind of before that really got out of Achanania, it's sort of Greek region.

Speaker 2 And so this guy, Pantalkes, who is one of the great generals of Demetrius's army, confronts Pyrrhus in battle.

Speaker 2 And according to one story, they even meet and they seek each other out on the battlefield. And Pyrrhus and Pantalkes fight sword against sword.
And Pyrrhus gets a wound and deals two wounds.

Speaker 2 He cuts him in the leg and then he cuts him across the throat. Pantalkes actually survives and is taken away.
But Pyrrhus wins the day and kills about 5,000 in this battle.

Speaker 2 So this is a serious engagement.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 this demonstrates to Demetrius's army how amazing Pyrrhus is as a general and particularly as a warrior. And they,

Speaker 2 rather than it being seen as a,

Speaker 2 you know, we've got to get that guy, he's horrible, they really start to admire him. And they've stopped really admiring Demetrius.
He's kind of not one and achieved as much as he wanted to.

Speaker 2 And the troops start to drift more to Pyrrhus than to Demetrius. And so Demetrius has major desertion problems.

Speaker 2 He's also then later killed in that year and Pyrrhus is able to seize the throne of Macedon and becomes king of Macedon briefly.

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Speaker 1 He's very opportunistic, isn't he? So Demetrius, you know, this once Titanic figure kind of gets laid low. By the end of his life, Pyrrhus has dealt this victory, beaten one of his generals.

Speaker 1 And then the throne that Mastodon is free.

Speaker 1 And Pyrrhus, because he's close, he just kind of takes advantage to kind of go into Mastodon and add that to his collection. That's quite interesting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but also, don't forget, he is part of the Macedonian royal family. You know, he is a second cousin of Alexander the Great.

Speaker 2 And by all accounts, you know, he demonstrates a lot of Alexander's military qualities. And this is something that the Macedonian elite really admire.
They like a good, strong commander.

Speaker 2 They even, some even say that he looked a bit like Alexander.

Speaker 2 And whereas other kings affected Alexander's neck position and hairstyle and robes, Pyrrhus demonstrated, you know, Alexander's military demeanor.

Speaker 2 There is another story though that Pyrrhus thought that he looked like Alexander and started wandering around a bit.

Speaker 2 And then this little old lady in one of the towns in Macedon said, oh, Pyrrhus says, you know, don't you think I look like Alexander the Great?

Speaker 2 And she goes, no, you look more like, oh, what's his name? Batrachias, which basically means froggy or Kermit,

Speaker 2 who is a local cook.

Speaker 2 And that takes him down a peg.

Speaker 2 And there are lots of stories actually about Pyrrhus getting ahead of himself and having this sort of sense of self-importance and then being taken down a peg by his advisors or by common people.

Speaker 2 And he tends to take these in incredibly good sport. There's one story that he...

Speaker 2 encounters a bunch of youths who have been drinking a lot and he hears that they've been insulting him. And he comes, how dare you you insult me you know

Speaker 2 would you keep insulting you know would you keep insulting me now i'm here and they and they replied yes if there was enough drink and so he laughs and and lets them you know he goes on his merry way so there are lots of these stories of pyrrhus thinking himself puffing himself up to be like alexander but also then being taken down a peg by various things like that Well, let's move on.

Speaker 1 So it's interesting. So Pyrrhus kind of taken control of Macedon.
He's won these victories. I'm guessing there is more fighting to come.

Speaker 1 But, Louis, kind of summarize, by the time we get to, let's say, 281 BC, I think that is the magical date, the magical number. How powerful was Pyrrhus and his kingdom of Epirus by that date?

Speaker 2 Right. So, you know, the best that the high point is him, king of Macedon, but Lysimachus, one of the other generals, comes in another successor.

Speaker 2 He has another successor who'd fought on the other, the winning side of Ipsus. He comes in with a monstrously big army and basically drives Pyrrhus from the throne.

Speaker 2 So Pyrrhus goes back to Epirus and he's left there and Lysimachus is in Macedon. So by 281, he's actually, Pyrrhus is looking for something else to do.

Speaker 2 He's interfered with Illyrian politics and got involved in some succession issues there and he's been campaigning there, but that's not really working out for him.

Speaker 2 Macedon itself, interestingly, is becoming, again, another sort of possibility. Lysimachus has gone and another Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy I of Egypt, is now on the throne.

Speaker 2 Ptolemy Caraunus, who is weak and relatively new to the job. Could Pyrrhus go and knock him off? Well, maybe, but that would offend Ptolemy I.

Speaker 2 So, in fact, they cut a deal, and Pyrrhus gathers some troops and money from Ptolemy Karaunus and gets money from Ptolemy I.

Speaker 1 And Ptolemy Karaunos, that means Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, which is, I mean, what a name that is. He's not a great figure, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 it doesn't end well for him.

Speaker 2 He's gone in a couple of years. He's killed by Gauls who suddenly appear on the map and start being a pain in Greece.
But that's, by the by, Pyrrhus, by this time, is being tempted west.

