The “Samnite wars” were succeeded by a short but brisk war, designated
in Roman history “the war with Pyrrhus and the Greeks in Italy.” Pyrrhus
was an able and enterprising Greek prince whom the Greek towns of
Southern Italy--fearful of being overwhelmed by what they called the
“conquering barbarians of the Tiber”--had invited over from his native
country to help them as champion of a Greek city.
Pyrrhus came over with a force of twenty-five thousand troops and twenty
elephants. In the first battle (Pandosia, 280 B. C.) the Romans fought
stoutly, until what they conceived to be gigantic gray oxen (the
elephants) came thundering down upon them; so that the victory remained
with Pyrrhus. In the next contest also (Asculum, 279 B. C.) Pyrrhus was
successful; but the Romans made him pay so dearly for his triumph that
he is said to have exclaimed, “Another such victory and I am undone!”
Not having succeeded in his main object, Pyrrhus quitted Italy and went
to Sicily; but soon after he returned, renewed the contest with the
Romans, and was utterly overthrown at Beneventum, in 275 B.C.
The subjugation of Southern Italy--of all that part called Great
Greece--soon followed, and at the close of the year B. C. 266 Rome
reigned supreme over the length and breadth of the peninsula of Italy,
from the southern boundary of Cisalpine Gaul to the Sicilian Straits,
and from the Tyrrhenian, or Tuscan, Sea to the Adriatic.