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A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties when he defeated the Romans during the Pyrrhic War at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war. [1]


In both of Pyrrhus's victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their losses did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus's losses did to his.

The report is often quoted as "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone." While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor, such as the USFL v. NFL lawsuit or the Conservative Party's victory in the 1992 General Election in the United Kingdom.

Examples

See also

Notes

1. ^ Plutarch (trans. John Dryden) Pyrrhus, hosted on the The Internet Classics Archive

Secondary sources

  • Denson, John, The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories. Transaction Publishers (1997). ISBN 1-560-00319-7.
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Roman military engineering (Praefectus fabrum)is a type of Roman engineering carried out by the Roman Army - almost exclusively by the Roman legions for the furthering of military objectives.
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castra,[1] with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean any building or plot of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position.
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Hadrian's Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Roman Empire across the width of modern-day England. It was the second of three such fortifications built across Great Britain, the first being Gask Ridge and the last the Antonine Wall.
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Pyrrhus (318-272 BC) (Greek: Πύρρος) was one of the most successful ancient Greek generals of the Hellenistic era. He was King of the Greek tribe of the Molossians (from ca.
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Epirus (Greek Ήπειρος Ēpeiros (Doric Greek: Ἅπειρος Apeiros), Albanian: Epir or Epiri
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Roman Republic was the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a republican form of government. The republican period began with the overthrow of the Monarchy c.
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Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC) was a complex series of battles and shifting political alliances among the Greeks (specifically Epirus, Macedonia, and the city states of Magna Graecia), Romans, the Italian peoples (primarily the Samnites and the Etruscans), and the Carthaginians
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Battle of Heraclea took place in 280 BC between the Romans under the command of Consul Publius Valerius Laevinus and the combined forces of Greeks from Epirus, Tarentum, Thurii, Metapontum, and Heraclea under the command of King Pyrrhus of Epirus.
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