- Never near Argos -

[Mediolanicus]

Notes:

This was the last surviving fragment of H___’s manuscript. It was an honour to be asked to translate this extraordinary work. We can only imagine how epic this work must have been in its complete form. The amount of detail of the surviving fragments is already extraordinary.
An oral tradition, written down by P___ more than a century later, tells us that Ptolemaios II himself came from Antiocheia to visit Pyrrhos on his sickbed. The Epirote had been suffering high fever for more than a week by then and had not left his bed since.

P____, de vita Pyrrhi, XX.

[…]
The moment the Ptolemaic King entered the room, Pyrrhos stood up with great effort and bowed. Ptolemaios immediately asked him to sit down and told him the King of Epeiros was nothing less than an equal to him.
Pyrrhos answered by thanking him and saying that the King of Epeiros was Alexandros. He assured Ptolemaios that Alexandros was an able King and will continue the alliance with the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
He also asked the King to ask Alexandros to release the writer Hieronymos, if he was still alive.[1]
He then said to the king that if Tyche [Latin name: Fortuna] would have let him he would have liked to talk some more, but alas, he and her were not very good friends.
The king left the quarters and Pyrrhos fell back asleep. He never woke up again. The great general’s sixtieth summer was his last one.
It is said that Ptolemaios cried when he heard the news. He ordered the body to be picked up and brought to Alexandria to be embalmed and buried in the Egyptian fashion.
Even the Palmyrans showed respect for the general who had cost them their independence and a funeral procession by all the women of the city accompanied the body on the first few miles on its voyage to Alexandria.
The Palmyrans from then on boasted that although they had lost their independence, it had taken the best since Megas Alexandros to defeat them.
[…]

[1] For Hieronymos see Book IV, 20-23. The old writer was indeed released and lived on to see his 104th birthday.

Pyrrhos is remembered as one of the greatest generals in history. But he is also remembered as one of the most unlucky characters history has to offer. Perhaps he made a few tactical mistakes in his life (going to Italy, returning to Italy, not taking Arpi, taking Arpi), but he lacked the luck to do anything with his military victories.
On top of that there’s the whole affaire with Alexandros. He knew his son was able as King of Epeiros, so Pyrrhos went into voluntary exile, where he died, possibly of a heatstroke, although some claim he was hit by a roof tile thrown by an enemy soldier’s mother in the streets of Palmyra, which caused a wound that got infected.