King Pyrrhus in Rome Total History

[Philadelphos]

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PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS chapter XXXII
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52. The Battle of Larisa

Pyrrhus had been watching out for his rival's moves in Thessaly. Antigonus Gonatas had assembled at least two large armies, one under his own command in the city and the other under a captain named Agesilaos just outside the walls. Their disposition made it almost impossible to conquer the enemy. But then one day a trireme captain brought the news that Agesilaos had been replaced by Nicanor the Elephant, and that his army had been significantly reduced in number.
Pyrrhus thought that this was his occasion to strike against Larisa. He quickly hired more Barbarian mercenaries and then embarked his army in Pydna to sail south where he landed in Magnesia on the Thessalian coast, where found and attacked the enemy.

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At first he moved against Nicanor the Elephant, but since the experienced mercenary had taken a strong position on the Phtiothian hills, Pyrrhus quickly desisted and changed direction to face Antigonus Gonatas in the Thessalian plains.
The Antigonid king had left the shelter of his walls, hoping to reunite with his general in Phtiothia, but Pyrrhus had taken the middle position with a battle line almost twice as long as each of his opponents.
Starting the battle, Pyrrhus first sent forward his light cavalry to harass the enemy with their javelins, but Gonatas reacted sending two units of light lancers against them. Pyrrhus destroyed one of the two with his bodyguards, but the other one chased the Epirote militia cavalry to the edge of the battlefield. Realising the impossibility to follow suit, Pyrrhus filed over the enemy line to find a weak link, when he suddenly spotted Antigonus Gonatas with his bodyguards.



Seeing a chance to end the war, the Epirote king rode around the flank of the Macedonian phalanx to engage his rival in a personal combat. The Antigonid fought bravely, but always out of Pyrrhus' reach. Only when all his bodyguards were slain he turned to flight and rushed for shelter behind the walls of Larisa.

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Being harassed by the enemy's peasants, Pyrrhus thought it wiser to get back to his battle line which had by now engaged the Macedonian phalanx. Due to the superiority in number and quality, the Epirotes finished off the Macedonians, before Nicanor the Elephant was able to bring any support.

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Coming down from his hills, the Macedonian general realised that Gonatas' army was gone and the battle lost without remedy. He made a timid approach sending his peltasts in advance, but when these were annihilated, he decided that further bloodshed was useless and retreated into the Phtiothian hills.

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Pyrrhus tried to follow him with his victorious army, but the astute general was able to elude him, using some hidden road to reach his king in Larisa.

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The battle ended with a clear victory. The Macedonians had lost 650 men. The Epirotes had 220 casualties, but 40 men were saved by the surgeons.

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53. An Uncomfortable Siege

At this point Pyrrhus had no choice but to start a siege of Larisa. Thanks to Nicanor's able move, Antigonus Gonatas could still count on a garrison of over 1200 men, while Pyrrhus had little more than 1.000 at his command.

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After the victorious battle it was quite natural that the king was still confident. But when his spies reported that another Macedonian army of 2.000 men was waiting on the Boiotian border, he started to realise how uncomfortable his position in Thessaly was.

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Unfortunately there was nothing he could do and so he asked his son Alexander in Ambracia to send at least some reinforcements and ordered his men to guard their back while preparing the siege works for the walls of Larisa.

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Demetrias - Larisa - Pieria - Pharsalus - Thermopylae - Thebes

Round Trip to Thessaly and Boeotia

- Arrive at the port of Demetrius Poliorcetes
- Admire his siege machines at the museum
- Worship Athena in her temple at Larisa
- Visit the stables of the Thessalian cavalry
- Go horse riding in the joyful Thessalian plain
- Enjoy the luxuriant flora of Mount Olympus
- Sacrifice at the Grove of the Muses in Pieria
- Visit the famous battlefield of Pharsalus
- Honour the statue of Leonidas at Thermopylae
- Reenact the glorious battle in historic armour
- Visit the Cadmeia and the House of Pindar in Thebes

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See more postcards:

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Travel east or travel west, Ionia Tours serves always best!

* Ionia Tours is a travel agency fully owned by RTH Holding Inc.

[Alwyn]

A great battle and your advert for Ionia Tours is very impressive!

[Philadelphos]

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PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS chapter XXXIII
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54. A Spartan Prince

Lacking the engineering spirit of the late king Demetrius Poliorcetes, Pyrrhus always prefered a battlefield to a long and exhausting siege. Unfortunately the situation at Larisa looked pretty much like a stall and the king was not amused in his tent beneath the walls.