Speaker 2 Now, this is what you want to ask me about.

Speaker 1 I do. So he's been tempted west.
He's cut a deal with Macedon. So he's kind of secured that border anyway, hasn't he?

Speaker 1 At least until the Gauls come knocking, as you hinted at there.

Speaker 1 In the West. So I'm guessing we're talking Italy.
What has been happening in southern Italy?

Speaker 1 At the same time, as the line's focus has been on Greece and the Titanic Wars and the successors, what has been going on in Italy? Which power has been rising and rising?

Speaker 2 It's Rome, isn't it?

Speaker 2 A central Italian,

Speaker 2 a major central Italian power in the 350s BC.

Speaker 2 By the 330s, has swallowed up Campania, is waging wars against the Samnite tribe.

Speaker 1 It's just Naples area, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, major. Yeah, so Campania is...
Naples,

Speaker 2 Capua, that kind of that part of the world south of Rome. But Samnium is this great Apennine federation of tribes, really, that runs up the spine in the sort of central Italy into southern Italy.

Speaker 2 And then you've got the Lucanians, who are another tribe of Rutians as well. And there are Greek cities on the south coast as well.
And one of those is Tarentum, a Spartan colony.

Speaker 2 It's been there for centuries, thinks of itself as a regional power.

Speaker 2 And so it's under pressure because the Romans have expanded. They've defeated the Samnites by the time of the 290s.
They've won the last of the Samnite wars.

Speaker 2 The Samnites are now part of the Roman alliance system.

Speaker 2 And the Romans are starting to put pressure on Tarentum in various ways.

Speaker 2 They've cut a deal in 300 and 2

Speaker 2 not to interfere with each other's affairs. And the Romans have undertaken not to sail north of the Licinian promontory.
Now, that's a bit confusing, but the Licinian promontory is actually

Speaker 2 on the instep of Italy. If you think of Tarentum on the heel of Italy,

Speaker 2 Taranto. And then you've got Regium on the on the tip of the toe.

Speaker 1 Next to Sicily, Regio, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 That's right, right across there.

Speaker 2 So you've got Regium there, and then on the in-step, you've got cities like Croton and Locris. These are Greek cities.

Speaker 2 And the Licinian promontory is a point along that in-step, as it were, the southern coast. So the Romans have come down the western coast of Italy.

Speaker 2 and nipped round the edge and have now undertaken not to approach the Tarentians from the south, essentially. And from the north, again, there are Lucanians in the way, but they're all part of

Speaker 2 another arrangement. So, that's that's the deal the Romans have.
But they are clearly the major power. They're cutting a deal with the Carthaginians.

Speaker 2 They've made an alliance in 306 with the Carthaginians, who are an African hegemony that stretches across a lot of Western Mediterranean and Western Sicily.

Speaker 2 So, this is the geopolitical situation that Alexander the Molossian had inserted himself into on the invitation of the Tarentines in the 330s originally.

Speaker 2 So the Tarentines had already become under pressure from the wars of the Romans and the Samnites and the Lucanians had taken an opportunity while the Samnites were distracted to kind of attack Tarentum.

Speaker 2 And so Alexander the Molossian was asked by the Tarentines to come in and help. And he does, but he's killed in battle.
So the Tarentines have a track record of looking to Epirus for help.

Speaker 2 And they're starting to think about help. In fact, they'd offered help to Pyrrhus to capture Corfu, Corsaira, which Alexander Pyrrhus had actually owned through marriage.

Speaker 2 He'd had a second wife whose name was Lanassa, who was the daughter of Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, a very powerful Sicilian king.

Speaker 1 Another powerful king.

Speaker 2 Another powerful king.

Speaker 2 So they'd made a marriage arrangement, and Pyrrhus has basically got therefore a marriage relationship with the powers in eastern Sicily, Syracuse in particular.

Speaker 2 And when Lanassa left him for Demetrius, I know she got fed up with the other wives that Pyrrhus had acquired. She left him and she gave Corfu to Demetrius.

Speaker 2 And so to recover Corfu, which wasn't really his, it was her dowry to give to whoever she wanted, he nevertheless enlists a fleet from Tarentum. So in a way, he owes the Tarentines

Speaker 2 a bit of, you know, considering.

Speaker 1 He's in debt to the Tarentines.

Speaker 2 Yeah, who

Speaker 2 have helped him, who have reached out across the Adriatic already in the 280s.

Speaker 1 And so they come calling to Pyrrhus for help, as they did with one of Pyrrhus's much earlier relatives, Alexander the Molossian, the other Alexander, several decades earlier.

Speaker 1 And Alexander the Molossian had ultimately failed and died. But they go to Pyrrhus and ask him, hey, you're powerful.
You owe us something as well.

Speaker 1 You're on good terms now with Macedon and in the East. We're worried about the Romans.
Come over here to Italy. And I'm guessing he accepts.

