Pyrrhic victory

A Pyrrhic victory (/ˈpɪrɪk/ (listen) PIRR-ik) is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has also taken a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress. The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.Ne ego si iterum eodem modo uicero, sine ullo milite Epirum reuertar.Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone.If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.Moral reason must learn how to make coercion its ally without running the risk of a Pyrrhic victory in which the ally exploits and negates the triumph.If minority groups hail this holding as their victory, they might consider the possible relevancy of this ancient remark: 'Another such victory and I am undone'. A Pyrrhic victory (/ˈpɪrɪk/ (listen) PIRR-ik) is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has also taken a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress. Pyrrhic victory is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC and the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC, during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius: