Pyrrhus and the Pyrrhic conflict was often used by Roman statesmen as rhetoric highlighting the dangers of the Hellenistic East, and also as a bogey-man for organized foreign invaders of Italian soil. Hannibal, of course, overshadowed Pyrrhus in that latter category, but Phyrrhus remained primary for any example of Eastern aggression and was a close second fiddle for the spectre of invasion.

In 200 BCE, with the 2nd Punic War just ended, a man named Publius Sulpicius Galba was consul. He had been consul before, during the war, and had been dictator briefly. During this his second consulship he pushed strongly for a renewed war against Philip V of Macedon. The Macedonians had aided, or threatened to aid, Hannibal and Rome had done some minor skirmishing across the Adriatic as result. Now in 200 BCE Sulpicius pushed to invade Macedon and punish them properly. Livy gives us a speech of his, in which he employs the memory of old enemies to get his war-weary audience excited for a new conflict:

(Livy 31.7) "You seem to be unaware, Citizens, that what you have to decide is not whether you will have peace or war; Philip will not leave you any option as to that, and he is preparing war on an enormous scale both by land and sea. The only question is whether you will transport the legions into Macedonia or wait for the enemy in Italy. You have learnt by experience, if not before, at all events in the late Punic War, what a difference it makes which you decide upon. ... Why, this very Philip had entered into an agreement with Hannibal through his agents and in his messages that he would invade Italy, and there is not the smallest doubt that we kept him in Macedonia by sending Laevinus with a fleet to take the offensive against him. Are we hesitating to do now what we did then, when we had Hannibal for our enemy in Italy - now that Hannibal has been driven out of Italy and out of Carthage, and Carthage itself is completely vanquished? ..."

Though he (via Livy) does not expressly spell it out here, Pyrrhus had established those many years before a precedent of Hellenistic Eastern aggression against Italy, especially the Hellenized cities of southern Italy. The Italian ravaging of Hannibal was fresh of course, but Sulpicius is able to all but guarantee an imminent Macedonian invasion based in part on the memory of the Pyrrhic conflict. There are historians who argue that Rome's basic war motivations were usually "defensive" or "reactionary," and they frequently cite this time period as a strong proof. I don't necessarily subscribe to that "defensive aggression" theory, but it is true that the Romans had a very long collective cultural memory of past trauma and were quick to harness those memories to further contemporary aims. Sulpicius continues:

"Perhaps you do not put Philip on a par with Hannibal or consider the Macedonians equal to the Carthaginians. At all events you will consider him the equal of Pyrrhus. Equal, do I say? How greatly the one man surpasses the other, how superior is the one nation to the other! Epirus always has been and is today a very small accession to the kingdom of Macedonia. The whole of the Peloponnese is under the sway of Philip, not excepting even Argos, famous for the death of Pyrrhus, quite as much as for its ancient glory. Now compare our position. Consider the flourishing state of Italy when all those generals and armies were safe and sound which have been since swept away by the Punic War. And yet when Pyrrhus attacked it, he shook it to its foundations and all but reached Rome itself in his victorious career! Not only did the Tarentines revolt from us and the whole of that coastal district of Italy called Magna Graecia, which you would naturally suppose would follow a leader of the same language and nationality as themselves, but the Lucanians, the Bruttians and the Samnites did the same. Do you suppose that if Philip landed in Italy, these nations would remain quiet and true to us? ... Let Macedonia rather than Italy be the seat of war, let it be the enemy's cities and fields that are devastated with fire and sword. We have learnt by this time that our arms are more potent and more successful abroad than they are at home...." [31.8] After this speech the assembly separated for the voting. The result was in favor of the consul's proposal, and they resolved on war. (transl. Roberts)

Those that argue that Rome was usually a defensive aggressor seize upon that last bit I quoted, that Roman arms "are more potent and more successful abroad than they are at home" (experti iam sumus foris nobis quam domi feliciora potentioraque arma esse). Pyrrhus certain contributed to that mindset, and certainly reminded the Romans that enemies were better at the periphery of their reach and imagination rather than at the gates of the city. The Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BCE birthed the idea, Pyrrhus reaffirmed the sentiment, and Hannibal took away all doubt. Here, then, Sulpicius begs his weary audience to let the war be somewhere else.