At the end of the Third Samnite War in 290, Rome’s hold over the Samnites and Lucanians was precarious, and its power over more distant communities was virtually nonexistent. In the first half of the third century, the Romans also campaigned regularly in the southern regions of the Italian peninsula, but these wars would involve a different kind of enemy, leading to changes in Roman methods of making war.

Roman officials quickly involved themselves in the affairs of the Greek cities of southern Italy. In 285, Thurii appealed to Rome for protection from the Lucanians and Bruttii. Gaius Fabricius Luscinus then forced the Lucanians to abandon their siege of Thurii, and he left a Roman garrison there for its protection. Shortly afterwards, other cities-Locri, Rhegium, and Croton-also successfully sought Roman protection. This growing Roman presence now alarmed the citizens of Tarentum, the largest Greek city in the region and often ambitious to lead the others. In 282, the Tarentines attacked and sank some Roman warships that had appeared outside their harbor, apparently in violation of an agreement between the two cities. The Tarentines then marched on Thurii, expelled its Roman garrison, and replaced the ruling oligarchy with a more democratic regime. Tarentum took these actions, it should be noted, while Rome was heavily involved in wars against Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls.

In the far south of Italy, the Romans were entering a region in turmoil. Tensions between oligarchic and democratic factions were common in the Greek cities there and in Sicily. Generally speaking, the more democratic leaders wished to give increased power and freedom of action to voting assemblies of citizens; they sought to enable these assemblies to instruct and restrain elected officials; and they wanted to open elected offices to a wider circle. Supporters of a more oligarchic order, on the other hand, sought to limit magistracies to the very wealthy, or perhaps even to the members of a few families; they wished to restrict the powers of citizen assemblies and their freedom of action; and they tried to elevate advisory councils of leading citizens, the local equivalents of the Roman senate, into the chief organ of government. Strife between such factions could lead to violence, providing one of the chief reasons for other states to be called upon for help. Roman leaders earned a well-deserved reputation for favoring oligarchic groups over democratic.

At the same time, the Greek cities along the south coast of Italy were often under fierce pressure from the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttii. When threatened in this way, the cities would appeal to other cities and rulers in the Greek world for help. In the decades before Rome’s intervention, the Tarentines and their neighbors had sought the aid of a number of strong military leaders who possessed more powerful armies than did most city-states. Agathocles was the most recent of them to respond. By the end of the fourth century, he had made himself ruler of the Sicilian city of Syracuse, and had begun to build up a military state— based on large numbers of mercenary soldiers—that encompassed much of the island and several cities in southern Italy. Agathocles died in 289 and his empire fell apart, but the Greek cities of southern Italy continued to turn to other powers from outside the peninsula. So in 281, when a Roman consul and his army entered Tarentum’s territory in reaction to its earlier attacks on Roman ships and garrisons, the Tarentines sought assistance from Pyrrhus, king of the Molossians in Epirus across the Adriatic. Pyrrhus’ intervention would differ from earlier interventions in its scale and in its consequences.

Dramatic changes had occurred in the political and cultural life of the Greek world during the decades before and after 300. In the fifth century, city-states had dominated Greek political, social, and cultural life, and monarchy and tyranny had largely disappeared. Kingship, as well as forms of community organization that were not centered on the city, survived only among some societies on the margins of the Greek world, where Greeks viewed the inhabitants as barbarous. In the fourth century, however, monarchy became a central political institution again, and kings would now overshadow the city-states of Greece. Changes in warfare fuelled this transition. City-states had made war with citizen armies fighting limited campaigns. In the fourth century, by contrast, military operations grew larger in scale and were less bound by traditional limits. Mercenary soldiers joined levies of citizens or subjects, and novel, more expensive techniques for besieging cities and fighting battles were developed. Individual city-states possessed neither the population nor the wealth to engage in warfare on this scale for long. It was the kings on the margins of the Greek world who did.

The rise of the kings of Macedon was central to this shift in political and military organization. Macedon was a land of villages and towns, ruled by kings who were strongly influenced by Greek culture. In the fifth century, Macedon had been relatively weak, open to foreign invasions and divided by feuds between members of the royal family and their followers. Greek cities to its south had intervened in its wars, plundered and exploited its territory, and founded colonies along its margins. Then in the fourth century, Macedonian kings began to gain a firmer hold over their kingdom, and started to turn it into a formidable military power. Philip II (reigned, 359–336) in fact became the dominant power in Greece. His army comprised Macedonians performing their traditional military service for the king, troops contributed by allies, and mercenaries serving the king personally for pay and plunder. After his victory over an alliance of cities in 338, Philip succeeded in uniting most of the cities of Greece into an alliance known as the League of Corinth, and gaining for himself the permanent post of hegemon or commander. As hegemon, he had the right to call on the allies to contribute soldiers and money for common military expeditions under his command.

