Pyrrhus of Epirus (Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli).
Before King Pyrrhus of Epirus crossed over to Sicily he reportedly narrowly escaped an attempt on his life. According to his biographer Plutarchus the king’s personal physician had offered the Romans to poison his master in return for a royal reward. The new consul for 278 BCE, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, had been horrified by the offer. Together with his colleague Quintus Aemilius Papus he had written Pyrrhus a letter to warn him about the physician’s plans. A grateful Pyrrhus thereupon released the Roman citizens that he held as prisoners of war. To return the favour, the Romans decided to release a similar number of Samnites and Tarentines.[1]
Italy without Pyrrhus
In 278 BCE Pyrrhus sailed to Sicily, where he raised an army of 30,000 infantry, 2,500 cavalry and 200 ships. With this army the king won victory after victory against the Carthaginians in the next couple of years. The Carthaginians did not stand a chance against the great general and were pushed ever further back towards the western corner of the island. In 277 BCE Pyrrhus won a victory over the Carthaginians at the old mountain stronghold of Eryx, reducing Carthaginian rule on the island to just the area around the city of Lilybaeum. The Greek cities were also delighted to see the king successfully take on the Mamertines of Messana. These former Campanian mercenaries, who had used a ruse and brute force to capture Messana, were notorious for terrorising their Greek neighbours and bleeding them dry financially. However, all these successes made Pyrrhus quite arrogant, and this would have huge consequences for him.
Southern Italy and Sicily (https://awmc.unc.edu/).
In 276 BCE the king started negotiations with the Carthaginians about peace. His condition that the Carthaginians were to evacuate all of Sicily was of course totally unacceptable, which meant that the war dragged on. Now Pyrrhus’ behaviour towards the Sicilians began to show ever more signs of despotism. After the king had orchestrated the murder of Thoinon, a political leader in Syracuse, many Greeks on Sicily had become fed up with him. The hatred against Pyrrhus on the island grew ever greater and many Greeks decided to join the Carthaginians, who sent a new army, and even the nefarious Mamertines. More important for our story is, however, that Pyrrhus received desperate calls from Tarentum and the Samnites to come and help them against the Romans. Pyrrhus had left some troops in Italy when he left for Sicily, including a garrison in Tarentum, but it was the Romans who had enjoyed a string of tactical successes in the three years since his departure.
Lucanian warriors on a krater (Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam).
Thanks to the Fasti Triumphales we have a pretty good idea of the Roman victories between 278 and 275 BCE. The aforementioned consul Gaius Fabricius Luscinus was granted a triumph for victories over the Lucani, Bruttii, Tarentines and Samnites. His successor Gaius Junius Bubulcus won victories over the Lucani and Bruttii in 277 BCE and was also awarded a triumph. Together with Publius Cornelius Rufinus he also fought against the Samnites, although with less success. The consul Rufinus did manage to capture the city of Croton, which had previously defected to Pyrrhus.[2] Another Greek city, Locri, which also previously sided with Pyrrhus, now defected to Rome again. Lastly, in 276 BCE the consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges won a series of victories over the Samnites, Lucani and Bruttii. He too was awarded a triumph for this. It should be clear that the Italian allies of Pyrrhus were under severe pressure and that the return of the king was urgently needed.
Back to Italy
Pyrrhus now felt compelled to leave Sicily and departed in 275 BCE. Unfortunately for him, the crossing to Italy proved to be rife with many difficulties. In the Strait of Messina his fleet was attacked by Carthaginian ships, and the king must have suffered sizeable losses in men and material in the fighting.[3] It is very likely that the Carthaginians also managed to capture Pyrrhus’ flagship: writing about the naval battle of Mylae in 260 BCE, the Greek historian Polybius reports that the Carthaginians made use of a septireme or “seven” that had belonged to the king.[4] Once he had landed in Southern Italy, Pyrrhus’ army was also attacked by the Mamertines, who had sent an army of several thousands of men after him. The king lost two elephants and many soldiers in the fighting, but is said to have also made a lasting impression on the Mamertines by personally splitting an enemy in half with a tremendous blow from his sword.[5]
Of the Southern Italian cities that were (again) in Roman hands and had Roman garrisons, Pyrrhus only succeeded in capturing Locri. The king urgently needed money to pay his troops and out of desperation decided to pillage the famous temple of Persephone in Locri. The stolen gold he sent to Tarentum by sea, but while enroute his ships were caught in rough weather. A heavy storm pushed them back to Locri, where several ships were dashed to pieces on the coast. Pyrrhus saw this as a case of divine intervention and did his utmost to return the gold and all the other stolen goods to the temple. His detractors obviously saw his blasphemous behaviour as the chief cause of the defeat that the king would suffer against the Romans that same year.[6]
The kidnapping of Persephone, mosaic from the second century (Centrale Montemartini, Rome).
The consuls for 275 BCE were Manius Curius Dentatus and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Caudinus. Of these the former had made his camp near the Samnite town of Maleventum. Seven years later the Romans would found a Latin colony here and call it Beneventum. The reason for the name change was quite simple: in Latin the word Maleventum meant “bad occurrence” and that name sounded rather ominous. Beneventum – “good occurrence” – sounded like an excellent alternative. For the sake of clarity I will already call the town Beneventum in the next couple of paragraphs. The other consul, Lentulus, fought against the Samnites and Lucani. According to the Fasti Triumphales he was awarded a triumph for his victories. Both consuls probably commanded a standard consular army of about 20,000 men. By contrast, Pyrrhus’ army was almost certainly larger. According to Plutarchus he had arrived in Tarentum with 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry. In Tarentum he then recruited local troops and was joined by a number of Samnites, although there cannot have been that many of them, as war-weariness had struck in Samnium.[7] One modern historian has estimated that Pyrrhus’ army was about 40,000 men strong.[8] His strongest asset were still undeniably his elephants.
The battle of Beneventum
Roman hastatus (source: Europa Barbarorum).
Pyrrhus decided to attack the consul Dentatus before he could join forces with the army of his colleague Lentulus. However, Manius Curius Dentatus was a very experienced commander. He was the first and only member of the gens Curia to reach the consulship. He was said to have been born with a full set of teeth, hence his nickname Dentatus (“toothed”). In 290 BCE he had first defeated the Samnites and then the Sabines, which had earned him a double triumph. In 284 BCE Dentatus had been elected consul suffectus. In this capacity he had destroyed an army of the Celtic Senones. If there was one Roman commander able to take on Pyrrhus of Epirus, it was definitely Manius Curius Dentatus.
The consul had entrenched himself on a hill with his troops and was therefore difficult to attack. Pyrrhus now decided to stage a daring night attack that he would lead personally. For the attack he handpicked a number of elite soldiers and some of his best elephants. In the middle of the night he took his troops on a flanking manoeuvre across very difficult terrain. Unfortunately for Pyrrhus the operation proved to be a bridge too far: the men got lost and the little army fell apart. By dawn the stragglers had been rallied again and the Roman camp was in sight, but the men were tired and thirsty. The situation was very different for the Romans, who were still fresh and well-rested. Dentatus now gave his troops orders to attack. The Romans managed to wound an elephant cub, which turned around and caused a great panic among the Epirotes. They also managed to kill two elephants and capture another eight. Thus Pyrrhus’ surprise attack ended in dismal failure.[9] The king himself managed to get away and later rejoined the rest of his army.
Plate featuring two elephants (Villa Giulia, Rome).
After this success Dentatus felt confident enough to descend from the hill and engage Pyrrhus’ main force on the plains. The Romans clashed with the king’s troops and drove them back in some places, while being driven back themselves by the elephants in other places. The elephants were still Pyrrhus’ most effective weapon. However, the Roman soldiers did not panic and managed to stage an orderly retreat towards the Roman camp on the hill. The sentries that had been left behind there then began pelting the elephants from above with all kinds of missiles and managed to hit many of them. The elephants did panic. They turned around, ran down the hill and crashed into their own ranks.[10] The flight of the elephants basically ended the battle. Pyrrhus left the battlefield and Dentatus had won a tactical victory. The next year he was awarded a triumph.
The aftermath of Beneventum
The battle of Beneventum had ended in a tactical Roman victory, but the army of Pyrrhus was anything but destroyed. Nevertheless, the king now decided that it was time to end his Italian adventure. He left the peninsula and sailed back to Epirus with the biggest part of his army. His departure meant that the battle of Beneventum had also become a strategic victory for the Romans. However, the departure of the king did not completely end the Epirote presence in Italy. Pyrrhus left behind a garrison in Tarentum, led by his son Helenos and his faithful commander Milon.[11] Perhaps the great general would return to Italy one day, but for the moment his future lay in Greece.
Southern Italian warrior on horseback (detail). Image from Paestum.
In the final years of his life Pyrrhus first of all fought against Antigonos Gonatas, the King of Macedonia. He managed to capture parts of the kingdom and once again declared himself king (he had previously been King of Macedonia between 288 and 285 BCE). While on campaign Pyrrhus made extensive use of Celtic mercenaries. One Celtic garrison wreaked havoc in the ancient Macedonian capital of Aigai and violated the royal tombs there. This cost Pyrrhus his popularity among the Macedonians and paved the way for the return of Gonatas. An attack on Sparta in 272 BCE was a failure, after which Pyrrhus tried to intervene in Argos, which was torn apart by factional strife. The king was subsequently killed in confused fighting in the streets of Argos. It was a sad end for a great commander, who in spite of all his talents and skills is mostly remembered for his “Pyrrhic victories”: victories that are won at such great cost that they basically amount to defeats.
Now that Pyrrhus of Epirus had left, the Romans were able to complete their conquest of Southern Italy in the next decade. This conquest also saw the subjugation of Tarentum. Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, the man who opened this post, was elected censor in 275 BCE. He expelled Publius Cornelius Rufinus, one of the consuls of 277 BCE, from the Senate for possessing more than ten pounds of silver.[12] Rufinus was a distant ancestor of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the general and politician who would leave such a strong mark on the Roman Republic in the first century BCE.
Notes
[1] Plutarchus, Pyrrhus 21.
[2] Cassius Dio, fragments of Book 10.
[3] Plutarchus, Pyrrhus 24.
[4] Polybius, Book 1.23.
[5] Plutarchus, Pyrrhus 24.
[6] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Book 20.9-10.
[7] Plutarchus, Pyrrhus 24-25.
[8] Jeff Champion, Pyrrhus of Epirus, p. 120.
[9] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Book 20.11-12.
[10] Plutarchus, Pyrrhus 24.
[11] Jeff Champion, Pyrrhus of Epirus, p. 123.
[12] Livius, Periochae 14; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Book 20.13.