Dr Simon Elliott

But they're Romans, so they learn, and ultimately they win the conflict.

Now, the interesting thing is there.

We know that Pyrrhus' main objective, he was brought over by the Tarentines from the southeast coast of Italy-

Yeah.

So for the first time, the Hellenistic kingdoms in the form of Pyrrhus are sort of in this backwater of the Hellenistic world, which is an interesting way of looking at it, because I think there's a degree of truth in that from a Hellenistic point of view.

That doesn't go well for the Hellenistic kingdoms, but we'll hold that for later.

So Pyrrhus is actually basically trying to peer away the various Roman allied states from Rome, but the Romans win.

And again, let's go back to true grit and the ability to nick other people's ideas.

There's a line in the contemporary sources that to counter the elephants, the Romans created anti-elephant wagons, which had a ballista in the front of the wagon and then two flaming poles.

Yeah, and the sides on the end of poles to hamstring the elephants.

Wow.

Proper Roman ingenuity.

And also, within that constitutional process, if the consul isn't any good, you can get rid of him before the end of his term by voting to install somebody else to replace him as well.

So it's a really, really... Compared to the fairly inflexible kingdoms that the Romans are now dealing with, it's actually a much more flexible system.

So it gives the Romans an extra string to their bow.

They've got the grit, and now they've got the flexibility as well.

Middle of the third century.

So here's our layer cake.

And the Romans are gradually taking slices from the layer cake to the north and to the south.

250 BC-ish.