At first he was very successful and defeated the Carthaginians, taking
the town of Eryx; but he failed in other operations, and returned to
Italy in 276 B. C., again to assist the Tarentines against the Romans.
In 275 B. C. his career in Italy was closed by a great defeat, inflicted
by the Romans at the battle of Beneventum, and Pyrrhus returned to
Epirus with the remnant of his army. In 273 B. C. he invaded Macedonia
with such success as to become king, and his restless spirit then drove
him to war in Peloponnesus. He was repulsed in an attack on Sparta, and,
after entering the city of Argos to assist one of its factions, was
knocked from his horse by a heavy tile hurled from a house-top by a
woman’s hand, and killed by the enemy’s soldiers. Thus died Pyrrhus, in
the forty-sixth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign,--a
man of the highest military skill, capable of great enterprises, but
without the steady resolution and the practical wisdom to bring them to
a successful issue.