The distinguished Demetrius Poliorcetes (besieger of cities) was king of Macedonia from 294 to 287 B. C. His life was passed in fighting with varied success and he was driven from the throne at last by a combination of enemies, including the famous Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Demetrius was a man of wonderful abilities and resources, deriving his surname from the enormous machines which he constructed for the siege of Rhodes, one of his warlike enterprises. He freed Athens for a time from Macedonian domination before he became ruler of Macedon.
A famous personage was Pyrrhus, the warlike king of Epirus, the territory in the northwest of Greece, inhabited by descendants of the old Pelasgians and Illyrians. The first king of the whole country was Alexander, the brother of Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. He ruled from 336 to 326 B. C.
THE WARRIOR PYRRHUS,
KING OF EPIRUS
Pyrrhus (295 to 272 B. C.) is renowned as the greatest warrior of his age. He had been driven by his subjects from Epirus, but, assisted with a fleet and army by Ptolemy I. of Egypt, returned thither and began his actual reign in 295 B. C. His first efforts were turned against Macedonia; but, after much fighting, he lost his hold there, in 286 B. C. It was in 280 B. C. that he began his great enterprise by crossing over into Italy, to aid the Tarentines against the Romans. In his first campaign he defeated the Romans in the battle of Heraclea in Lucania. His skill was aided by a force of armored elephants, and by the Macedonian formation of the phalanx, both novelties to the Romans. In the second campaign (279 B. C.) Pyrrhus gained a second dearly bought victory over the Romans at Asculum, in Apulia, yet with no decisive result; in 278 B. C. he crossed into Sicily, to help the Greeks there against the Carthaginians.
REPULSES AND DEATH
OF PYRRHUS
At first he was very successful and defeated the Carthaginians, taking the town of Eryx; but he failed in other operations, and returned to Italy in 276 B. C., again to assist the Tarentines against the Romans. In 275 B. C. his career in Italy was closed by a great defeat, inflicted by the Romans at the battle of Beneventum, and Pyrrhus returned to Epirus with the remnant of his army. In 273 B. C. he invaded Macedonia with such success as to become king, and his restless spirit then drove him to war in Peloponnesus. He was repulsed in an attack on Sparta, and, after entering the city of Argos to assist one of its factions, was knocked from his horse by a heavy tile hurled from a house-top by a woman’s hand, and killed by the enemy’s soldiers. Thus died Pyrrhus, in the forty-sixth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign,—a man of the highest military skill, capable of great enterprises, but without the steady resolution and the practical wisdom to bring them to a successful issue.
GALLIC INVASION
OF GREECE
The Gauls invaded Greece in 280 B. C. After penetrating through Macedonia and Thessaly they were defeated under their leader Brennus (namesake of the captor of Rome a century earlier), near Delphi in Phocis. Some of the Gauls in this irruption made their way into Asia Minor, and ultimately gave their name to the province Galatia, adopting the Greek customs and religion, but keeping their own language.
THE CELEBRATED ACHAEAN
LEAGUE
The Achæan League was founded, in its new form, in 280 B. C., consisting of the towns in [383] Achæa, and afterwards including Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and many other Greek cities, so that it became the chief political power in Greece. In 245 B. C. Aratus (sometimes called the “last of the Greeks”) became head of the league, and much extended its influence by skillful diplomacy. Philopœmen, another distinguished man of this period, general of the league in 208 B. C., and again in 201 and 192 B. C., was successful in battle against the Spartans when they assailed the League, and in 188 B. C. took Sparta, leveled the fortifications, and replaced the institutions of Lycurgus by the Achæan laws.