Alexander I of Epirus (died 331 BC) was King of Epirus from 342 to 331 BC, succeeding Arybbas and preceding Aeacides.
Biography[]
Alexander was the son of Neoptolemus I of Epirus and the brother of Olympias, and he was raised at the Macedonian court in Pella with the purpose of being trained to become a Macedonian puppet king one day. In 342 BC, Alexander's brother-in-law Philip II of Macedon invaded Epirus and deposed Alexander's uncle Arybbas of Epirus, placing Alexander on the throne.
In the middle of the 4th century BC, the Dorian Greek colonists of Tarentum in southern Italy had apealed to Sparta, their mother city, for help against the indigenous population which threatened them. At a time when northern Greece was crucially involved against Philip of Macedon, Sparta had sent a force under King Archidamus III, who had subsequently been killed fighting in Italy. Later, when Alexander the Great was in the east, Alexander of Epirus - who had made himself ruler of the tribes and cities of Epirus - gladly accepted another Tarantine invitation to intervene in southern Italy. He crossed into Italy in 334 BC to help the Tarentines against the Lucanians, Bruttii, and Samnites, defeating the Samnites and Lucanians at Paestum in 332 BC and making a treaty with the Roman Republic. He then took Heraclea from the Lucanians and Terina and Sipontum from the Bruttii, but, through the treachery of Lucanian exiles, he was lured into a losing battle at Pandosia and killed by a Lucanian warrior. His son Neoptolemus II of Epirus would later rise to the throne.