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But then the Spartan prince Cleonymus paid a visit to Thessaly, to inspect the progress of the siege, and Pyrrhus was glad to welcome the distraction. Since the death of Milon, the king felt like he had lost too many of his best friends and here was at least one to ease his loneliness.



Cleonymus was a member of the Spartan royal family of the Agiads. He was the second son of Cleomenes II and a pretender to the Spartan throne. However, when his father died in 308 BC, he was excluded from the line of succession, allegedly for his violent and tyrannic character. His nephew Areus I became king instead, while the offended prince continued to nurse a grudge against his fellow Spartans.

Cleonymus then started a career as a mercenary leader. To help the city of Tarantum against the Lucani, he went to southern Italy in 303 BC. There he captured the town of Metapontum and raised such a large army that the Lucani immediately concluded peace. Afterwards the Spartan prince sailed to the island of Corcyra which he conquered too, although many of his ships were destroyed by a storm.

In 302 BC Cleonymus returned to Italy sailing north to the coast of the Veneti. From the mouth of the Meduacus he sailed upstream to the countryside of Patavium where he raided the nearby villages. But the natives defeated him and after losing four-fifths of his ships he barely escaped with his life.

In his later career he fought against Demetrius Poliorcetes in Boeotia, although he withdrew when the diadoch arrived with a large army.

As an older man Cleonymus married the beautiful Chilonis as his second wife. Chilonis was the daughter of Leotychidas, who was a member of the other Spartan royal family of the Eurypontids. However, Chilonis was secretly in love with Acrotatus II, the son of king Areus I, and when she betrayed her husband, the old fool was deeply offended and started to seek revenge.

This was the reason why he had come to meet Pyrrhus in Thessaly, trying to persuade the mighty king to back his claim to the Spartan throne.

Worried by the Antigonid rival in Larisa threatening his supply lines, Pyrrhus at first was not much in the mood for a new adventure, but when Cleonymus praised his glorious feats in Italy, claiming that the best judge was he who had tried before, the king gave order to bring the best wine from his cellar.

Soon the two soldiers were making plans for more invasions and the vengeful Spartan argued that a campaign on the Peloponnese would be easy now that king Areus was away in Crete. Sick of delays and hard siege work, Pyrrhus found a lot of comfort in the wine and the company and at the end of the day Cleonymus managed to talk him into the new adventure. Glad to agree with the Spartan's plan, Pyrrhus ordered his officers to break off the siege of Larisa and march to the Thermopylae pass.


55. The Boeotian Crossroads

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Reaching Boeotia Pyrrhus found a large army encamped outside Thebes, while the governor Leon of Paionia was alone with his bodyguards inside the walls of the Kadmeia.

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The Battle took place west of Thebes, at the crossroads of Koroneia. The Macedonian army had taken position on the plain behind the road from Thebes to Delphi.

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The Macedonian commander Agesilaos used his peasants to cover his phalanx. Pyrrhus used his skirmishers, mounted and not, to harass the peasants with javelins.



When the lines engaged Pyrrhus rode with his bodyguards to the right flank, to face the enemy commander. He had just killed Agesilaos, when he realised that the Macedonians, encouraged by the arrival of Leon of Paionia, were concentrating their cavalry on the other side.

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Pyrrhus rode all across the battlefield and came just in time to thwart an attack by the Thesslian cavalry. A unit of lancers came to aid their comrades, but Pyrrhus called his Thessalian cavalry in support and together they annihilated the enemy cavalry. Afterwards he rode to the extreme left, where Leon of Paionia was surrounded and killed in personal combat.

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In the center the decimated peasants were no match for the Epirote phalanx, but the Macedonian phalanx opposed decent resistance. Only when the Agrianian, Illyrian and Barbarian Mercenaries entered the fight, the Macedonians turned to flight. The survivors, still 600 men strong, fled to Thebes.

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Pyrrhus had lost 115 men, the Macedonians almost 800.

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[Kleomenis]

very nice update with a nice combination of images and story

[Alwyn]

Good update, an impressive victory!

[Philadelphos]

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PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS chapter XXXIV
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56. The Cadmeia of Thebes

Pyrrhus allowed his men to rest for three days and on the following morning he gave order to attack the city of Thebes. Only half of the defenders were deployed behind the walls, while the others were waiting in the vicinity of Tanagra.

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Once the glorious city of Thebes had been protected by seven mighty gates, but now there was only a poor palisade. The besiegers bulldozed the wooden structure with ease.

