实用英语：Pyrrhic victory 惨胜
Reader question:What does this sentence – Most historians agree that the battle was an
Egyptian defeat or a draw or at best a Pyrrhic victory – mean, and in particular
what is "pyrrhic victory"?
My comments:
It means the Egyptians probably lost the battle. It was perhaps a draw. At
the very best, if the Egyptians won, their own loss was so great that they could
hardly find any satisfaction in the victory.
Pyrrhic victory? You could have more or less guessed it, I think. It refers
to a victory that has come at a great cost, such a great cost, in fact, that
it's perhaps not worth fighting for. Pyrrhic, with a capitalized "P", is after
Greek king Pyrrhus (318-272), who gained such a victory against the Romans.
Pyrrhus had lost so many men in the battle that when people came to congratulate
him for the victory, Pyrrhus said to them: "One more such victory and Pyrrhus is
undone."
Hence, Pyrrhic victory.
Having grasped its origin, I hope you'll find this phrase easy to remember.
And having learned its story, you'll be able to put Pyrrhic victory into use in
the right situations. While we're at it, talking about victory, we might as well
touch upon two other kinds of victories for the sake of comparison. One is
Cadmean victory, the other moral victory. Cadmean is also Greek in origin. A
Cadmean victory is one that has come at ruinous costs to both sides. A moral
victory, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which you feel you do the
right things and your beliefs are right even though you do not win the game,
battle or argument.
Well, in short, all three of these victories we'd probably do better
without.
Here are two media examples of Pyrrhic victory.
1. In short, the Hong Kong government might have won this particular battle
against the speculators, just as the Malaysians reckon they have done. But with
both administrations' credibility hugely damaged as a result, these are Pyrrhic
victories that they may come to rue.
- "Market intervention: Fashionable", The Economist, September 5, 1998.
2. After intense and wearying discussions that came close to breakdown on
more than one occasion, European leaders, thanks mainly to the efforts of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Luxemburg's Jean-Claude Juncker, snatched victory
from the jaws of defeat to reach agreement over a reform treaty in the early
hours of June 23.
But it was a pyrrhic victory. The document that emerged from Brussels
appeared to reject the ideals of a strong and unified European Union as
envisioned by statesmen like Francois Mitterrand or Helmut Kohl and was instead
a watered down, dismembered, and completely illegible version of the defunct EU
constitutional project.
- Pyrrhic victory for EU at Brussels summit, The Hindu, July 12, 2007.
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