Despite regular economic and commercial links, the eastern and western ends of the Mediterranean had very little political contact, in any serious sense, until the middle of the third century, and even then this was largely brought about through the expansionist activities of Rome. It was Rome that steadily encroached on the wealthy cities of Campania and southern Italy, Rome whose embroilment with the great commercial empire of Carthage in the First Punic War (264–241) led to the absorption of Sicily as a Roman province, Rome whose concern to halt the depredations of Adriatic piracy brought about a Roman intervention in Illyria, and, very soon, a confrontation with Antigonid Macedonia. The impact of Alexander’s conquests could not leave the West untouched, but their effect was secondary, and for the most part restricted to attempts, by local condottieri, to ape the royal pretensions of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids while operating in the old Sicilian tradition of military tyranny.1
The Sicilian so-called monarchies of Agathocles (317/6–289) and Hieron II (269–215) in Syracuse, though the latter in particular reveals a certain Ptolemaic panache, were not really Hellenistic, but rather an extension of the quasi-benevolent autocracy practiced in the fifth century by Hieron I and Gelon, and early in the fourth by Dionysius I. At the same time these rulers were well aware of what was going on in the eastern Aegean, and in ways sought to emulate it. When Agathocles proclaimed himself king, in 305/4, it was a deliberate bid to join the select club recently established by the Diadochoi (pp. 30–31).2 Contacts between West and East certainly existed, for the most part in the form of a succession of Greek generals who either were invited across the Straits of Otranto by hard-pressed Greek settlers (caught between Rome and the mountain tribesmen of southern Italy), or else decided to try their luck there independently. Some of them, like Timoleon of Corinth, who liberated Syracuse from the despotic tyranny of Dionysius II (344), were reasonably enlightened men; but mostly they come over as savage, and savagely ambitious, military thugs.
The sheer record of atrocities during the fourth and third centuries, in Sicily particularly, is worse than for almost any other period of ancient history: a grisly chronicle of mass executions, public torture (on one occasion in the theater, with schoolchildren brought in to watch, since the punishment of a tyrant was held to be a highly edifying spectacle),3 rape, pillage, and enslavement, with the Romans as the worst, but by no means the only, habitual offenders. The period with which we are here concerned, from the mid-fourth to the late third century, is chiefly important, in terms of Hellenistic history, for the progressive emergence of Rome as a powerful, and, very soon, dominant factor in the affairs of the Greek and Macedonian world. Roman involvement was directly contingent upon the military adventurism, in Sicily and Magna Graecia, of successive foreign captains: Timoleon, Alexander of Epirus, Agathocles, Pyrrhus. Hieron II, a native Syracusan (and onetime lieutenant of Pyrrhus) falls into a slightly different category (see p. 224).
By the end of the First Punic War (241), with Greek Sicily firmly in her grasp and a growing appetite for international trade, Rome was bound, sooner rather than later, to be drawn into the politics of the Hellenistic world. Political caution could not hold out for ever against commercial greed; the private sector was sure, in the long run, to force a change of policy. At the same time it seems clear that the original policy was not (as has sometimes been assumed) one of imperial expansionism. Illyrian piracy formed no more than the immediate excuse for what can be seen, in retrospect, as inevitable intervention on a major scale. Rome’s ad hoc, initially reluctant involvement in Greek and Macedonian affairs nevertheless destroyed the delicate diplomatic balance between Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Antigonids, thus radically transforming the nature of power politics in the eastern Mediterranean. From about 200 onwards the Hellenistic kingdoms—and a fortiori the smaller surviving principalities or Greek poleis—found themselves combining, with progressively less success or confidence, to stem the tidal encroachments of this great new power, imperial despite itself. One by one the independent monarchies surrendered or were destroyed: when in 133 Attalus III of Pergamon, anxious to preempt the ambitions of his illegitimate half-brother, Aristonicus, bequeathed his entire kingdom to Rome (p. 529), he was merely being realistic (and, arguably, avoiding unnecessary bloodshed). What we must examine now is the background to this expansionism: the struggle for power in Sicily and southern Italy between about 345 and 220.
