ABSTRACT
The Pyrrhic War in the Roman narrative of their own history was a remarkable moment when they defeated their first extra-Italian enemy, completed the conquest of Italy, and set the foundation for the conquest of a trans-Mediterranean empire. For modern historians, the war is made difficult by fragmentary literary sources which were written decades and centuries after the events they purport to describe. The Pyrrhic War existed on the edge of Roman historical memory, some 80 years before the first historians and poets of Rome began to write. As such, specific moments were particularly malleable within a sturdy framework of events. The war was remembered by these writers as the culmination of the heroic age of Roman history when they faced a conqueror who sought to emulate Alexander the Great in the west, when they overcame Carthaginian duplicity, and when Italy became truly Roman. Victory was achieved due to the virtues of a Roman community that had not yet been corrupted by empire. The Pyrrhic War was a momentous event in the history of Rome, but it has been profoundly shaped by ancient perceptions of earlier and later periods.
