Retreat From Italy
While Pyrrhus had been campaigning against the Carthaginians, the Romans rebuilt their army by calling up thousands of fresh recruits. When Pyrrhus returned from Sicily, he found himself vastly outnumbered against a superior Roman army. After the inconclusive Battle of Beneventum in 275 BC, Pyrrhus decided to end his campaign in Italy and return to Epirus which resulted in the loss of all his Italian holdings. Before leaving Italy Pyrrhus sent requests for military and financial assistance to southern Greece and Macedon, as well as to the Hellenistic empires of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties. These appeals were all in vain.
Read more about this topic: Pyrrhus Of Epirus
Famous quotes containing the words retreat from, retreat and/or italy:
“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!”
—William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879)
“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)