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When Scipio Africanus later said that the Sicilian warlords Dionysius and Agathocles were his favorite Greek statesmen, he may have been thinking of the things they had in common: they both rose to power with the support of aristocrats and had many important marriages in their families. While Dionysius I married three times, all to highly influential aristocratic families, Agathocles’ first marriage was into Syracuse aristocracy, and later he married his daughter Lanassa to a man who counted for more than most, King Pyrrhus of Epirus (319-272 BC).
This marriage was an unhappy one, since Pyrrhus had a polygamous lifestyle and Lanassa left him four years after the wedding. It also was one with far-reaching implications: the ambitious groom was the proto-typical Hellenistic king, and eventually became the most spectacular example of that colorful breed.
Even though Pyrrhus is commonly identified as king of Epirus, a small state in western Greece that had managed to remain independent of but subservient to Macedon, like many other Hellenistic rulers of the era he never called himself king of any specific land: just King, which – for somebody with his degree of ambition – left a convenient void to be filled1.
Like Alexander, a distant relative (Pyrrhus’ father was a cousin of Alexander’s mother), and Agathocles, Pyrrhus aspired to continued conquest, to be King of as much as he could be, and he gave it his best shot: dethroned by the Diadochus Cassander at the tender age of 17, he regained his throne five years later with the help of the cunning Ptolemy, and went on to fight pretty much everyone else.
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