← Back to the front page

The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

27. Ascending the Heights

Pyrrhus and his elephants fighting the Romans. Wikimedia

Pyrrhus ended up in Egypt, where he married king Ptolemy I’s stepdaughter, and his new in-law gave him financial and military backing that restored him to the Epirote throne in 297 BC. Pyrrhus then spent the next few years making a name for himself as a brilliant general in a series of conflicts in the Balkans.

In 282 BC, the Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy got into a dispute with an expansionist Rome, and turned to Pyrrhus for help. Encouraged by a prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi, and eager for an opportunity to create an empire in southern Italy, Pyrrhus agreed. He formed an alliance with the neighboring kingdom of Macedon and landed in southern Italy in 280 BC with an army of about 20,000 infantry, 3000 cavalry, and 2500 archers and slingers.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.