Democracy, in the Sicilian cities, with their tradition of commercial expansionism and enormous wealth (combined with bitter poverty), was an uncertain and intermittent luxury. More characteristic were the tough oligarchies and military tyrannies that we so frequently find dominating the scene.4 Class warfare, more violent and more bloody in Sicily than elsewhere because of a huge gap between haves and have-nots, produced a volatile, unstable political pattern, with the cities largely incapable of long-term mutual cooperation. Devastation was widespread. Divide and rule, as innumerable foreign conquerors learned, offered the simplest key to control of this rich but turbulent island. The situation in Syracuse was typical. In 346, after a ten-years’ ouster, Dionysius II, in vengeful mood, and not noticeably improved in his moral or philosophical outlook by Plato’s tutelage, finally regained control of Syracuse, only to be blockaded by various rebels, not to mention a Carthaginian fleet.5 The aristocrats of Syracuse appealed first to Hicetas, the Syracusan tyrant of nearby Leontini, and then to their mother city, Corinth. The second choice proved wiser than the first.
Hicetas intrigued with Carthage, and was plainly bent on extending his own absolute power. The Corinthians, ignoring his bland assurances that no help was needed, dispatched to Syracuse a middle-aged ex-condottiere named Timoleon to restore order and deal with the Syracusans’ various pressing problems.6 Against all odds, Timoleon proved the most extraordinary success. He got rid not only of Dionysius (who was shunted off to retirement in Corinth, where he became a walking tribute to the fate of tyrants),7 but also of several other would-be usurpers, Hicetas among them. He freed Syracuse, and beat off the Carthaginians, with whom, after the great battle of the Crimisos River, he made a working peace based on spheres of interest (339/8): the Carthaginians kept the western part of the island, but all Sicily east of the Halycus River was now under Greek rule.8 He introduced democracy, of a sort, once more; he even got the cities of Sicily back into some kind of federation. Colonists were invited from mainland Greece—no less than sixty thousand new citizens came to Syracuse alone—and a flood of prospectors arrived to take over deserted land (e.g., at Megara Hyblaea),9 and to boost the population of the cities with a strong, fresh Hellenic input.10 Corinth, perhaps also acting as a middleman for other cities (and as an exchange center for their currencies), now began to import enormous quantities of Sicilian wheat and dairy produce into mainland Greece at competitive prices.11
Dictatorial powers over Syracuse were conferred on Timoleon by acclamation. Despite his extraordinary successes, and self-proclaimed moderation, he was really no more than a benevolent tyrant in the Peisistratean tradition. It is significant that after the Crimisos victory his ambitions became more obvious, and his rule a good deal tougher, more palpably authoritarian.12 While no more a democrat by conviction than any of the Successors, he was, like them, more than ready to play the democratic game for so long as he found it either necessary or advantageous. Like Peisistratus, again, he depended on mercenaries, who had helped to establish his power in the first place. Though the assertion that “he was autocratic and ruthless and brutal and faithless (otherwise known as ‘diplomatic’)” is too strong a reaction in the other direction,13 there can be no doubt of his unscrupulous determination in pursuit of his goals.14 Further, though born lucky—and a true child of his age in his cultivation of Random Fortune (Automatia)15 —he was not quite the genius that his own propaganda endeavored to make him out.16
Timoleon’s good press is due in part to the historian Timaeus (ca. 356-ca. 260), whose father, Andromachus, was one of Timoleon’s closest allies, and whose praise of Timoleon himself earned him a stinging reproof from Polybius.17 This seems to have depressed Timoleon’s stock a little too far, in antiquity as among modern historians.18 Though his methods may have been fundamentally those of a tyrannos, he did get rid of rival minor tyrants; he did revise the laws of Syracuse on a democratic basis;19 he symbolically destroyed the palace-fortress of Ortygia in Syracuse, home of too many despotic rulers; and even if his “restored democracy” was in fact (as has been argued) nothing but oligarchy in disguise,20 at least he was moving in the right direction. For eight years he struggled against formidable opponents: final victory looked, and was, far from certain. The worst of his cruelty was reserved for local brigands or would-be despots, whom he determinedly stamped out. He took an unswervingly hostile line against Carthage. He knew how to win popularity while never relaxing his grip on government, an enviable talent. When he began to go blind he stepped down from office, and died a year or two later (337/6), shortly after Chaeronea, as Syracuse’s most honored elder statesman.21 At his funeral his achievements were enumerated: the overthrow of tyrants, the defeat of Carthage, the repopulation of devastated cities, the restoration of the rule of law in Greek Sicily.22
Immediately after his death, however, all his work was undone. His Council (synedrion) of Six Hundred,23 originally an echo of Cleisthenes’ Council of Five Hundred in democratic Athens, soon degenerated into a mere oligarchic faction (hetairia) of the wealthiest and most blue-blooded families,24 and monopolized power in Syracuse. The result was a renewal of feuding and stasis (factional warfare). Throughout this period the Syracusans remained, as so often, their own worst enemies. Yet despite all this internecine fighting, both our literary and our archaeological sources confirm the growing prosperity of Sicily in the late fourth and early third centuries.25 Agricultural production, in response to increased demand for exports, was up,26 and the capital reserves thus acquired went into a spate of public building:27 temples, theaters, town walls, municipal offices were all renovated or enlarged, and the cities of Gela and Acragas were refounded.
