Pyrrhic Victories

-Rome wanted to conquer the southern half of the Italian peninsula, but Magna Graecia stood in the way.
   -However, the Greek cities were independent and disorganized, and kind of ignored by the Greek motherland (who was mainly focused on fighting amongst each other and/or the Persians, although Athens did try to invade Sicily in 415 BC).
-Pyrrhus of Epirus was born in 318 BC, a few years after the death of Alexander the Great.
   -Alexander the Great's empire had split into four kingdoms:
      -Kingdom of Macedon
      -Seleucid Empire
      -Egypt (Ptolemaic Kingdom)
      -Kingdom of Pergamon (Attalid dynasty)
   -Born in the Greek kingdom of Epirus (now modern-day northwestern Greece and southern Albania), second cousin of Alexander the Great.
   -Father was King Aeacides of Epirus, but was exiled when Pyrrhus was 2 years old.
      -Pyrrhus was finally enthroned when he was a teenager in 306 BC, but was deposed a year later and exiled.  Luckily for him, however, he was able to gain some powerful friends by marrying a granddaughter (by marriage) of Ptolemy I of Egypt and married off his sister to Demetrius I of Macedonia.
         -These power plays allowed him to regain his throne in Epirus.  After his sister died, he then used his power to invade Macedon in 286 BC (although he quickly lost it a couple years later).
-282 BC- Tarentum in Magna Graecia sent envoys to Epirus and Macedon begging for help against the Romans, but the Greeks didn't seem to care.  However, Pyrrhus saw a chance to expand his empire.
   -He gathered 25,000 troops together to help Tarentum- Rome had already declared war due to some drama between the two cities.
-Before Pyrrhus arrived, however, the Romans had already sacked the city and were negotiating a peace treaty with Tarentum.
   -Pyrrhus finally showed up in 280 BC and drove off the Romans with an army that included cavalry and mighty war elephants.
      -Pyrrhus began to plan for complete invasion of the entire peninsula.
         -The Romans sent 8 legions to fight Pyrrhus near the city of Heraclea in Magna Graecia.  This intimidated Pyrrhus, as Rome had an organized, civilized army, and weren't just a horde of barbarians like he imagined.  Still, Pyrrhus' Greek phalanx was pretty badass, and was still better than Rome's maniple.
            -They clashed, and Pyrrhus won, but he also lost a ton of soldiers.
               -The Roman cavalry were terrified of the elephants.
-The Romans then fought Pyrrhus again at Asculum, north of Heraclea.
   -Pyrrhus was able to reinforce his army with Samnite and Terantine forces.
      -The armies were equal in size, but the Romans had developed a new tactic to bring down the war elephants- chariots would encircle the elephants with rope and then trip them.
      -The first battle ended up being a stalemate.
      -They clashed a second time, and Pyrrhus won, but again lost of men.
         -This is where we get the phrase "Pyrrhic victory".
-The Romans thought about suing for peace, but decided against it.
   -They were able to sign a peace treaty with the Carthaginians as a form of solidarity against the former kingdoms of Alexander the Great's empire.
-Pyrrhus soon realized that the Italian peninsula would be too much of a pain in the ass to conquer, so he just decided to go for his main goal- Sicily.
   -During this time, Sicily was divided between the Carthaginians in the west and Magna Graecia in the east.
      -The Carthaginians got news of Pyrrhus' plans, so they tried to invade Syracuse in order to use that as a strong defense, but they failed.
-Pyrrhus landed in Sicily, claimed Syracuse as his own, and led his army (and Syracuse's) against the Carthaginians.
   -He pushed them back till they only held a single city (Eryx) on the west coast, and then the Carthaginians tried to sue for peace.
      -Pyrrhus denied them, but couldn't take the city, so instead he just decided to go for Carthage itself!  He also tried to get the Sicilians to unite behind him and raise an army and build ships, but they didn't want to because they thought Pyrrhus was douchebag.
-So, Pyrrhus then decided to return to Italy in 270 BC, but he was met with a Roman army at Malaventum, and, of course, won, but also lost a lot of troops (haha).
   -At this point, the Romans had also developed fire arrow technology, which really freaked out the elephants.
   -Pyrrhus had finally had enough, so he just packed up his shit and went back to Epirus.
      -This resulted in the Romans changing the name of the city from Malaventum to Beneventum (ha).  
-The Romans then conquered Tarentum (where Pyrrhus had left a garrison), and then conquered the rest of Magna Graecia on the Italian mainland.
   -Rome now controlled all of central and southern Italy!
-The Roman conquest of Magna Graecia brought about an end of an era in the ancient world- the era of the city-state.
   -The Greek philosophers had always argued that the concept of the "polis" (the city-state) was the best, but Alexander the Great shattered that concept when he united all of Greece under Macedonian rule.
   -Only the city-states of Magna Graecia were holding out, and they had just been conquered by the Romans.
      -It was now the age of empires!
   -Only Syracuse remained as an independent city-state, and they wisely decided to quickly make an alliance with Rome.8g