A good king gone bad
After having crossed from Sicily and failed to take Rhegium, Pyrrhus decided to loot the temple of Persephone in Locri in order to secure money to pay his men. This episode is well attested in surviving sources and was apparently referenced in Pyrrhus’ own memoirs according to Dionysius.31 The king, urged on by three depraved advisors, seized huge quantities of gold from the temple. After all, Pyrrhus joked, fear of the gods should not get in the way of such a ready source of wealth.32 Zonaras adds that he put some local leaders to death for good measure, no doubt in response to the city’s lack of loyalty. Pyrrhus then put the seized wealth on ships and sent them to Taras, but they were wrecked by a storm and the treasure was washed back onto the shores of Locri. Pyrrhus, now fearful of divine wrath, returned everything and more in an attempt to placate the goddess.33 His efforts were not successful in assuaging her anger according to the priests of the temple. Pyrrhus’ choice to loot the temple is telling of a significant change in his character late in the war. During his time in Sicily, the king began exhibiting darker tendencies at odds with the more-or-less noble opponent of the Romans who had first arrived in Italy.
Pyrrhus’ character makes a dramatic shift as his time in Sicily comes to an end. In Syracuse he is said to have seized property, executed citizens, placed his own cronies in positions of power, and otherwise run roughshod over the traditions and institutions of the city. Of course Pyrrhus had been harsh in Taras when he first arrived, but that had been in reaction to the degeneracy of the Tarentines and thus a positive action. These failures of character were the reason the Tarentines needed to call for Pyrrhus in the first place. But in Syracuse, it was the despotic actions of Pyrrhus that spurred discontent against him. The king had met with spectacular success in nearly driving the Carthaginians from the island, which encouraged his desire to be a king of Sicily. His ultimate failure is thus the result of his own hubris, and his poor choices only continued as he returned to Italy. In Locri, he chose to violate divine law as he had those of men. (Plutarch does not mention the episode at Locri, preferring Pyrrhus’ change of character not include sacrilege.)
For the Romans, the looting of the temple was an exemplary event that called to mind the corruption of later generations of Romans. Diodorus and Livy both describe Pyrrhus’ actions in the context of the similar looting of the same temple (among more horrendous crimes) by the Roman legate Q. Pleminius in 205.34 According to Livy, madness resulted among the men involved rather than a shipwreck like Pyrrhus. The Locrians appealed to the Senate for redress of Pleminius’ crimes, but for Diodorus it was not genuine piety that inspired the Romans to act. While Livy points towards anger at the poor handling of the situation by Scipio, he says it was jealousy over the distribution of the spoils. In a similar episode in 173, Q. Fulvius Flaccus took the roofing tiles from the temples of Juno in Lacinia, a city in Bruttium, for a temple he was constructing in Rome.35 Pyrrhus’ callous actions were repeated by the Romans a century later when they too sat in a position of power. Just as Pyrrhus’ character was changing for the worse, so too were later Romans losing the virtues that had allowed them to beat Pyrrhus and gain an empire. As with Pyrrhus, the Romans of the later Republic would continue on the path of self-destruction.
Of course, the seeds of impropriety were always there, but held in check by his friend Cineas. In laying out his grandiose intentions to conquer the west, Cineas acts as a check on Pyrrhus’ ambitions, a mouthpiece for the reader urging restraint. While he accompanied the king to Italy, he disappears shortly after the Sicilian campaign begins. His fate is unmentioned in the surviving sources, but the fact that his disappearance from the narrative coincides with Pyrrhus’ decline in morals is certainly not a coincidence. From then on, Pyrrhus is found suffering poor advisors. It was those disreputable characters that benefited from his tyrannical actions in Syracuse, as well as they who encouraged looting the temple of Persephone. Without Cineas to rein-in his darker tendencies, Pyrrhus’ ambitions undermined his own efforts.
