Pyrrhus of Epirus: The Greatest General of His Age, Killed by a Roof Tile | Roman Nights

One More Such Victory. Roman Nights · Season 2, Episode 5 · 279–275 BC · The End of Pyrrhus 00:00 Cold open: Pyrrhus reads the list, 279 BC 00:56 The King Comes Again 15:02 Asculum 28:33 One More Such Victory 38:36 The Bribe That Did Not Work 48:07 The Doctor's Offer 57:07 Two Men Who Cannot Understand Each Other 1:03:44 The King Looks at Sicily 1:13:00 The Crown That Slipped 1:21:43 Beneventum 1:37:58 The King Goes Home 1:50:34 Writer's Note After Heraclea, Pyrrhus offered Rome peace. The Senate said no. A king who had never lost came back for a second battle and won that too — at Asculum, two days of fighting that cost him twenty-two officers he had known since childhood and could not replace by sending home for more men. He won. He looked at what winning had cost him. He said the words that would carry his name forever: one more such victory and we are lost. This is the episode where the most brilliant general of his era finally meets the thing he cannot solve. Not a better army. Not a better general. Not elephants that aren't afraid of fire. Something stranger and more terrible: a city that treats its own defeat as a planning problem, that reads the cost of every battle and shows up with something new the next time, that never — once, in any exchange, under any pressure — asks what it would take to stop. Pyrrhus goes to Sicily. He comes back. He loses at Beneventum. He goes home. He dies in a street fight in Argos, when an old woman throws a roof tile at his head from a window. Rome does not celebrate. Rome just moves on to the next item on the list. Story summary: Battle of Asculum in 279 BC: two days, brutal, Rome uses fire carts against the elephants with partial success. Pyrrhus wins but loses twenty-two irreplaceable Epirote officers. One more such victory and we are utterly ruined. Pyrrhus goes to Sicily to help the Greeks against Carthage, loses allies by being a demanding king, and returns to Italy in 275 BC. Battle of Beneventum: Rome's new anti-elephant tactics work. Pyrrhus retreats and returns to Greece with a fraction of his army. He dies in street fighting at Argos — a roof tile thrown by an old woman from a window above. Rome conquers Tarentum in 272 BC. The peninsula is Rome's.