Speaker 2 Well, kind of. Yes, he says yes, and he sends an advance guard.
But he's kind of taking his time, gathering support from amongst the successor kings. In fact, he manages to get money out of people.

Speaker 2 He gets elephants from Ptolemy Coraunus.

Speaker 1 Some Indian elephants.

Speaker 2 They probably are Indian elephants. So they are decent weapons of war.
And, you know, Pyrrhus isn't... resplendent with elephants, so this is a real asset to him.
He gets 20 of those.

Speaker 2 and he he portrays himself as the liberator of the greeks against the barbarians so you know as alexander the molossium may have posed as a a liberator of greeks against the lucanian barbarians now pyrrhus is posing as a sort of succor to the greeks in the south against the romans who have fallen out very big time with the tarentines there's been an accident with some ships that had sailed north of the licinian promontory and ended up in the tarento

Speaker 2 provocation Yeah, I think. Well, the Tarentines see it as a provocation.
They treat the crews badly. They sink some of the ships.

Speaker 2 The Romans come with an army and start devastating Tarentine territory. And it's at that point that Pyrrhus is called in to help.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they also acquire...

Speaker 2 The Tarentines also manage to get the Lucanians who have been subdued by the Romans and indeed the Samnites who are still resentful of the Roman conquest to kind of promise troops as well.

Speaker 2 In fact, they promised an outlandish amount. They promised 350,000 men,

Speaker 2 which is outrageous. And then these guys never materialise.

Speaker 2 But nevertheless, Pyrrhus, that persuades Pyrrhus and indeed the coine of the Epirates to agree together that they can send a major expedition to Italy.

Speaker 2 And that expedition takes 20,000 men out of Epirus, 20,000 infantry. There are 2,000 archers, 500 slingers, and 3,000 cavalry, and the 20 elephants.
All of these are drawn from Epirus and also from

Speaker 2 mercenaries. That's Pyrrhus, he's allowed to hire mercenaries, but the Epirus have to mint the coins for him to do that.

Speaker 1 But that almost feels like, so that 20,000, that's the core. That's his elite troops, his kind of the Macedonian equivalents.

Speaker 1 you know, the Macedonian infantry of Alexander the Great equivalents.

Speaker 1 That is the core heavy infantry, the phalanx infantry, the heavy cavalry, very much like an Alexander the Great army but with elephants as well and he's presuming he's going to italy thinking that it's going to be supplemented by these not tens but hundreds of thousands of allied troops that are going to come running to him kind of worshiping him as the their savior from the romans and he's going to plow forward with this humongous force to take on the romans is that what he's thinking yeah absolutely and who are these romans anyway and no one's ever really heard of them you know well they have but you know they've not been tested against a proper decent hellenistic king not the might yeah the successors of alexander the people who think themselves like the greatest military forces in the world basically absolutely and pyrrhus thinks of himself as not one witch shy of any of those great kings so you know in and in he's just had these recent successes has had defections from Demetrius's forces.

Speaker 2 He knows that he's adored by his army. He's great at inspiring his soldiers in particular.
So they've got great Alan and great Esperida corps.

Speaker 2 So when he comes across, they're veterans of the conflict. There are obviously all these mercenaries as well who are trained specialists.

Speaker 2 He thinks he's going to have a reasonable impact on southern Italy at least and possibly pinching the Romans right back.

Speaker 2 So he arrives and approaches the Romans.

Speaker 2 The Romans muster an army and the army that had been raiding Tarentum had retreated to Venusia, which is one of the Roman colonies in southern Italy.

Speaker 2 And another consular army, when they hear of Pyrrhus's advance, they are on the march as well. So there are these two Roman armies, probably around about 30,000, 40,000 men assembling against Pyrrhus.

Speaker 2 And Pyrrhus has come with about 25,000 men and some elephants. He recruits from Tarentum, he recruits mercenaries, he gets a unit called the White Shields.
No idea what they are.

Speaker 2 They're obviously maybe hoplites rather than phalangites. So the Greeks use the word phalanx for basically any kind of dense formation of heavy infantry.

Speaker 2 Traditionally, Greeks had hoplites who were sort of spear-armed, shielded individuals, but they wielded their spear with one hand.

Speaker 1 It's a two-meter-long spear, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, basically two to three meters, about eight, eight feet or so in old money.

Speaker 2 And Alexander the Great's armies and the successor armies predominantly rely on phalanxes of pikemen so the pike is much longer at least 12 foot probably 15 to 18 foot six meters yeah so it gets longer over time so we can't quite be sure how long pyrrhus's spears were and we think that pyrrhus has got pikemen or lots of pikemen because polybius suggests that polybius a greek historian writing in the second century bc talks about pyrrhus's army facing the Romans briefly and and implies that they are pikemen but that's that's the only source that ever says that they are really pikemen.

Speaker 2 We get this sort of generic word phalanx, and one wonders how many actual Macedonian-style pikemen the Epirates actually have.