Philip’s son, Alexander III (Alexander the Great), vastly extended the territory under his control. With the forces under his command, he invaded the Persian Empire, the largest, richest, and most powerful empire of its day, stretching from the Greek world to its west as far as India to its east, and from central Asia in the north to the southern frontiers of Egypt in the south. In campaigns that lasted until his death in 323 at the age of thirty-three, Alexander defeated Persian forces in a series of major battles, led his armies through the principal regions of the empire, and even eliminated its king and the monarchy itself. Before his early death, Alexander began to establish his own rule instead. The phenomenal nature of his accomplishments made him a towering figure to most of his contemporaries and successors, and many considered him to be a god. In later generations, plenty of kings and generals—Romans among them—would seek to imitate him and to be hailed his equal.

Alexander’s empire did not long survive him, however. Rather, for decades following his death, his generals engaged in lengthy struggles for power, wealth, and dominance. By the end of the fourth century, the more successful leaders, now calling themselves kings, had begun to build rich and powerful states with elaborate military establishments. These new monarchies were often unstable and liable to rapid shifts in their frontiers and territory. Wars, conspiracies, and assassinations were common occurrences. Although Greek cities were able to preserve a certain civic existence within these new states or even, if especially fortunate, to maintain a precarious independence, they still lost much of the control over their own affairs that had long been so integral to Greek political ideals. Now cities had to fear such royal intrusiveness, the imposition of taxes if they were too weak and vulnerable to avoid them, and occasionally the establishment of a garrison in the city itself or in its territory.

Some of the new kingdoms would survive over the following three centuries, and together they would create a distinctive political culture—now known as Hellenistic—that was to exercise a marked influence even in lands that no Greek or Macedonian king ever succeeded in ruling. Hellenistic kingship was personal rather than ethnic or territorial. Kings ruled because they were wealthy, powerful, and able to rule, not because they were governing long-established states according to traditional procedures. In these circumstances, kings and their supporters placed special emphasis on the material bases of their power—great wealth and large armies. They also advertised the personal qualities of the ruler, exaggerating or inventing deeds and characteristics that would show him to be favored by the gods and, on occasion, either a god himself or godlike. In the royal courts and capitals that served as the centers of their government, these kings prided themselves on being patrons of the arts and literature, and they made grand ceremonial displays of their wealth, their luxurious lifestyle, and their military power and warlike deeds. These elements of the public culture of the Hellenistic kingdoms would find many imitators, including members of the Roman governing elite.

Pyrrhus matched this model. His power base was his kingship over the Molossians, a traditional office with customary limitations. To this he added the post of hegemon, or commander, of the Epirote League, an alliance of Epirote communities to which each contributed forces and funds toward common goals. Pyrrhus also controlled cities and districts in his own name, which were administered by his personal officials and commanders; here he was able to raise revenue and soldiers as he wished. Altogether these territories served to provide the means for pursuing greater ambitions than had traditionally been within reach of the Molossian king, and Pyrrhus would spend much of his reign doing just this on an increasing scale. Accordingly, when he received the Tarentines’ invitation in 281, he resolved to seek opportunities in the West.

For this Italian campaign the following year, he assembled his forces at Tarentum itself. Molossians and other Epirotes formed the core of his army, which included about twenty war elephants; to this core, Pyrrhus added large numbers of mercenaries. The Tarentines contributed their citizen army. Meantime the Romans, who also were fighting in Etruria and Umbria, had their own forces in the south. Lucius Aemilius Barbula, who as consul in 281 had commanded the Roman army ravaging Tarentum’s territory, had remained nearby over the winter (one of the earliest known instances when a Roman army did not return home after a summer’s campaigning). The armies of Pyrrhus and Barbula engaged at Heraclea, southwest of Tarentum. After a hard-fought battle, Pyrrhus won, but with immense loss of life, giving rise to the expression “Pyrrhic victory” for a battle won at such cost that it almost amounted to a defeat. A bronze plaque found at the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus records the dedication of some of the plunder following this victory: “King Pyrrhus and the Epirotes and the Tarentines to Zeus Naios from the Romans and their allies.”

