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Originally posted by Albert Speer
i did not vote but Pyrrhus is very much a legitimate choice in this poll as he actually was successful whereas Hannibal lost at Zama and thus, lost the war. his successes in battle came to nothing.
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The problem with Pyrrhus is that he was leading an elite army of highly trained Greek warriors against some Roman forces with far less sophistication and knowledge of "modern" tactics. Hannibal did not have the same degree of qualitative advantages in his battles. In addition, Pyrrhus appears to have made some significant errors during his last battle before he withdrew and the Romans made their own tactical changes.
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The Romans, for their part, had made a radical innovation in order to deal with Pyrrhus¹ 20 elephants. They had taken a number (perhaps 300?) chariots and equipped them with long spikes to wound the elephants, pots of fire to scare the elephants and manned them with troops who would hurl javelins at the elephants to drive them back...
The subsequent battle was fought over two days. On the first day, the battlefield appears to have been marshy and broken, which stopped Pyrrhus from using his cavalry and Elephants to full effect. The Pyrrhic phalanx appears to also have been affected by the ground. The day ended in stalemate.
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http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/battles/asculum.html
While Pyrrhus corrected his mistakes, he should have never fought over broken and marshy ground in the first place. Furthermore, in 275 BC, Pyrrhus went back to Italy and was decisively defeated by the Romans at the town of Malventum and forced to withdraw back to Greece.
