The Battle of the Cranita hills was fought on 277 BC between a Roman and a Samnite army during the Pyrrhic War (280-275 BC). The Samnite people allied with King Pyrrhus of Epirus against the Roman Republic to regain the independence that they had lost during the Roman Samnite wars, but when Pyrrhus left Italy in 278 BC for Sicily, Pyrrhus' Italian allies were left to defend from the Romans on their own.