a Pyrrhic victory

Pyrrhus of Epirus was one of the finest generals of the ancient world, and when the young Roman republic began to threaten the Greek cities of Italy, he sailed across the sea with his army and his war-elephants to fight them. He was confident. He had beaten great enemies before.

At the battle of Heraclea, and again at Asculum, he met the Roman legions head-on. The fighting was savage and went on all day, and when the dust settled, Pyrrhus had won. The Romans had been driven from the field, and by every ordinary reckoning the day belonged to him.

Yet when he looked over the ground his men had taken, his heart sank. His finest officers lay dead among the fallen, and whole ranks of his best soldiers, the veterans he could never replace so far from home, were gone. The Romans, beaten, could raise fresh armies from their vast lands within weeks. Pyrrhus could not.

Surveying the terrible cost of his triumph, the king is remembered as saying that one more such victory would utterly destroy him. He had won the battle and lost the war, his strength bleeding away with every field he took, until at last he was forced to give up Italy altogether.

From those ruinous triumphs comes the phrase a Pyrrhic victory — a win so dearly bought, at such crippling cost, that it does the victor almost as much harm as an outright defeat.