Pyrrhus

Two victories over Rome cost Pyrrhus so much of his army that his name became shorthand for a win not worth having. Abbott begins well before the king was born, with the vicious scramble for Alexander’s empire under Olympias, Antipater and Cassander, then follows the infant Pyrrhus into exile in Illyria at the court of Glaucias, his years as a hostage in Egypt, and his wars in Macedon. The Italian and Sicilian campaigns take up the heart of the book: elephants panicking Roman horses that had never seen such animals, the adviser Cineas asking his king what he plans to do once every conquest is finished, and the retreat from Tarentum. It closes at Argos, where a roof tile thrown by a soldier’s mother kills him. Abbott warns in his preface that such ancient lives are part legend.