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Updated: June 3, 2025
Nor did he brook the affront put upon him by this injurious treatment, but immediately sent secret messengers to Laevinus, to treat about delivering up Agrigentum.
When news came that Laevinus, the Roman consul, was marching to attack him with a large force, and was plundering the country of Lucania as he advanced, while Pyrrhus' allies had not yet arrived, he thought it a shameful thing to allow the enemy to proceed any farther, and marched out with his army.
He also sent a messenger to Rhegium, the praefect of the garrison, which had been placed there the consul Laevinus, against the Bruttians, and consisted eight thousand men, the greater part of whom had been brought from Agathyrna in Sicily, as has been before mentioned, and were men who had been accustomed to live by rapine.
No army crossed his path; but everywhere the towns of Latium closed their gates against him, and with measured step Laevinus followed him from Campania, while the consul Tiberius Coruncanius, who had just concluded a seasonable peace with the Etruscans, brought up a second Roman army from the north, and in Rome itself the reserve was preparing for battle under the dictator Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus.
Lucania was lost to the Romans: Laevinus collected the troops stationed there and marched to Apulia, The Bruttians, Lucanians, and Samnites joined Pyrrhus unmolested.
In this perplexing state of affairs, when all deliberation was at a stand, and a kind of torpor had seized on men's minds, Laevinus, the consul, observed, that "as the magistrates were more honoured than the senators, and the senators than the people, so also ought they to be the first in taking upon themselves every thing that was burdensome and arduous.
Both the Aetolians immediately commenced war against Philip, and Laevinus taking, all but the citadel, Zacynthus, a small island near to Aetolia, and having one city of the same name with the island; and also taking Aeniadae and Nasus from the Acarnanians, annexed them to the Aetolians; and also considering that Philip was sufficiently engaged in war with his neighbours to prevent his thinking of Italy, the Carthaginians, and his compact with Hannibal, he retired to Corcyra.
Both the consuls, however, first proposed to the senate the consideration of the state of the commonwealth, and the arrangements respecting the provinces. On this occasion Laevinus reported the state of Macedonia and Greece, of the Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Locrians, and the services he had himself performed there on sea and land.
They therefore ordered Marcus Livius, proconsul, to march his army of volunteer slaves out of Etruria to Ariminum, and gave in charge to Cneius Servilius to issue orders, if he thought it necessary for the safety of the state, that the city legions should be marched out under the command of any person he thought proper. Marcus Valerius Laevinus led those legions to Arretium.
At the summons of the herald "to enrol in the room of the fallen," the young men immediately after the battle of Heraclea had pressed forward in crowds to enlist; with the two newly-formed legions and the corps withdrawn from Lucania, Laevinus, stronger than before, followed the march of the king.
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