Pyrrhus beat Rome in battle so expensively that his name became a warning
Pyrrhus of Epirus defeated Roman armies at Heraclea and Asculum, yet each victory cost him so dearly that it weakened him more than his enemy. Those battles gave the world the phrase Pyrrhic victory. He was still counted among antiquity's greatest generals, and Antigonus predicted he would be the finest of his time if he lived long enough.
Born around 319 BC into the royal Aeacid house of the Molossians, Pyrrhus was a second cousin of Alexander the Great and claimed descent from Achilles. His name comes from the Greek for fire and may have meant fiery or red-haired. His childhood was turbulent: when he was two, his father lost the throne of Epirus, and the family took refuge with Glaucias, king of the Illyrian Taulantians, who refused to hand the boy over even under pressure from Cassander, the ruler of Macedon.
Glaucias put him on the throne of Epirus while he was still a boy, but a revolt unseated him a few years later while he attended a wedding. Pyrrhus then served his brother-in-law Demetrius, fighting at the Battle of Ipsus, the largest clash among Alexander's successors. Sent to Alexandria as a hostage under a peace treaty, he married a stepdaughter of Ptolemy I, who later supplied men and money to restore him to Epirus in 297 BC.
He was a formidable fighter in person. In one battle he accepted a challenge to single combat from Pantauchus, a general of Demetrius, wounded him and routed his army, and his troops honoured him with the nickname Eagle. He later shared rule of Macedon with Lysimachus until being pushed out in 284 BC.
His most famous adventure began in 280 BC, when the Greek city of Tarentum asked for help against Rome. After his costly wins, he moved on to Sicily to fight Carthage, had early success, was driven out, and lost all his Italian gains after the Battle of Beneventum in 275 BC. He seized the Macedonian throne again in 274 BC, but his attack on Sparta failed, and in 272 BC he died during street fighting in Argos.
Source: Pyrrhus of Epirus