After the battle at Heraclea in 280, the war spread. Lucanians, Samnites, the Bruttii, and some of the Greek cities that had been allies of Rome, all decided to join Pyrrhus. With his army and allies he now invaded Campania, but without capturing any major community or inspiring any to desert Rome and join him. Next he turned toward Rome itself, approaching to within fifty miles (80 km) of the city. By this time, however, another Roman army which had been campaigning in Etruria returned to protect Rome, and Pyrrhus hesitated to press on. Instead, he returned to Tarentum, where he began offering peace terms. Our sources preserve different versions of his demands (conveyed through his envoy Cineas), which seem to have either confused Roman historians or offended their patriotic sensibilities. According to one account, Pyrrhus demanded that the defeated Romans give up all the land they had taken from the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttii and become his allies, in effect thereby ending both their empire and their independence. Nonetheless an elderly, blind senator, Appius Claudius Caecus, who had been censor in 312, is credited with having persuaded the senate to reject these inordinate demands; copies of his speech may have survived into the first century B.C.

The war resumed again in the following year (279). Pyrrhus brought over reinforcements from Epirus, hired more mercenaries, acquired new elephants, and raised additional funds from his allies. The financial contributions imposed on them may have undermined his popularity for a time. Certainly they were onerous. A number of inscribed bronze tablets, which record the finances of the temple of Zeus Olympius at Locri, probably date to this year. They record the payment of over 300 tons of silver from the temple treasury “to the king.” Pyrrhus led his army through Apulia with the apparent intention of marching on through Samnium toward Rome. He met the Romans at Ausculum, and another lengthy, fearsome clash ensued. Once again, Pyrrhus proved victorious in battle, but at terrible cost.

At this point, therefore, he decided to direct his forces elsewhere. Certainly, his failure to win a decisive victory underlines the depth of Rome’s resources. Unlike other city-states, Rome, with its colonies and municipia, was able to muster citizen troops on a scale that made it possible to compete with, and eventually overcome, the armies of Hellenistic rulers. The Greek cities of Sicily provided the occasion for Pyrrhus’ departure. After Agathocles’ death in 289, his kingdom of Syracuse became embroiled in civil war. Carthage, which controlled the western part of Sicily, took advantage of this disorder and attempted to establish its control over the entire island. In these circumstances, the Syracusans in 278 offered Pyrrhus the supreme command of their forces if he would bring his army to assist them. In the two years that Pyrrhus then spent in Sicily, he did succeed in driving the Carthaginians out of most of the island, but he was not able to expel them altogether nor could he defeat the stronger Carthaginian fleet. His allies in Italy suffered much in his absence. Lists of Roman commanders who achieved great victories—the so-called fasti triumphales—record defeats of Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttii in 277 and 276.

In 275, Pyrrhus returned to Italy, prompted perhaps by renewed appeals from his Italian allies as well as increasing dissatisfaction with his leadership in Sicily. Later that year, Pyrrhus’ army met the Romans at Beneventum in Samnium, and this time the Roman army won. The victorious consul, Manius Curius Dentatus, would later build an aqueduct at Rome from his share of the plunder from Pyrrhus’ camp. By the end of the year, Pyrrhus had crossed the Adriatic and returned home. There he would achieve some success for a time, only to be killed during street fighting at Argos in southern Greece in 272.

Pyrrhus’ failure proved disastrous for many of his allies, who in consequence would lose their independence to Rome and suffer Roman depredations. In 272, Tarentum became a Roman ally. Wars with the Samnites and the Lucanians continued into the 260s. The foundation of Latin colonies at Paestum in 273, Beneventum in 268, and Aesernia in 263 mark their defeat. By this time, the Romans had reduced to the status of allies, voluntarily or otherwise, around 150 once independent communities. Another important consequence of Rome’s war with Pyrrhus and the associated involvement in the affairs of the Greek cities of the south was an altogether closer engagement with the Greek world and its culture. Although there would be no direct Roman participation in the wars of the Hellenistic states until the last decades of the third century, well before that Rome was no longer just an Italian power. Hellenistic monarchies and leagues of Greek cities now had to factor Rome into their plans, and their wars affected Rome.