Pyrrhus’ moral decline also recalls that of Alexander. Once the Macedonian king had defeated Darius in battle and effectively ended Persian resistance, he progressively devolved into megalomania.36 Once-trusted associates were sent away or killed, new advisors of ill repute gained favor, Persepolis was burned to the ground (at the insistence of a courtesan according to some sources), and Alexander insisted upon his own divinity. While Alexander retained many of the features that had brought him success, power and success unleashed darker elements of his personality. The negative personality characteristics of both kings were brought out by those with whom they associated. Pyrrhus could not overcome the inherent weaknesses of his advisors, the Tarentines, and the Syracusans. Instead, he was corrupted.
It would be up to the Romans to succeed where Pyrrhus failed. For Dionysius in particular, Pyrrhus’ eventual fall is a morality tale. He was, at the start, a man to be admired, tricked into fighting the honorable Romans through the duplicity of the Tarentines. The Romans were unable to overcome this very capable general and could only barely hold their own, but through their resistance demonstrated their strength of character to the king. Pyrrhus was, ultimately, a tragic figure. Once committed to his path, fueled by hubris, Pyrrhus could not turn away. Through striving for the impossible in imitation of his cousin, he turned to despotism and impiety, which in turn doomed him to failure against the virtuous Romans.
Even at the end, the Roman narrative highlights that Pyrrhus still had the capacity to be a man of honor. After losing the battle of Beneventum, Pyrrhus escaped back to Taras. There, according to Dio/Zonaras, he meted out a harsh punishment for the doctor who had offered to assassinate him for the Romans.37 The honorable choice by Fabricius to alert Pyrrhus to the plot rather than pursue it is juxtaposed with Pyrrhus’ decision here to have a chair upholstered with the man’s skin. It was meant to reinforce obedience among the Tarentines as the king prepared to leave Italy. It is no coincidence that the Imperial Age writer Dio Cassius (via Zonaras) paints a more negative portrait of the king as Curtius Rufus does with Alexander. But this cruelty is paired by Dio/Zonaras with another concurrent event. At a party a group of young men mocked Pyrrhus in a fashion that brings to mind the criticism of Cleitus towards the actions of Alexander.38 In that instance, a drunken Alexander was enraged at his long-time friend and murdered him in cold blood. When Pyrrhus similarly decides to punish the young men, he first asks them why they had done it. They replied that they would have said much worse, but the wine ran out. Amused, Pyrrhus chose to let them go. While Pyrrhus’ character had declined over the course of his campaign, he was still capable of some restraint unlike his more famous cousin.
The battle of Beneventum (summer 275 BCE)
The situation at the beginning of 275 had changed significantly for everyone involved in the Pyrrhic War. For the Carthaginians, things were looking better as Pyrrhus had been mauled in his withdrawal from Sicily with little chance of an immediate return to the island. Meanwhile, the Sicilian Greeks again fragmented. In Italy, the Romans had seen significant gains in the south with alliances reestablished among the southern Greeks. At the same time, the Samnites had been beaten back. For Pyrrhus, his position was greatly weakened. Control of the western Greeks could still be won and peace forced on his enemies, but bold action would be needed in order to gain the time to forge something enduring. Pyrrhus’ previous victories gave him the initiative against the once more cautious Romans, but he needed a decisive battlefield triumph. Ultimately, Pyrrhus would find the Romans near the Samnite city of Maleventum, better known by the name of the later Roman colony on the site, Beneventum.39
In Roman eyes, the plague that had just struck only compounded the sense of disaster. The portents in 275 are said to have been, to put it mildly, horrific. On the Capitoline Hill the statue of Jupiter was struck by lightning, blowing its head off.40 The implication is clear: Rome, as the head of Italy, was in danger of being removed by Pyrrhus. But the situati
on was salvageable. The haruspices managed to find the head, no doubt promising that no matter how grim things looked they would turn out well in the end. The sources (save only in the perpetually pro-Roman narrative of Dio/Zonaras) insist that everything was looking grim for the Romans.
