These victories had come at considerable cost. Pyrrhus twice defeated the Romans in major battles, but they stubbornly refused to surrender. The Roman legions were not yet the deadly weapon of war they would become, and they had no experience whatsoever of fighting against war elephants. His intention was to put the upstart Romans back in their place, and quite possibly to carve out a corner of the empire for himself. With these cities threatened by the growing power of Rome, a Greek general by the name of King Pyrrhus led an army of infantry, cavalry, and war elephants into Italy. As Rome sought to expand its borders, it soon clashed with other powers in the Mediterranean region, most notably the Greeks who still possessed several cities in Sicily and the Italian mainland.
In 282 BC Rome was still little more than an ambitious city state.
