James Baquet

For a few centuries, the Roman Republic was nothing to be reckoned with. It was traditionally founded in 509 B.C., when Tarquin the Proud was driven out by relatives and the Senate abolished the old Roman kingdom altogether. But even years later, Rome didn’t count for much on the world stage.

By the turn of the third century B.C., however, Rome was a rising power that was expanding into the territories of its Italian neighbors, including the Samnites and Latins to the north and the Greek colonies to the south. One of these, Tarentum (modern Tarento) in the southeastern region of Apulia, in 280 B.C. called on King Pyrrhus of Epirus, across the Adriatic in Greece, to come to its aid against the Romans.

And come he did. Pyrrhus was a battle veteran whose army wielded a terrifying bit of ancient “technology”: war elephants, a threat the Romans were not accustomed to. However, even when victorious, the Epirote army suffered serious losses until, after his second battle (at Asculum), King Pyrrhus was reported to have said, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”

The source, the biographer Plutarch in his “Life of Pyrrhus,” went on to report that the Epirotes had lost the better part of their forces, including many leaders of the army; reinforcements were far away across the sea; and the local Greek-Italian allies really couldn’t measure up.

Further, the Roman forces were continually replenished, Plutarch reports, “as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city.” The replacements were fresh, brave, and eager to avenge their losses.

The situation — a technical “win” that leads to unsustainable losses — has given rise to the term “a Pyrrhic victory.”

After campaigning for three years in Sicily against the Carthaginians (in support of the Greeks on the eastern side of that island), Pyrrhus returned to the Italian mainland. He was defeated by the Romans at Beneventum when his elephants were thrown into confusion and ultimately captured by the Romans. The war ended with the return of his shattered army to Epirus.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. used, like a weapon

2. unable to last for long

3. replacements for troops

4. completely, absolutely

5. put an end to, did away with

6. used (to)

7. dealt (with)

8. get revenge for

9. conducting military operations

10. one with a lot of experience