Yet the political base remained, as always, uncertain. The independent, self-determined polis had, as we have seen, lost all its real power in mainland Greece; in Sicily, on the other hand, it had never taken really firm hold. There was a weakness here to be exploited, a power vacuum to be filled. Predictably, Syracuse, under the uncertain control of the Six Hundred, soon fell into the hands of a military adventurer whose continuing support came from the lower classes (317/6). This was Agathocles (b. 361 at Thermae in Sicily),28 who had first come to Syracuse at the age of eighteen, with his father, an immigrant potter from Rhegium.29 Once again we have to be careful about our evidence, though this time in an inverse sense: the same historian, Timaeus, who glorifies Timoleon, also paints as black a picture as one could conceive of Agathocles30—but then, Agathocles was responsible for exiling him, just as Cleon was for exiling Thucydides a century earlier.31 Agathocles, as a native Sicilian, seems to have modeled himself, as we might expect, on Dionysius I rather than on the Successor dynasts.32 Though his father made good in Syracuse as a prosperous ceramics manufacturer,33 Agathocles himself spent his early years as a mercenary, heading his own private army, a skillful and daring soldier of fortune. This did not stop him making much political capital out of his reputed skill as a potter: he was never slow to exploit the common touch. Also, like so many populist politicians, he ensured his future by marrying money: in his case the immensely wealthy widow of Damas, his patron and ex-lover.34 Though Justin is probably wrong to present his early career as that of a pretty boy who graduated from minion to bandit by way of professional gigolo,35 the exaggeration is perhaps not so great as some scholars have supposed.36
Agathocles’ takeover of Syracuse was accompanied by a mass slaughter of propertied oligarchs—some four thousand died in one day37—and wholesale looting. He offered to resign his generalship, but was confirmed in sole power by an assembly of his elated sans-culotte supporters, who made him in effect dictator, with a mandate to cancel debts and redistribute land. The Spartan-led opposition to him collapsed ignominiously.38 His ferocious cruelty seems to have been class-based throughout (it was always the oligarchs whom he decimated in his Sicilian forays, always the radical exiles whom he reinstated), and in any case abated as soon as he felt himself firmly established, from about 305 onwards. His “pretense”39 to champion democracy was probably neither more nor less sincere than the Successors’ claims to be promoting Greek freedom: what it primarily indicates is the source of his support. To get that support he must have fulfilled some, at least, of his pledges: it would be interesting to know (though the evidence is lacking) just what happened to the property of those four thousand dead oligarchs. Certainly his main opponents were the rich and the well-connected, identified in Diodorus’s account as the Six Hundred, who numbered among them “all the most respectable and largest property owners,” who had “governed the city during the oligarchy.”40 It is also clear that he enjoyed genuine popularity (offset by the occasional brutal purge) with the common people, since he had no bodyguard and was easily accessible at all times.41 It is interesting that his success signaled a resurgence in Syracusan imperial ambitions.42
What makes Agathocles of special significance in a Hellenistic context, indeed, is his extension of activity into North Africa.43 Driven back from Acragas to Gela, and thence to Syracuse, where he was blockaded by a Carthaginian fleet, Agathocles thereupon, with cool impudence, eluded the blockade,44 sailed from Syracuse with a moderate-sized squadron (August 310), crossed the Libyan Sea, burned his boats, and marched on Carthage—“the first European to invade North Africa in force.”45 The odd result was that Carthage and Syracuse now found themselves faced with each other’s forces simultaneously. It was at this point that Agathocles made an alliance with Ophellas, Ptolemy I’s governor in Cyrene (see p. 42). There is no reason to suppose that he was deliberately abetting Ptolemy’s own anti-Carthaginian policy;46 Ophellas was an ambitious maverick, and each man probably figured on using the other for his own purposes. If so, Agathocles won hands down. He waited till Ophellas obligingly brought him cavalry, chariots, and a large infantry force. Then, with cool aplomb, he attacked and killed his new ally, and took over his entire army (309/8).47
