Talk:Battle of Beneventum (275 BC)

Comments

The text says: "the Romans outnumbered Pyrrhus' forces" while the box ("strength") says the contrary. Which one is correct?--Proofreader 05:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, the casualties of Pyrrhus forces seem unreasonably high, suggesting a crushing defeat rather than what the text states in "Although they never defeated Pyrrhus on the field".

Yes, Beneventum was the battle that convinced Pyrrhus to leave Italia and Roman histories say that Pyrrhus was narrowly defeated, though many historians now claim it was inconclusive. The numbers aren't given in the sources I read, but they should be around even, and certainly not that high for either battle, or any battle that Pyrrhus fought against the Romans.

If the Romans drove the phalanx from the field, how are modern historians "wrongly" claiming that Rome won the battle? It seems to me that they held the field at the end, so that's basically a win by ancient standards. They are not wrong. Rome finally defeated Pyrrhus here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.2.74.186 (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Small error

According to Plutarch ("Pyrrhus", §23), Pyrrhus used the phrase 'What a battlefield I am leaving for Carthage and Rome' while he was departing from Sicily (thus before the Battle of Beneventum), not Italy in general. -- Atlantia, 19 April 2009

Problem

Much of the article appears to have been directly copied from a nono-reliable source here.[http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A3533726} Edward321 (talk) 13:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-london/plain/A3533726. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:26, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: Text added when I removed the copyvio was that removed by the copy-paster. It was present in the article in this version. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:26, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

they run....no....they ran

They run through the ranks of Pyrrhus which were thrown into disarray and, as a result, the Romans won the battle.[8] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.28.212.33 (talk) 23:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Casualties

The "Aftermath" section of this page states: "There is no information about the number of troops deployed by either side or the number of casualties. After this defeat Pyrrhus went back to Tarentum and gave up the war. He sailed back to Epirus."

This is correct. There are no primary or secondary sources for battlefield strength or losses for this battle, outside of the anecdotes about the elephants. Yet, the battle-box summary provides very specific strength and loss figures. Would strongly recommend this box be reviewed and the specific figures removed. Akaricloud (talk) 05:27, 29 May 2023 (UTC)