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Updated: June 3, 2025
He therefore dismissed the legions into winter quarters, and sent his brother Lucius Scipio with Hanno, the enemy's general, and other distinguished prisoners, to Rome, while he retired himself to Tarraco. During the same year, the Roman fleet under Marcus Valerius Laevinus, the proconsul, sailing over from Sicily into Africa, devastated to a wide extent the fields about Utica and Carthage.
The Romans did not remove Laevinus from his office of consul, although Caius Fabricius is reported to have said that it was not the Epirotes who had conquered the Romans, but Pyrrhus who had conquered Laevinus; meaning that he thought that the defeat was owing not to the greater force but the superior generalship of the enemy.
During the same time Marcus Valerius Laevinus, having first sounded the intentions of the leading men by means of secret conferences, came with some light ships to a council of the Aetolians, which had been previously appointed to meet for this very purpose.
With the rest of the ships, orders were given that Marcus Valerius Laevinus should either pass over himself into Africa to ravage the country, or send either Lucius Cincius or Marcus Valerius Messala. With regard to Spain, no alteration was made, except that Scipio and Silanus were continued in command, not for the year, but until they should be recalled by the senate.
In a few days, therefore, the town surrendered, and was delivered over to the Aetolians, the booty, according to compact, was given up to the Romans. Laevinus then received a letter informing him, that he had been elected consul in his absence, and that Publius Sulpicius was coming as his successor. He arrived at Rome later than he was generally expected, being detained by a lingering illness.
He and his horsemen who refused to follow the younger Hanno entered into negotiations with the Roman general Marcus Valerius Laevinus and delivered to him Agrigentum.
Marcus Valerius Laevinus, who had been twice consul, endeavoured to show that those who had come were spies, and not ambassadors; that they ought to be ordered to depart from Italy; that guards should be sent with them to their very ships, and that Scipio should be written to not to relax in prosecuting the war.
But Laevinus returning answer, that the Romans neither accepted him as arbitrator. nor feared him as an enemy, Pyrrhus advanced, and encamped in the plain between the cities of Pandosia and Heraclea, and having notice the Romans were near, and lay on the other side of the river Siris, he rode up to take a view of them, and seeing their order, the appointment of the watches, their method and the general form of their encampment, he was amazed, and addressing one of his friends next to him: "This order," said he, "Megacles, of the barbarians, is not at all barbarian in character; we shall see presently what they can do;" and, growing a little more thoughtful of the event, resolved to expect the arriving of the confederate troops.
Thence passing through Apulia, on their way to Capua, they fell in with the Roman troops stationed to protect the country, and were conveyed to Marcus Valerius Laevinus, the praetor, who lay encamped in the neighbourhood of Luceria.
On the other hand the Romans succeeded, by means of a weak corps which advanced along the Lucanian frontier and of the garrison of Venusia, in preventing the Lucanians and Samnites from uniting with Pyrrhus; while the main force four legions as it would appear, and so, with a corresponding number of allied troops, at least 50,000 strong marched against Pyrrhus, under the consul Publius Laevinus.
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