After this promising start, however, Agathocles’ subsequent progress was less spectacular. Forced by trouble at home to return to Sicily (an inevitable hazard) he found himself shuttling to and fro between his Syracusan and North African spheres of action, to the detriment of both. Rebellion in Sicily was followed by mutiny in his army, probably due to arrears of pay. In 306 he was forced to abandon his African venture. He made peace with Carthage on the basis of the status quo:48 though his expedition had proved a failure, it was not forgotten, as the subsequent actions of Pyrrhus and Rome make very clear. Then he returned home to Syracuse, where (on the basis of a war indemnity and a consignment of grain he had received as part of the deal) he gave himself the airs of a conqueror.49 Indeed, it was soon after this that, in imitation of the Diadochoi, he declared himself king (305). Will is surely right in seeing this as a purely personal affectation, a “superficial decoration calculated to enhance the tyrant’s prestige,”50 with no imperial implications, since Agathocles’ power was now by and large restricted to Syracuse.51
Yet his ambitions were by no means dampened. From now on he did his best to involve himself in the affairs of Greece and Egypt, perhaps as part of an ongoing effort, still, to create a strong anti-Carthaginian Greek bloc in the West under his leadership.52 About 300 he married, as his third wife, Theoxene, the sister(?) of Magas, Ptolemy’s new governor of Cyrene, and in all likelihood Ptolemy’s own daughter or stepdaughter.53 We may surmise that Ptolemy was not ungrateful to him for eliminating Ophellas, who had been showing dangerous signs of independence. Shortly after this, in any case, Agathocles moved to keep Ptolemy’s enemy Cassander out of Corcyra, that key island controlling the Straits of Otranto and the Adriatic: he burned the Macedonian fleet, and occupied the island himself, displacing the royal Spartan condottiere Cleonymus, who had made it his base.54 In a further bid for useful Greek connections he married off his daughter Lanassa to Pyrrhus (295), with Corcyra as her dowry (above, p. 126).55 However, in 290, perhaps in renewed hope of a final confrontation with Carthage, Agathocles broke with Pyrrhus, to ally himself instead with Demetrius the Besieger.56 Lanassa thereupon also left Pyrrhus, and went back to Corcyra, her dowry, where, and for which, Demetrius, as we have seen, in turn married her (p. 126).
All these maneuvers were in vain. Demetrius had offered to guarantee the succession of Agathocles’ son, but could not prevent him being assassinated by a disgruntled half-brother, the son of the king’s first wife. Agathocles, surrounded by family intrigue and, like Freud, suffering from cancer of the jaw, packed his Ptolemaic wife, Theoxene, off back to Egypt, and (since he now had no heir designate) as a last gesture before his death restored the democracy in Syracuse (289), a good way of annoying all his relatives at once, and a sure guarantee of anarchy and factionalism the moment he was gone.57 The worst charge that can be brought against Agathocles, it has been claimed, “is that he was a mere opportunist who lived by improvisation and had no fixed policy.”58 But he was also an anachronism, the oldstyle local tyrannos with a populist following, murderous and repressive, in a new world of expansionist superpowers. His forays into southern Italy never achieved anything of value; he conquered Bruttium, but could never control the Greek cities of the mainland.59 He was thus a transitional figure between Sicily’s Greek past and Roman future.60 Indeed, he appealed to the Romans rather more than he did to the Greeks: Scipio, the conqueror of Carthage, named him, together with Dionysius I, as the supreme example of boldness and intelligence in a statesman.