Speaker 2 You know, it's given that it's a military tradition of Macedon rather than the pirates. So I'm just a little bit cautious about saying that the whole of those 20,000 men, pikemen.

Speaker 2 I would say a large fourth, maybe 12,000, I'm just guessing, but that's a kind of standard block that you kind of find in a lot of Macedonian successor armies, 12,000, 16,000.

Speaker 2 They come in 4,000 blocks, mathematically quite simple for the formations they use.

Speaker 2 So maybe there's 12,000, maybe there's 16,000 of these are pikemen and then some others, you know, who are light infantry or peltasts or some other kind of intermediate force.

Speaker 2 So he comes with this army, he offers peace to the Romans, and the offer is essentially to leave the Tarentines alone and

Speaker 2 become a friend of me. And that's all he asked for, really.

Speaker 2 so that's his opening gamut so rather than this whole idea of you know conquering the whole of italy the the the terms that we we hear are actually quite modest after the battle there's another

Speaker 1 after the battle all right

Speaker 2 we'll come to the battle but after the battle there is another

Speaker 2 offer that offer is a bit more harsh to the romans we'll come to that maybe in a second so the romans refuse and the Battle of Heraclea happens.

Speaker 2 Okay, so at the Battle of Heraclea, Pyrrhus's phalanx engages the Romans and there's a vicious fight between the Roman legionaries and the phalanx.

Speaker 2 The cavalry seems to be evenly matched, but the battle is turned by the elephants who freak the Romans out somewhat drastically. Because

Speaker 2 they've never seen them and their horses panic, they don't like the smell of them and the trumpeting, the sign that they're just really intimidated.

Speaker 2 So these just 20 animals make this huge impact on 40,000 Romans and Pyrrhus is able to drive them off. Now the casualties

Speaker 2 on both sides are quite heavy, but Pyrrhus seems to have inflicted about twice as many casualties on the Romans.

Speaker 2 They may have lost in the region either 7,000 or 15,000, depending on the ancient source that you believe. And Pyrrhus loses sort of half that amount on the other side.

Speaker 2 So he wins this battle, drives off the Romans, who then retreat back towards Campania and then into Rome. And Pyrrhus thinks that he's kind of offers this next piece, this victorious piece.

Speaker 2 And in that, it's a bit harsher because he's expecting to be joined by the Samnites and Lucanians. They hadn't quite made it to the battle, but they were on their way.

Speaker 2 He makes an offer, which is the original two terms that I mentioned, but also in addition that the Romans have to give up all of the land that they've taken from the Lucanians, the Samnites, the Bootians, which would essentially break up the Roman Federation in the south that they've spent 20 years.

Speaker 1 Stopping Roman expansion in this track.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And molting the Roman state, essentially.
pegging it right back to sort of 330s position. And that is impossible for the Romans to consider.

Speaker 2 and so they although actually they are wavering the senate wavers and they listen they listen to Pyrrhus's ambassador Kinneas a Thessalian but a good general and a philosopher and and hangs out with Pyrrhus a lot and gives him lots of sage advice Kinneas finds out that the Romans eventually are swayed by the oratory of one particular famous old Roman who who was a grizzled veteran of the Sunnight Wars, Appius Claudius Caicus the blind, because he's losing his sight.

Speaker 2 He stands up and makes a fantastic speech in the Senate, and that persuades the Senate to carry on fighting.

Speaker 2 And Cinneus comes back, having seen the Romans raising more legions to replace all the losses. And he says to Pyrrhus, okay, we're in a bit of, this is a proper fight we're in.

Speaker 2 The Roman Senate is like a senate of kings,

Speaker 2 and the people are like the Lernaian Hydra. In other words, you chop off one head and two spring up.

Speaker 2 And so he makes this point about the idea that the the romans have got plenty more where they came from loads and loads of soldiers left to throw at pyrrhus and so what happens next so the romans launch another campaign and pyrrhus wades in and fights another battle at asculum again it's pyrrhus's victory but this is a you know heavy casualties on both sides again the elephants play a role Our Roman sources, our pro-Roman sources, are starting to sort of play down the impact of elephants and starting to say, well, in this battle, a couple of the elephants started to panic and this created some confusion because the romans in the first battle had learned that the elephants were not indestructible one of their soldiers a hastatus one of the young men in the front line of the battle had chopped the trunk off one of the elephants and they went these things bleed amazing so they started to develop tactics and then one outlandish tactic that they appear to have used at Asculum was to create wagons that they sort of sunk into the ground and then put grapnels and other weird things and flaming pivot on the top to kind of freak the elephants out and try and address the elephants well what does pyrrhus do he sort of keeps his elephants away after a couple of minutes and throws in some light infantry which just clear the wagons so it's a nice idea but it doesn't really work for them and eventually the elephants and pyrrhus' army do prevail in this battle at asculum but what's the big thing from this battle the the thing we remember him yeah well this is it so the losses are so severe on both sides that as he's being congratulated by his officers and he loses many of his generals and his officers in this battle as well as best men, they say, well, you know, this is it.