For 275, the Romans elected M’. Curius Dentatus and L. Lentulus Caudinus as consuls.41 Only Curius, a plebeian, had held the consulship before; in 290 he had earned triumphs over the Samnites and Sabines as well as an ovation over the Lucanians. With his experience in the south, it would be Curius who would direct Rome’s military efforts. However, the consuls faced significant problems recruiting men for their armies.42 When Curius drew lots for the first name of the levy, the man did not present himself for service. The consul was forced to turn to extremely harsh measures, selling the man into slavery and auctioning off all of his property. The convicted man’s appeal to the tribunes of the plebs, defenders of the plebeian class, was ignored. With this accomplished, the levy continued uninterrupted as men now feared refusing to serve more than they feared Pyrrhus.
This hesitation to enlist serves as yet another spur for the reader’s dread as well as the very real difficulties the Roman state faced in continuing the war at this critical juncture. The problem was twofold. The first issue was morale. The Roman senate had already come close to accepting peace in 280, and the men who would do the actual fighting faced the possibility of another ignominious defeat with heavy casualties. The second problem was a significant drop in the number of citizens, which had gone from 287,222 in 280/279 to 271,224 in 276/275 due mostly to the plague of 276.43 The battles of Heraclea and Ausculum had also not helped the census figures. A 5.5% decrease in population over such a short period of time was a destabilizing element in society and would negatively affect the economy. The situation paralleled that which the Romans faced in the opening years of the Second Punic War, when the Romans lost so many men to Hannibal but still fielded more in the following years. As they would do in that war, the Romans here needed to avoid significant losses and hold on to their gains while the situation at home stabilized.
With armies raised, the consuls marched south. The size of the Roman forces is not recorded. In the absence of any data, it is safest to accept that each consul commanded a standard force of two legions plus allies, some 20,000 apiece, as they had throughout the war. Curius invaded Samnium while Lentulus entered Lucania. Neither probably planned on moving much further south, just as the consuls of the previous year had avoided Magna Graecia as soon as Pyrrhus had returned.
Pyrrhus’ position was precarious, but he decided on aggression rather than a defensive strategy. He may have feared further Roman efforts among the Italiote Greeks, which had undermined his control of the area during his absence. Retaking those cities would pin Pyrrhus down for a time, allowing the Romans a free hand to attack his allies elsewhere. Another victory on the battlefield could have potentially solved both problems: driving the consuls back and convincing wayward allies to return to their alliances with him. The king could also reinforce Samnium and Lucania as buffer regions. Another victory may also have convinced the Romans to make peace.
Pyrrhus’ decision to march north was also informed by the numbers he had available for his army compared to the Romans. Pyrrhus is said to have returned from Sicily with some 20,000 men, which may have included a significant number of Lucanians and Bruttians picked up along the march back to Taras.44 Orosius puts the total number of men Pyrrhus had at Beneventum at 80,000, and Dionysius says he outnumbered the Romans three to one.45 Here, the situation is reversed from Heraclea. Now the inferior numbers of the Romans would overcome the huge army of Pyrrhus. More realistically, Pyrrhus’ total forces in 275 may have numbered upwards of 40,000, including Epirotes, Italiote Greeks, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites, but at Beneventum he commanded a smaller number of around 20,000–25,000.46 He had already failed to obtain any reinforcements from Epirus. The king was in a similar position to the one he had been in in Sicily, increasingly reliant on his allies for support as his own men dwindled via attrition.
Pyrrhus sought to dictate the circumstances of the battles in order to gain the upper hand.47 The consuls were not operating together, but were not so far apart that they could not support one another in short order if needed. As such, Pyrrhus decided to send forces to pin Lentulus in Lucania while he attacked Curius in Samnium with the best men of his army. Once he had won, Pyrrhus could then turn and crush Lentulus. With both consular armies defeated he would face little resistance for the rest of 275 and he could roll back Roman gains in the south.