This hyperbolic claim, it is safe to say, tells us rather more about Scipio, and Roman values generally, than it does about Agathocles (or, for that matter, Dionysius). Though Agathocles made a considerable effort to learn the new rules for ambitious would-be monarchs, he never fully assimilated them. His Carthaginian expedition marked the highlight of his career, and after it he relapsed for too long into mere bloody-minded Sicilianism, a virus from which better men than he were not immune. Any larger objectives he might have had were invariably conditioned by his idée fixe over Carthage. At the time of his death, for instance, he was planning, and had already made extensive preparations for, another North African campaign, one object of which was to prevent the Carthaginians’ importing wheat from Sicily or Sardinia.61 The natural condition of Sicily—at once wealthy past belief in physical resources, yet isolated from the major centers of Hellenic culture and commerce—meant that if it was to move with the times, it would most probably be under external rule. Pyrrhus is reported as saying of this period that Sicily was ripe for the plucking—“for ever since Agathocles’ death the whole island has been riddled with factionalism; law and order have broken down in the cities, and the demagogues are having a field day.”62
It is a nice paradox that the last, and arguably the best, of Sicily’s independent tyrants, Hieron II (ca. 306–215)—an ex-lieutenant of Pyrrhus who rose, by way of a Syracusan command, to kingship through victory63—should have ruled Syracuse for half a century, from 269, as a purely domestic fief, without any trace of external military adventurism; and an even nicer one that from 263, after six years of progressively less effective resistance to Roman armies (during which time he was allied with Carthage),64 he should have switched sides, thereafter appearing as the Romans’ sedulous client-king, regularly supplying them with grain, timber, and other basic necessities during their long struggle against the Carthaginians.65 By the time Hieron died, what he ruled—perhaps a quarter of the island—had become a privileged enclave under treaty (renewed 247 sine die) in the new Roman province of Sicily; but in this way he had avoided the massacres and depredations from which the rest of Sicily had suffered, and indeed derived enough profit from his dealings with Rome (his ports and naval yards were open to Roman warships) to achieve regular representation, and victories, at the Olympic Games, to rebuild and extend Syracuse’s stone theater, to erect temples, gymnasia, stoas, not to mention a splendid palace for himself on the harbor island of Ortygia, and a gigantic altar (199 × 23.5 m) on which no less than a thousand beasts could be slaughtered simultaneously.66
This cultural ostentation, while highly Hellenistic in flavor—we recall how he built that monstrously large ship for Ptolemy II (p. 774 n. 22)—did not make him a Hellenistic monarch. Philanthrōpia of his sort had been long established with those early fifth-century Deinomenid rulers Gelon and (his namesake, but probably no relation) Hieron I. Most of his public works were carried out after Rome’s occupation of Sicily at the end of her first war with Carthage (241), and in a sense under the Roman aegis.67 An early believer in the protective arm of the pax Romana, Hieron sold off his catapults and siege engines to the Rhodians, and concentrated on civic promotion schemes instead. He might, and did, wear the diadem, use the title of king, and represent his queen, Philistis, on his coinage (a clear borrowing from Ptolemaic practice: the case of Arsinoë II springs to mind),68 but these practices did not per se make him a genuine Hellenistic monarch. He spent most of his reign, in effect, as Rome’s client—privileged, but a client nevertheless. Polybius pays lavish tribute to his singlehanded success against odds, his most un-Sicilian avoidance of bloodshed, his modesty and personal temperance in the midst of luxury, his popularity with his subjects.69 It is, nevertheless, arguable that what most appealed to Polybius about Hieron was, precisely, his wholehearted cooperation with Rome. Perhaps his most lasting contribution was the so-called lex Hieronica, Hieron’s law, a system of tithes on grain and other products, widely regarded as equitable, and taken over by the Romans when Sicily became a province.70 Though his overseas trade with Egypt and Rhodes enriched him and his city, it could never give him true independence.