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But then, while Pyrrhus observed the progress of his infantry at the gate, one of his cavalry militias was surprised by Macedonian lancers advancing from Tanagra. The Epirote cavalrymen fled into the hills and Pyrrhus was forced to follow, to save his men from annihilation. The cavalcade went all over the Boiotian plain until they almost reached the lake of Copais, and for this reason the king was not present during the siege of the Cadmeia.

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After taking the gate, the Epirote infantry commander deployed his pikemen in the rear, to prevent the Macedonian reinforcements from entering the city, and then he took the plaza after a bloody fight. The Epirotes lost 150 men, with 40 casualties saved by the surgeon. The Macedonians lost 680 men, but the army of Tanagra remained quite intact.

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In the night the Epirotes revelled and the king found some comfort in the arms of a Theban floozy. But when the party was at full swing, his friend Cleonymus suddenly felt ill. The king immediately called his doctors who came to the conclusion that the Spartan probably suffered a stroke.

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Cleonymus had already suffered of bad health after the passage of the Thermopylae and for this reasons he had taken no command in the Battle of the Crossroads and the assault on Thebes. Pyrrhus ordered the doctors to do their best in order to save him, and when one of them objected that Thebes had no adequate medical structure, the king deployed one of his ships to bring the patient to Pella. Cleonymus was lucky for one last time, when his transport narrowly escaped the pirates lurking in the Aegean, but after his arrival at Pella the old prince died within a week.

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57. Revolution in Sparta

When Pyrrhus received the news of the pretender's death, his first thought was that the attack on Sparta had lost any ground. But then he got news from the Peloponnese that the city of Lycurgus was beaten by violent disorders, and so his confidence grew again.

Since the glorious days of the Persian Invasion and the Peloponnesian War, the city of Sparta had been in decline for over a century. The ancient laws of Lycurgus had been neglected and rather than exercising their military skill in the agon, the Spartan youth had given itself up to luxury. Through the influx of the concomitant vices, the Spartans had greatly degenerated from the ancient simplicity and severity of manners. After the abolition of the Lycurgian law which secured to every Spartan head of a family an equal portion of land, they even arrived at an extreme inequality in the distribution of wealth and property. After the farmland all passed into the hands of very few individuals, fewer than 100 Spartan families held estates, while the poor were greatly burdened with debt.

The worst consequences were for the military, because the number of families with full citizenship declined to less than 700, and as a result the Spartan army lacked the numbers to fill the ranks of the phalanx. For a certain period they could still rely on their mercenaries, but finally a young king stood up to say that things couldn't go on like that.

Agis IV was an idealistic young man with the fix idea that only a return to the ancient laws of Lycurgus could save the Lacedaemonian state from disaster. To this purpose he proposed a land reform and a cancellation of debts. The second was quickly done, but the first met strong resistance by the land owners. King Agis tried every trick to pass his bill, but before his reforms were completed he was killed by a conspiracy.

With the reformer king dead, all hopes of the poorer classes were dashed, and the result was a general uprising that threw the city into turmoil. After several days of bloodshed the Helots gained the upper hand, and now Spartan slaves took brutal revenge for centuries of harassment.

Led by the surviving king, the Spartan citizens fled to Tegea. Behind the walls of the citadel they were safe for the moment and even formed a government in exile, but their glorious army had been almost completely annihilated and the chances to get their city back appeared very remote.

Thus was the situation, when Pyrrhus decided to intervene in the Peloponnese, either to help the Spartans recover their fatherland or to conquer the city for himself. The obstacle on his road was the city of Corinth, still held by the Macedonians.

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[Alwyn]

Good chapter - King Pyrrus clearly deserves his title of 'the Conqueror'! I wonder what level of opposition he will find at Corinth.

[Philadelphos]

Corinth will be his darkest hour!

[Napoleon Complex]

Stirring stuff. I think the Spartans will quickly come to rue their decadence. Good riddance.

[Philadelphos]

I'm currently working on the next release and this is the reason for the delay.

Among other things we are introducing biographies for the major leaders, and since he was mentioned in the current AOR, here comes as an example the biography of Cleonymus of Sparta:

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This seems to anticipate the result of Pyrrhus' intervention in the Peloponnese, but RTH history may take another course...

[Alwyn]

Biographies for major leaders look like an enjoyable feature, allowing players to compare their campaigns to the historical events and inspiring players with the real history.

[Josh of Galway]

I've always enjoyed the biography aspect of things on AAR forums, nice work.