As with the battles of Heraclea and Ausculum, the surviving descriptions of the battle of Beneventum are fragmentary and contradictory.48 Only Plutarch’s narrative is complete, but just as brief as his descriptions of other battles. Dionysius’ description is mostly lost, save for a few isolated episodes. Zonaras, Orosius, and Florus emphasize the role of Pyrrhus’ elephants in his defeat. As with their descriptions of Heraclea and Ausculum, these authors use the elephants as a means of demonstrating the terror of Pyrrhus’ forces, the bravery of the Romans in defeating them, and the ironic point that Pyrrhus’ defeat was his own doing. But this undue emphasis on the elephants overshadows anything else about the battle that they found in their sources (Livy and Dio Cassius) and as such must be largely disregarded. Plutarch’s narrative, which made use of a combination of Greek and Roman sources without falling into the same trap of overemphasizing the role of the elephants, serves as the most reliable of the sources on the battle of Beneventum.
The consul Curius took up position near the Samnite city of Beneventum (then Maleventum).49 The city was located in the Calor River valley. To the southwest of Beneventum, through the pass of the Caudine Forks, were the rich plain of Campania and the Via Appia. To the northwest was the Volturnus River valley, which connected eventually with the Via Latina. Both roads gave direct access to Latium and Rome. As such, Beneventum represented a key chokepoint where Curius could deny access to the Roman heartland if Pyrrhus attempted to repeat his invasion of Campania and Latium. Whether or not the king intended anything of the sort is unclear, but is seems unlikely given the current strategic situation and the overall ineffectiveness of his earlier invasion of Latium. Beneventum served a similar purpose for Pyrrhus, controlling an important route into Samnium that the Romans had been exploiting. But Curius’ army was the main target for Pyrrhus.
Curius took up position near a tributary of the Calor River in the foothills, which afforded him an excellent defensive position. He called for Lentulus to join him, at which point the Romans would outnumber Pyrrhus. His cautious approach was reinforced by unfavorable omens. Time was the ally of the Romans. The army Pyrrhus had dispatched to pin Lentulus in place could not have been intended to actually defeat the consul. Pyrrhus wanted to fight each separately, which meant that he needed to act fairly quickly before they could unite. The fact that Lentulus earned a triumph during this year over the Samnites and a new cognomen for seizing Caudium, a city only about 12 miles south of Beneventum, may indicate that he was fast approaching. Pyrrhus needed to act.
The Roman position put Pyrrhus at a disadvantage. The hilly terrain was not favorable to his phalanx, cavalry, or elephants. So he decided upon a risky maneuver. He ordered a detachment of his best men to set out in the night, encircle the Roman position, and seize the high ground behind them.50 He would then catch the Romans in a pincer, negating the strength of their position. That night, according to Dionysius, Pyrrhus experienced a terrible dream that made him doubt his decision, and it was only with difficulty that his advisors prevented him from calling his men back. Of course, in the hands of later Roman writers that dream proved prophetic. Dawn caught the men after they had spent the night struggling through dense forest in their heavy gear before they could complete their mission. They were exhausted, thirsty, and fully visible to the Romans. Curius ordered an immediate attack before the main body of Pyrrhus’ army could move up in support of th
eir comrades. The detachment was driven back without accomplishing anything but fatiguing Pyrrhus’ best men.
Buoyed by his success, Curius ordered his army to attack into the valley. This decision was perhaps ill-advised as it mirrored events at Ausculum. There the Romans had marched onto open ground that favored Pyrrhus’ troops, and suffered defeat as a result. Curius’ army nearly suffered the same fate. The Romans drove the forward elements of Pyrrhus’ army before them as they left the hills. It was then that Pyrrhus ordered his elephants forward, breaking a portion of the Roman line and driving them back in turn. But the battle was now a disorganized affair, and neither general could have exerted much control as their armies were victorious and defeated at various points on the field.
The assault of the elephants was put to an end by reinforcements from the Roman camp who harried the animals with javelins, eventually causing them to panic and flee.51 Dionysius insists that it was the distressed cries of a young elephant separated from its mother that panicked all of them. The animals then, we are told, ran amok through Pyrrhus’ own ranks, disrupting the lines and causing his defeat. It was the efforts of the Roman reinforcements that turned back the beasts, no doubt with much difficulty. The Romans had already fought the animals twice already and were not as susceptible to them as they had once been. With the failure of his nighttime encirclement and charge of his elephants, Pyrrhus withdrew his men from the fighting.
A History of the Pyrrhic War Page 19