Pyrrhic victory

A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties when he defeated the Romans during the Pyrrhic War at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.[1]

In both of Pyrrhus's victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers and their losses did less to their war effort than Pyrrhus's losses did to his.

The report is often quoted as "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone". While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor.

Examples

• Battle of the Persian Gate (330 BC)
• Battle of the Hydaspes River (326 BC)
• Pyrrhic War (280-275 BC)
• Battle of Malplaquet (1709) - War of the Spanish Succession
• Battle of Bunker Hill (1775) - American Revolution
• Battle of Olszynka Grochowska (1831) - November uprising, Poland
• Battle of the Alamo (1836) - Texas Revolution
• Battle of Antietam (1862) - American Civil War
• Battle of Chancellorsville (1863) - American Civil War
• Battle of Isandlwana (1879) - Anglo-Zulu War
• Second Boer War (1899-1902)
• Spring Offensive (1918) - World War I
• Winter War (1939-1940)
• Battle of Bir Hakeim (1942) - World War II, North African Campaign
• Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands (1942) - World War II, Pacific Theater
• Battle of the Hürtgen Forest - World War II, European Theater (winter 1944-45)
• Tet Offensive (1968) - Vietnam War
• Yom Kippur War (1973) - Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Battle of Vukovar (1991)
• Battle of Mogadishu (1993) (1993)
• Battle of Ramadi (2004) (2004) - Iraq War

Pop culture

• Zap Brannigan's idiotic swarm tactics
• Most horror films
• The Alien series
• Predator
• Alien Versus Predator
• One Eight Seven (also known as 187)-the Pyrrhic victory story is used by the lead character to help a troubled student understand life
• Warhammer 40,000
• The Terminator series
• The Time War in the British science-fiction TV series Doctor Who

See also

• War of attrition
• Winner's curse
• Heroic failure
• No-win situation
• Win-win situation
• Mexican standoff
• Poison pill

Secondary Sources

• Denson, John, The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories. Transaction Publishers (1997). ISBN 1-560-00319-7.