Speaker 2 You know, I want more victory and you've won this war. And he says, if we have another victory like that, we're done for.
You know, and this is the famous Pyrrhic victory

Speaker 2 where you win, but the losses are so great that you can't continue. You know, that you take such a heavy blow from it that it's almost like a poison chalice to win this battle or even fight it.

Speaker 2 The Pyrrhic victory.

Speaker 1 There you go. So that's the origins of the phrase, the Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Ascalam.
So what happens next? Come on.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Well, so this is it.
Pyrrhus realizes that he can't fight this war against the Romans successfully. People are beginning to get fed up with the fact that he's not winning the war.

Speaker 2 The Tarentines are beginning to grumble and so on. He has another offer.
In fact, he has two other offers.

Speaker 2 Coranus has died and there's a possibility that he could head back and take over the throne of Macedon. The other possibility, though, is in Sicily, where you remember that connection with Agathocles.

Speaker 2 Agathocles' daughter had married Pyrrhus. Well, Agathocles was long gone and Sicily was in a state of turmoil.
And the tyrant of Syracuse, Thuanon, he was sort of out of favour with the populace.

Speaker 2 And the Carthaginians, remember them, they'd made an alliance with the Romans. In fact, they make another alliance with the Romans to face off against Pyrrhus.

Speaker 2 And so they are actively collaborating, have marched on Syracuse and besieged it. And Syracusans turn to Pyrrhus and say, come and help us.
Please come and help us.

Speaker 2 And Pyrrhus sees an opportunity because he is, you know, legitimately a successor to Agathocles and could basically become king of Syracuse here.

Speaker 2 And it seems like an opportunity with the Samnites being able to kind of maybe hold the Romans off for a bit to take on

Speaker 2 and conquer Sicily and then maybe even go all the far and do what Alexander had perhaps dreamed of doing, Alexander the Great, which was to attack and conquer the Carthaginians and their empire in Africa.

Speaker 2 So he is tempted and he goes.

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Speaker 1 So he's been tempted to go to Sicily. He's said, once again, this opportunistic pyrus, isn't he? See what opportunity one after another to prove his military metal.

Speaker 1 And he goes to Syracuse.

Speaker 2 Is it a success what happens he's immediately made strategos altocrator which means commander in chief or generalissimo of the of the syracusans they they love him you know there's the hats in the air everything so he takes over absolute control of syracuse his first step to being recognized as king of the syracusans as well so essentially he's just cemented his position there he draws in other greeks the carthaginians retreat in the face of his his force and he then wages a campaign against the Carthaginians for the next three years.

Speaker 2 Eventually, he drives across the island. Most of the Greek cities join him.

Speaker 2 He captures the fortress of Eryx, which is in the far west, and celebrates lavish games to Hercules. By this time, he's making associations with Hercules.
We've heard about the Hydra of the Romans.

Speaker 2 You can see how Hercules, the great slayer of Hydras, you know, he's beginning to play that game as well as the Achilles connection as well, and that Alexander the Great had had as well so he's got he's playing on these the echoes of mythological things so he makes these great games to Hercules at Eryx which is also a shrine to Aphrodite or Venus as the Romans would call it he then captures Penormus Palermo and only got one position left to take before he scraped the Carthaginians off the island and that's the city fortress of Lilibium in the far west.

Speaker 1 It's Marcella today.

Speaker 2 But the Carthaginians are tough and this is a tough city to take and after two months he's getting nowhere. The Carthaginians keep sailing supplies and troops in.

Speaker 2 They control the sea and so he has to try and build a fleet.

Speaker 2 He has made himself unpopular with the Syracusans and other Greek cities with the

Speaker 2 enlistment of troops and some of the troops are not so voluntary.

Speaker 2 enlistments and so he starts to fall out of favor with the Sicilian cities the creation of the fleet is kind of a straw on the camel's back of the sicilian cities.

Speaker 2 And they think, well, actually, this guy is actually not the man that we thought he was. He's too much of a tyrant.

Speaker 2 He's too much of a tyrant in the bad way rather than sort of neutral term, meaning just unelected commander or leader. So he acts tyrannically towards them.
And he's a bit harsh. He's a bit strict.

Speaker 2 And they just don't like it. So although he gets the fleet, he realizes the game's up.
really and he's also having appeals from the Tarantines and Sunnites saying we can't hold on much longer.

Speaker 1 So the Romans have come back.

Speaker 2 The Romans have come back. The Romans are hammering.
They've conquered most of Samnium.

Speaker 2 They're really dealing with things.

Speaker 2 They're almost at the door of Tarentum again. So he realizes the game's up, really, even though he looks like he's won.
He even has to abandon plans to sail to Africa with this fleet.

Speaker 2 He can't even finish the siege of Lilabium. Cities start going over to the Carthaginians and the Mammatines, who are a bunch of mercenaries in Masana.

