King of Epirus, was the son of Xeicles, and a descendant, according to the ordinary account, from Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, and was born about 318 B.C. The early part of his life was involved in misfortune. Scarcely was he two years old when his father was deposed by rebel subjects, and a general massacre took place among the royal family and their adherents. The infant himself was snatched from the very hands of the assassins, and carried away with difficulty to the court of Glauca, king of the Taulantians. It is true that the decline of Cassander's power in Greece opened up a way for him to his father's throne; but he had only reigned five years when the adverse party among his subjects suddenly gained the ascendancy, and drove him to take refuge with his brother-in-law Demetrius. So hard, indeed, did misfortune press upon him, that he was at last glad to go into Egypt as a hostage for the prince just mentioned. At this point, however, the tide of events began to turn in Pyrrhus' favour. Admiring his great abilities, and his pleasing and virtuous bearing, Berenice, the wife of King Ptolemy, took the charge of his fortunes. The hand of her daughter Antigone was given to him in preference to many princely rivals. Money and men were then placed at his disposal, to enable him to take possession of his hereditary kingdom. Nor did success fail to accompany him to Epirus. His subjects received him with acclamation; he was appointed colleague to Neoptolemus, the sovereign who then occupied the throne; and his power grew so great that, in 295 B.C., he ventured to make away with his rival, and to wield the sceptre alone.

In 294 B.C. Pyrrhus began his aggressive policy by acquiring an ascendancy over Alexander of Macedon. The overthrow of that impotent prince soon afterwards by Demetrius did not long retard his ambitious designs. His admirable qualities proved too strong for his former friend and brother-in-law. In a battle fought in Ætolia in 289 B.C., against Pantarchus, the brave general of his enemy, he won from the Macedonian troops not only victory, but generous admiration. They went home landing his wonderful achievements in the fight, comparing him to that favourite monarch, the dead Alexander, and desiring an opportunity to transfer to him their allegiance and their services. No sooner, therefore, did they see his lofty plume and his crest of goat's horns before the city of Berea in 287 B.C., than they went over to him in a body. It is true that, changing sides once more, they soon deserted him for their old general Lysimachus, and left him no alternative but to abandon Macedonia. Yet his exploits in this campaign had gained for him a reputation which extended to other countries, and which, in course of time, was the means of opening up before him a new path to victory and glory.

It was in 281 B.C. that the Tarentines, attracted by the military renown of Pyrrhus, implored him to assist them against the aggressive tyranny of Rome. Too impatient to wait until the rude winter was past, he embarked early in 280 B.C., and after being nearly engulfed by the boisterous waves of the Ionian, he landed on the coast of Italy, and commenced his measures. He first applied a rigorous system of reform to the pleasure-seeking city of Tarentum. The theatres were closed; all revels were proscribed; and the lounging citizens were subjected to military drill. Then taking the field, he made a vigorous attack upon a Roman army under the consul Lævinius, as it was crossing the River Siris. The hardy legionaries, indeed, like men accustomed to conquer, were loath to yield. During a whole spring day did they stubbornly grapple with him for the prize of victory. But he routed them with great slaughter, and began to take measures to improve his victory. By the orator Cineas he offered terms of peace to the Roman Senate. When these were disdainfully rejected, he advanced by forced marches to within 24 miles of the enemy's capital. The intelligence, that the army of Etruria had just arrived in Rome, induced him to retreat to winter quarters in Tarentum; but did not make him slacken in his efforts to accomplish the object of his enterprise. He continued to ply the Senate with proposals of peace until the spring arrived. He then took the field, and defeated the enemy in a hard-fought battle at Asculum in Apulia. Nor was it until he discovered how fast his army was wasting away, and how difficult it was to obtain any reinforcements from home, that he desisted from the attempt to bend the Romans either by negotiation or by force.

From this period may be dated the decline of the power and reputation of Pyrrhus. Invited over to Sicily in 278 B.C. to aid the natives against the Carthaginians, he entered upon his first course of disaster. It is true that, for some time after his landing, his arms were victorious. The enemy was everywhere put to the rout before him; the strong town of Eryx was taken by a brilliant coup de main; and the Punic invaders were driven to sue for peace. But the failure of his attack on Lilybaeum turned the tide of fortune. So completely did he lose the good-will of the Sicilians that he was glad, in 276 B.C., to depart ingloriously for Italy. Nor was misfortune left on the shore behind him. As he was crossing the strait, the Carthaginian fleet, attacking him, destroyed seventy of his ships. When he landed, the warlike Mamertines, who had hastened from Sicily to intercept him, harassed his march towards Tarentum. The Romans also, two years afterwards, gained the complete mastery over him. His forces were cut to pieces at Beneventum by the consul Curius; and there was no alternative left for him but to return to Epirus, beggared in resources, and with a mere handful of soldiers. A short interval of prosperity intervened in the life of Pyrrhus after his arrival in his own kingdom. Invading the territories of Antigonus, King of Macedon, and coming to an engagement with the troops of that prince, he routed the Gauls which formed the rear of the hostile army, brought the Macedonian soldiers over to him by holding out his hand invitingly, and thus gained a kingdom by one magnificent stroke of combined force and persuasion. But this success only tempted him to rush into new calamities. Consenting in 272 B.C. to interfere in the quarrels of Cleonymus, the ex-king of Lacedemon, he hazarded a rash attack upon Sparta. The attack roused the deathless Spartan valour, and he was soon forced to desist. Still more unfortunate was the attempt which he then made to co-operate with Aristeas, the leader of one of the factions in Argos. Admitted by Aristeas during the night into the distracted city, he was immediately detected. The alarm was raised, those of the opposite party seized the strongest positions in Pythagoras the town; and he and his men were soon hemmed in on all sides. Day dawned, and found him fighting his way back amid a weltering sea of enemies. He had cut his passage as far as a narrow street, and was dealing blows of death upon all around him, when an old woman, looking down from a roof immediately above, and seeing him in the act of overpowering her son, seized a large tile with both her hands, and let it fall upon his head. The blow struck him senseless from his horse; and one of his antagonists, dragging him into a porch, despatched him with an Illyrian blade. (See Plutarch's Lives.)