Pyrrhus' Legacy

This edited volume presents research pursued within the PRIN 2022 project Mediterranean Multipolarity and Roman Unipolarity: Power Competition and Collaboration in Graeco Roman Geopolitics (3rd-2nd century BCE).

The contributions first investigate how the upheavals of the Pyrrhic War affected the relations of the Greek communities of southern Italy with Rome. They also explore how the new political situation in the peninsula was reflected in historiographical writing, which intensified in the 3rd century and counted Timaeus of Tauromenium among its most important exponents. Further chapters pay due attention to episodes of coercive mobility in Italy after the war and demonstrate that the conflict influenced the construction of identities, primarily civic and ethnic ones, as can be traced through literary and archaeological evidence. The final contributions examine how the memory of Pyrrhus was exploited in Roman political discourse of the Late Republic. To this end, relevant passages from Greek and Roman authors such as Polybius and Cicero are considered, which will interest scholars and students from various fields of Classical studies.