Aulus Hostilius was on his way to Macedon via Epirus. An Epirot leader wrote to Perseus to tell him to hurry there. However, the king was delayed. If he had attacked at the river passage, the newly recruited troops would have been defeated. In any case, Aulus Hostilius was informed about this and changed his route. He left Epirus and sailed to Anticyra (on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, in Boeotia) and marched to Thessaly. He marched on the enemy straight away, but he was no more successful than his predecessor, being defeated in battle. Then he gave up his useless attempts first to force his way through Elimea in south-western Macedon and then secretly march through Thessaly. Perseus anticipated all his moves. Livy wrote that Gaius Hortensius did not conduct his naval operations “with sufficient skill or success, for none of his acts deserves better to be remembered than his cruel and perfidious plundering of the city of the Abderites when they endeavoured to avert, by entreaty, the intolerable burdens imposed on them.” Perseus made an incursion against Dardania in southern Illyria, killed 10,000 and seized a large booty.