Speaker 2 Ex-Agathocles mercenaries who are Italian warriors who call themselves the son of Mars, the Mamatines. He has to fight them as well.
And so there are all these problems in Sicy.

Speaker 2 So he decides, I'm getting out now. On his way, as he's sailing to Italy with his army, he's attacked by a Carthaginian fleet and he loses 70 out of the 110 warships he had constructed.

Speaker 2 But he gets away with his own transports, with the troops on the transports.

Speaker 2 So although the war fleet is more or less annihilated, the actual troops that he's going to rely on for his land campaign escape.

Speaker 2 And so he's able to land in southern Italy and march north to confront the Romans at a place called Malventum. So, two Roman consuls, two armies.

Speaker 2 Pyrrhus has to send some of his force to face off against one of the Roman consuls who is based in Lucania. But Malventum is the army that he chooses to attack.

Speaker 2 And so at Malventum, he engages, he tries to attack the Romans.

Speaker 2 No, actually, what he tries to do is gain high ground but he has to go through a wood through night and apparently all his torches the the route is so circuitous that the torches will burn down and they can't find their way in the dark and so they all get lost and by the time that dawn arises the romans seize on the opportunity the disarray and the tiredness of pyrrhus's army to launch an attack and pyrrhus is in fact defeated his elephants panic and cause chaos as well and so finally

Speaker 2 pyrrhus is driven back to torentum with only about 8,000 men.

Speaker 1 This is the epitome of how not to do a night march, isn't it? Kind of thing, when it all goes horribly wrong and how bad it can be if you're caught out in the open when the sun rises.

Speaker 2 Marching pikemen through a forest is also crazy. And cavalry and elephants, it just, it's just the worst thing you could possibly do.
In fact, at Asculum, he'd got on away with it.

Speaker 2 Apparently, there was a forest there that he'd managed to fight, but he had a rough time and it was a two-day battle.

Speaker 2 he should have known better but he went for he went for the big objective which was to gain the better ground, because he was regarded as one of those generals who had the best eye for the disposition of forces and would go that extra mile to get into the right places at the right time.

Speaker 2 So it was a risk he needed to take, but obviously here it just goes badly wrong. And so luck sort of helps the Romans win this battle.

Speaker 1 Well, like I tell Pyrrhus so many times in the past and Alexander, it's only about time that your luck runs out. And it did for Pyrrhus then.
And it's interesting.

Speaker 1 So it's called Malventum at the time, which means bad. But then I see it's good.
It's called Beneventum. So do the Romans change the name almost?

Speaker 2 Indeed, to celebrate their victory at the bad place or the bad coming point.

Speaker 2 They then changed it to Beneventum, which means the good place or the good coming point. And so thereafter, Beneventum is known as that.

Speaker 2 And the Romans are good at changing things like that just to celebrate victories.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so Pyrrhus leaves a garrison in Tarentum, but decides he needs to go back to Epirus.

Speaker 1 He's gone. He's gone.
He can't help them anymore, kind of thing.

Speaker 2 He's burned out.

Speaker 1 His force had enough, really.

Speaker 2 But he's got opportunities in Greece.

Speaker 1 But he is the last and it feels i mean very briefly to highlight isn't it pyrrhus is one of he is that last major figure to challenge rome's dominance in italy as it's expanding in that initial expanding when it's just growing and growing and growing pyrrhus is that last big hurdle that the romans had to face and they succeed they beat this figure who the romans portray very much so as like the greatest of alexander the great's successors so the closest they come to facing alexander the great Great himself.

Speaker 2 Yeah, indeed.

Speaker 2 And that is often invoked in later speeches, you know, when the Romans are trying to g themselves up for fighting the Macedonian king Philip V in the third century and the second century BC.

Speaker 2 They sort of say, oh, look, you know, Pyrrhus was the, you know, we managed to beat Pyrrhus. We can easily beat this other guy who's not at all like Pyrrhus.
He's the closest they come.

Speaker 2 And there are sort of what-ifs in some of the sources, you know. What if Alexander the Great himself had come to Italy?

Speaker 2 Well, it wouldn't have been the kind of losers that we've got in the in the 280s, like Li Vinius and people like that, who are kind of not all the generals who lose

Speaker 2 who are not all that famous, you know, and not all that successful.

Speaker 2 No, we had, you know, people like Happius Claudius Caicus and all these other dudes, and they would have made short work of Alexander, you know, so there's Livy has this sort of gloating sort of schoolboy analysis of the what-tiff counterfactual history thing that he he just loves to write about.

Speaker 2 So yeah, the Romans really celebrate the fact that they've defeated this this Hellenistic army and they really remember and really sort of big up, I think, Pyrrhus's abilities as well.

Speaker 2 And that, of course, influences some of the sources that we have. And so, sometimes separating the man from the myth is quite difficult because of these things.

