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:
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, so their losses did less damage 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, such as the USFL v. NFL lawsuit.

Contents

Examples

See also

Notes

Secondary Sources

Examples

★ Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC)

★ Battle of Thermopylae (480 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 Revolutionary War

★ Battle of Guilford Court House (1781) - American Revolutionary War

★ Battle of York (1813) - War of 1812

★ Battle of Olszynka Grochowska (1831) - November uprising, Poland

★ Battle of the Alamo (1836) - Texas Revolution

★ Battle of Camarón (1863) - French intervention in Mexico

★ Battle of Chancellorsville (1863) - American Civil War

★ Battle of Franklin II (1864) - American Civil War

★ Battle of Isandlwana (1879) - Anglo-Zulu War

★ Second Boer War (1899-1902)

★ World War I (1914-1918)

★ Soviet-Finnish War or Winter War (1939-1940) - World War II, European Theater

★ Battle of Muar (1942) - World War II, Malayan Campaign

★ 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 (winter 1944-45) - World War II, European Theater

★ Battle of Iwo Jima (1945) - World War II, Pacific Theater

★ Battle of Okinawa (1945) - World War II, Pacific Theater

★ Battle of Chosin Reservoir (1950) - Korean War

★ Battle of the Marshes (1984) - Iran-Iraq war

★ Battle of Vukovar (1991) - Croatian War of Independence

★ Battle of Mogadishu (1993) - Somali Civil War

★ Siege of Nahr el-Bared (2007)

See also

★ War of attrition

★ Winner's curse

★ Heroic failure

★ No-win situation

★ Win-win situation

★ Mexican standoff

★ Poison pill

★ Cadmus

Notes

Secondary Sources

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