Pyrrhic War - Sicilian Campaign

Sicilian Campaign

Veterans of Agathocles, settled now at Messana, offered their help, but Campania and most of the south gave Pyrrhus no encouragement. Only Etruria thought the tide had turned against Rome, quickly to discover its mistake.

After two campaigns in which, though he always won battles, Pyrrhus was losing more men than he could afford, he moved on to Sicily (278 BC) to aid the Greeks there, who were being hard pressed by the Carthaginians. The Romans had little difficulty in dealing with his friends and rear guards on the Italian mainland.

The Carthaginians had not waited to be attacked. When Pyrrhus sailed for Sicily, they were besieging Syracuse, his necessary base, and looking for him with their fleet. He evaded their ships, however, and drove off their field army, captured the cities of Panormus and Eryx and refused their offer to surrender everything in Sicily except for Lilybaeum, which they direly needed if they sought to keep their hold on Sardinia.

All the while, his losses had been heavy and his reinforcements few. Tarentum was hard pressed by the Romans, and between them and the Carthaginian fleet he might have been trapped in Sicily. So in a desperate attempt he returned once more to Italy, to fight one more campaign.