Speaker 2 We have testimony from others about his greatness.

Speaker 2 So, Hannibal is asked about Pyrrhus's greatness and says that he was the greatest general after Alexander the Great, and then he puts himself third, precisely because of these things like disposition and stratagem and bravery in combat

Speaker 2 so pyrrhus you know even though he's defeated at beneventum

Speaker 2 that's his only really major defeat in the field and he comes back to greece and to epirus and again gets interfering in the affairs of macedon and in greece for the next few years so he's back in 275 bc and

Speaker 2 by the time of his death in 272, he's got himself involved in a conflict with the new Macedonian king, a guy called Antigonus Gronatus.

Speaker 1 He's the son of Demetrius, isn't he? Yes.

Speaker 2 And so they fall out. And initially, Pyrrhus's first move is against Sparta.
One of his mercenary captains is also an heir to the Spartan throne. And so he decides to try and install him in Sparta.

Speaker 2 And they go to Sparta and

Speaker 2 according to the narratives they catch the Spartans with their pants down almost there the city is almost ungarrison and undefended but Pyrrhus

Speaker 2 no and well yeah no maybe not maybe no walls

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 he but Pyrrhus delays a day because he he sort of arrives in the evening he does want a night attack for obvious reasons last time he lost a battle was at night so he doesn't want to attack the city at night he waits for the day by which time the spartans have assembled a scratch force they've dug a ditch in front of the city, which makes it very difficult for his pikemen to get across in the actual assault.

Speaker 2 And in the actual assault, he is basically driven off. He fails.
And by the following day, reinforcements from out of the city have arrived, and it becomes harder and harder for him to take the city.

Speaker 2 So he marches off. On his way out, he's heading for Argos.
So we're now in 272 BC. On his way out, he's attacked by Spartan harassment forces.

Speaker 2 And one of his three sons, a guy called Ptolemy, who is obviously named after his original sponsor, is killed. And what's really interesting is Pyrrhus' reaction.

Speaker 2 So we talked about his martial prowess. In this engagement, Pyrrhus goes absolutely nuts.
He really gets really angry.

Speaker 2 Covered in blood, he charges personally into the Spartans, taking on their commander, taking on the guy who's killed Ptolemy.

Speaker 2 So is this Sparta?

Speaker 1 Is this the Mammatines that this is?

Speaker 2 No, this is Spartan.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. No, I forgot to mention the Mammothines one.
we'll come back to that. But yeah, so he kills loads of them.
It just sort of demonstrates his prowess. He just kills loads of them.

Speaker 2 And he stabs a guy called Evalkis through the chest with his spear. Evalchus had nearly cut his hand off, but had cut the reins of his horse instead.
And Pyrrhus then drives his spear through him.

Speaker 2 So the Spartans are completely overawed by this and then withdraw and run away. This is one example of his powerful prowess.
You'll mention this Mammetine ambush.

Speaker 2 When he gets back to italy the mammate a few years earlier yes

Speaker 2 yeah yeah so this is yeah just before the battle of beneventum he's actually harassed by mammate who are actually in the italian mainland as well as that they are based in sicily but they've sent troops over to help the romans and one mammotine challenges him to single combat and pyrrhus gets a little bit frustrated rides over to him and then chops him in half with one blow with his sword unseemed from chaps to knave to reverse shakespeare's macbeth He's literally cut in half and falls into two halves in front of them.

Speaker 2 Anyway, this forces the Mamatees to kind of give up. It's a conspicuous display of the prowess of Pyrrhus.
And we've seen him on a number of occasions get personally involved and fight.

Speaker 2 He's a great warrior, covered in wounds and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 And so, I mean, it's another great story.

Speaker 1 We kind of did a bit of tangent there, but I think it was deserved because, you know, that is that one kind of personal courage and fighting ability of Pyrrhus that is definitely

Speaker 1 brought up to the next level in the surviving literature that survives about him as this great heroic figure, but still there must be some elements of truth in it as well.

Speaker 1 But how does it all end?

Speaker 2 Well, this is the thing. Because Macedonian kings risk themselves, and Alexander the Great had gone into battle at the head of his cavalry.
Pyrrhus does the same. All the successor kings do.

Speaker 2 14 out of 18 Seleucid kings die in battle. It's incredible.
The death rate of these commanders is huge. So Pyrrhus is a man who commits himself.

Speaker 2 So he goes to Argos, which is neutral, and Antigonus Gonatus is operating in the vicinity as well.

Speaker 2 And they're about to sort of face off for a battle, but Pyrrhus decides to try and take Argos to get a strategic advantage. And the city is betrayed.
The gates are opened.

Speaker 2 And so he takes a night adventure and he tries to get his army inside the city.

Speaker 2 He gets to the center of Argos, the marketplace, the Agora, with his pikemen, with some of his cavalry, but he's trying to get his elephants in through the gate and they clog it up and slow it down.

Speaker 2 The argives hear about this and they wake up and the assembler forced to fight him. While he's in the agora, he's got room to maneuver, he does okay.

