Pyrrhus a suppliant at the court of Glaucias. A.M. 3685.

This is one of a group of drawings by British artist and book illustrator Edward Francis Burney, depicting scenes from Greek and Roman history and mythology. One of the inscriptions on the margin, September No. 9, seems to refer to the month in a calendar for which Edward Francis Burney created this frontispiece drawing. Burney executed many headpieces of this kind for pocket calendar and memorandum books between 1796 to 1829. [See correspondence between Patricia Crown and Edward Morris, in the docket] Glaucias was the Illyrian King of the Taulantii state. Six years after the death of Alexander the Great and with Macedonia being ruled by the ruthless Cassander, Glaucias offered asylumn to the infant Pyrrhus in 317 BC after the expulsion of his father Aeacides from his kingdom among the Molossians. The infant Pyrrhus was brought to the court of Glaucias and his wife Beroea and placed betwen their feet. Pyrrhus crawled himself to Glaucias, who ordered his wife to raise him along with their other sons. Beroea was herself a Molossian princess.