Hieron remained faithful to his Roman patrons till the end. His last known public acts were the dispatch of grain, cash, and auxiliaries to Rome after the crippling defeats at Lake Trasimene (217) and Cannae (216).71 Soon after his death—he lived to the ripe old age of ninety-two72—even the semblance of freedom vanished.73 His grandson and heir, Hieronymus, a spoiled adolescent, was maneuvered by the two leading regents into negotiations for an alliance with Carthage. This caused such alarm that opponents of the move had Hieronymus assassinated.74 However, the pro-Carthaginian populists,75 mistakenly assuming that Rome had been finished by Cannae, not only consolidated their power in the backlash of feeling against Hieronymus,76 but also began to conduct raids against Roman-held territory.77 In very short order they saw Leontini sacked (213), and Syracuse itself put under siege by a far-from-defeated Roman proconsul, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Though that scientific genius Archimedes (p. 465) had made the city walls virtually impregnable, in 212 Syracuse was betrayed; the gates were opened, and the city sacked: Archimedes himself was one of the casualties.78 From now on Sicily was a Roman province, and its administrators bled it even whiter than its home-grown rulers had done. As Cicero said at the trial of the island’s most notorious governor, Gaius Verres, Sicily was “the first to teach our ancestors what a fine thing it is to rule over foreign nations.”79 The lesson was soon learned, and put to increasingly enthusiastic use as time went by.
We must now look back for a little to see what had been happening during these decades in Magna Graecia. At the time of Timoleon’s activities in Sicily, and of Alexander the Great’s expedition against the Persian empire, Alexander’s brother-in-law, Alexander of Epirus, received an appeal from the people of Taras (Roman Tarentum, mod. Taranto) for help against the Messapian and Lucanian tribesmen of the hinterland, who coveted their rich plain and seaport. This was in 334, and the expedition that Alexander of Epirus mounted set a pattern. Once in Italy, the Epirot king began to get ambitions (if he had not been nursing them from the start) to conquer worlds in the West as his brother-in-law was doing in the East. He led a very similar type of army, a royal tribal muster reinforced by mercenaries, which was more than a match for any local levies. His conquests and, worse, his rapprochement with Rome (for a campaign against the Samnites) scared the Tarentines, and they were by no means sorry when, in 330, he got himself killed.80
It is true that genuine Hellenizing schemes of conquest were rare in the West. The most notorious, the Athenians’ Sicilian expedition (415–413), had resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the invaders, which also served to discourage others from any similar attempt. Even so, one might have thought that the Tarentines would think twice before risking a repetition of the dangers to which they had exposed themselves by importing Alexander of Epirus: could they not see that any mercenary captain was liable to turn conquistador on his own account? Yet in 282 they sent an embassy to solicit the assistance of Pyrrhus (of all frustrated and ambitious warlords), and this time against Rome herself.81 The Roman fleet, in defiance of an existing treaty, had trespassed in Tarentine waters; hostilities had been declared, and the Greeks wanted a first-class general to deal with Rome’s legions. On this score Pyrrhus was their obvious choice. He was a brilliant and seasoned commander; he was also available—too available, they might have reflected, had they not been so eager for his services, and full of imperial dreams that would not be satisfied with service as a mere hired generalissimo. His present situation also should have given them pause for thought. After invading Macedonia with Lysimachus he had been driven out of his new fief in 285 by Lysimachus himself, and retired to his own small western kingdom (above, p. 130).82 This was a man who would be king with a vengeance, and of considerably more than the Molossian kingdom of Epirus.
When the Tarentine ambassador reached him, early in 281, Pyrrhus nevertheless found himself in a quandary, since Lysimachus had recently been eliminated at Corupedion (p. 132). Which road should his ambition take? Should he accept this timely offer, follow where his former father-in-law Agathocles had pointed the way, and work to carve himself an empire in the West?83 Or should he rather stay in Greece, and make one last bid for the Macedonian throne? In the end he accepted the Tarentine offer, perhaps with a view to having it both ways by establishing a base from which he could, eventually, return to Greece in strength.84 It may be doubted whether he had any true appreciation of just how formidable an enemy he was up against in the Romans; worse, by 280 it was already too late to reverse Rome’s progressive absorption of Magna Graecia.85 His rivals at home—Ptolemy Keraunos, Antigonus Gonatas, Antiochus I—all heaved a collective sigh of relief at his decision, and lost no time in providing him with troops and equipment (including elephants) in order to get him out of Greece as soon as possible.86 In return Pyrrhus gave up—at least for the moment—his designs on the Macedonian throne.
He landed in Italy in May 280. The Tarentines, who had bid for a mercenary general, found themselves invaded by a vast foreign army as well.87 Pyrrhus, who meant business, also occupied the acropolis and garrisoned the city: this did not make him popular. It also sent a warning signal to his official opponents. For Rome, the war against Pyrrhus became the turning point in a drive to control the whole Italian peninsula,88 whereas for Pyrrhus, that skillful yet feckless condottiere, it was simply one more episode in a hand-to-mouth career of military adventurism. To begin with he was remarkably successful, defeating two Roman consular armies in succession, at Heracleia-by-Siris and Ausculum. At one point he was actually in Latium, near Praeneste, no more than a few miles from Rome.89 But at the urging of old Appius Claudius Caecus, who clearly understood the immense potential value of Magna Graecia, Pyrrhus’s offer, made very much in the spirit of the Diadochoi, to partition Italy (with the south going to him) was rejected,90 and soon afterwards Pyrrhus himself was lured south by an offer from Sicily to lead a campaign against the Carthaginians.91 Ptolemy Keraunos’s death almost drew him back to Greece (p. 133), but the offer of Acragas, Syracuse, and Leontini was one he could not resist. In 278, with ten thousand veterans at his back, he answered the call.
His initial reception was enthusiastic, and he soon scored up such a string of victories in western Sicily that he was hailed in some quarters as king. The Carthaginians, meanwhile, driven by a well-justified fear of Pyrrhus’s ultimate intentions, sought, and obtained, a firm alliance with Rome,92 a move that should have given him pause, but clearly did not. By 277 the only strongholds still eluding him were the western port of Lilybaeum, still firmly in Carthaginian hands, and Messana (mod. Messina), where the Mamertines—a group of independent mercenaries rather like the Catalan Grand Company in the Middle Ages—had dug themselves well in. Pyrrhus, who was no diplomat, when offered peace by Carthage (with Rome by now at her back) on the basis of the status quo, refused the offer, and then failed to take Lilybaeum by siege.93 Having thus ignominiously thrown in an all-but-won hand, he returned to Italy, after quarreling rancorously with the Sicilians he had gone to help (fall 276),94 who were in no mood to encourage another potential tyrant,95 much less now—with Rome in the game—to support his plans for carrying the war into North Africa. The Carthaginians damaged his fleet severely during the crossing.
Once again Pyrrhus was answering an appeal for military assistance from the hard-pressed Tarentines and Samnites; once again, incredibly, there was the same basic malentendu between the contracting parties. What the locals wanted was a professional general who stuck to his commission; what they got, as with Alexander of Epirus, was an ambitious conquistador, and, worse, this time one who proved no match for the opposition. Pyrrhus spent the winter in Taras, getting his army ready for a spring offensive. But in the summer of 275 he was soundly beaten at Beneventum (then Maleventum, but renamed in honor of the Roman victory) by Manius Curius Dentatus, who had taken the trouble to learn how elephants should be dealt with.96 It was in these less than auspicious circumstances that Pyrrhus returned to Greece to try his luck against Antigonus Gonatas (above, pp. 143 ff.). He had not abandoned his Western dream altogether: he left his son Helenus and a garrison force behind in Taras. But he himself never came back, and the following year he withdrew most of his troops from Italy. In 272, answering one appeal for help too many, he was knocked out by that old lady’s well-aimed tile in Argos (above, p. 144).97 In the same year the Romans took Taras, which was surrendered to them by Pyrrhus’s skeleton garrison.98
Both Rome and Carthage benefited from Pyrrhus’s removal; and with his going the last chance for a Greek recovery in the West vanished. The unification of all Italy under Rome was now only a matter of time. Ptolemy II, always alert to Mediterranean realities, promptly sent an embassy to this rising, indeed risen, power, becoming the first of the Hellenistic monarchs to cultivate a policy of friendship toward Rome, or to recognize her growing importance in international affairs.99 As subsequent events made plain, Ptolemy had displayed shrewd foresight. Rhegium fell in 270, and Brundisium (mod. Brindisi) three years later. Sicily beckoned alluringly. In 264, partly through greed, partly by accident, Rome lurched into the first of her three drawn-out wars with Carthage.
The course of that great and draining struggle does not directly concern us here. But Rome emerged from it the ruler of Sicily, proceeded to occupy Sardinia and Corsica, and in 229 turned, at last, eastward to Illyria. If the Greeks of the West played no great role, either politically or culturally, in the development of the Hellenistic world—but then there had been no Alexander to open up a vast empire for their exploitation—at least, through a series of accidents, they had been in part responsible for bringing about the confrontation of that world with its ultimate nemesis: Rome.