Speaker 2 But as they get gradually ejected from this, because his whole force isn't in there and there's confusion behind him, he starts being pushed into the streets.

Speaker 2 One of the elephants, whose name is Nikon, he's the only elephant that is named in Pyrrhus' army. loses its mahut, loses the rider that guides it.
And Nikon tries to grab the mahut.

Speaker 2 And so he turns around and goes back, causing chaos in the streets, trying to pick his mahoot up.

Speaker 2 And this means that the reinforcements are all crushed and everyone's getting compressed and the confusion is rife. And in that moment, Pyrrhus is involved intimately in the street fighting.

Speaker 2 He's cleaving left and right and killing people. And he kills a certain Greek soldier, Argive soldier.
whose mother apparently is watching from the rooftops.

Speaker 2 She sees this and gets very, very annoyed, obviously, and picks up a rooftile, throws it down into the street, and it hits Pyrrhus on the head and it stuns him.

Speaker 2 So he collapses and he's quivering and trembling by all accounts. And before he's able to recover, another soldier by the name of Zapirus, I think it is, tries to chop off his head.

Speaker 2 He's not very accurate, hits him in the face a couple of times, but eventually he chops his head off. And that's the end of Pyrrhus.
And that's the end of essentially the adventure.

Speaker 2 The pirates pirates are ejected from the city.

Speaker 2 Antigonus Galatus gets the body of Pyrrhus and honours it as a brave warrior and gives him a proper funeral, as you would give a member of the Macedonian royal family, which Pyrrhus essentially is a kind of splinter of.

Speaker 1 Well, I think we've gone from beginnings to death of Pyrrhus. And it feels right to end here, isn't it, with the fact that you mentioned adventure.

Speaker 1 Because I think Pyrrhus's life is almost the epitome of an adventure in ancient history in the fact that we remember him today as this venturing military commander who has this incredible legacy however overshadowed by the pyrig victory label that is the one thing that everyone thinks first and foremost with him and yet the ancients particularly commanders they viewed him as one of the greatest generals of ancient history i mean that has sadly been overshadowed but he was this great venturing military commander who fought in so many different theaters of war, won so many victories and became almost the closest to Alexander the Great in the ancient imagination.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. I think this is the important thing to remember.
You know, he's been to Asia Minor, he's been to Egypt, he's been to Sicily.

Speaker 2 He's one of the most well-traveled of the Hellenistic kings and a restless spirit, I think, is the way to kind of think of him. You know, he never seems to stop to rest on his laurels.

Speaker 2 He's always seeking for more, which is kind of at the core of the identity of these Hellenistic kings, these successors to Alexander. Alexander himself, you know, tried to go to the ends of the earth.

Speaker 2 Even when he returned, he was thinking about Carthage. You know, there's this idea that these kings are always grasping for more.
They are never satisfied.

Speaker 2 And I want to leave you with this wonderful anecdote. Just before Pyrrhus sets sail for Tarentum, he is having a party and he talks to Cineas, his wise general.

Speaker 2 And he says, you know, this is great and we're destined for great things. And Kineas says, well, what are you going to do in Tarentum? He said, well, we're going to humble the Romans.

Speaker 2 And when we've conquered the Romans, we'll be really super powerful. And Cineas says, what next?

Speaker 2 Well, then we can use the Romans, we can use all our conquests to attack Sicily and then take on the Carthaginians and conquer them. Kineas says, what next?

Speaker 2 Well, then we'll have enough power to challenge the Diadokes, the successors, and I can, you know, go east and recapture Macedon and then go to Asia Minor and then become the most powerful ruler in the world.

Speaker 2 We will rule the world. And Kineas says, and then what next? He said, then we will party like there's no tomorrow.
You know, we'll drink and we'll carouse at our leisure.

Speaker 2 And Kineas says, but that's what we're doing anyway.

Speaker 2 But it sums up this whole idea of Pyrrhus never wanting to be restful, you know, always grasping for more, greater and greater things, even when they don't pay off at all.

Speaker 2 He just goes on to the next best thing.

Speaker 1 He does. I mean, Louis.
I'm so grateful that you said yes when I asked you to do this interview.

Speaker 1 It said Pyrrhus was someone I did my undergraduate, my dissertation on so many, many years ago, but he's a figure close to my heart.

Speaker 1 And I'm so glad we could now finally, after so many years, do him justice. We have a detailed podcast episode on his life from rise to rain to ultimately demise too.

Speaker 1 Louis, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.

Speaker 2 You're very welcome.

Speaker 1 Well, there you go. That was Dr.

Speaker 1 Louis Rawlings talking through the story of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, one of my favorite figures from ancient history, and I'm so happy that we've finally been able to record an episode all about this extraordinary ancient warlord who challenged Rome and ventured all across the ancient Mediterranean in those decades following Alexander the Great's death, the beginning of the Hellenistic period.

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