Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
To this first and most essential error Pyrrhus added a second; he
proceeded with his fleet, not to Lilybaeum, but to Tarentum. It was
evident, looking to the very ferment in the minds of the Sicilians,
that he ought first of all to have dislodged the Carthaginians wholly
from the island, and thereby to have cut off the discontented from
their last support, before he turned his attention to Italy; in that
quarter there was nothing to be lost, for Tarentum was safe enough for
him, and the other allies were of little moment now that they had been
abandoned.
It is conceivable that his soldierly spirit impelled him
to wipe off the stain of his not very honourable departure in the year
476 by a brilliant return, and that his heart bled when he heard the
complaints of the Lucanians and Samnites. But problems, such as
Pyrrhus had proposed to himself, can only be solved by men of iron
nature, who are able to control their feelings of compassion and even
their sense of honour; and Pyrrhus was not one of these.