The consuls and praetors, when they had entered upon their magistracy on the Ides of March, drew lots for the provinces. To Lucius Lentulus fell Italy, to Publius Villius Macedonia; of the praetors, to Lucius Quinctius the city jurisdiction, to Gnaeus Baebius Ariminum, to Lucius Valerius Sicily, to Lucius Villius Sardinia. Lentulus the consul was ordered to enroll new legions, Villius to take over the army from Publius Sulpicius; for filling it up he was himself given leave to enroll as many soldiers as seemed good. To the praetor Baebius the legions which the consul Gaius Aurelius had had were so decreed that he should keep them until the consul came up with a new army; and when this consul had come into Gaul, all the soldiers were to be discharged and sent home save five thousand of the allies—with these it was enough to hold the province about Ariminum. The command was prorogued to the praetors of the year before: to Gaius Sergius, that he might see to the assigning of land to the soldiers who had served their campaigns through many years in Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia; to Quintus Minucius, that in Bruttium he might finish the same inquiries into the conspiracies which as praetor he had conducted with good faith and care, and might send to Locri for punishment those whom, found guilty of sacrilege, he had sent in chains to Rome, and see to it that what had been taken from the shrine of Proserpina be replaced with expiatory rites. The Latin Festival was, by decree of the pontiffs, held over again.

From Suessa it was reported that two gates, and what there was of wall between them, had been struck from heaven; and the envoys of Formiae reported that the temple of Jupiter, the people of Ostia likewise the temple of Jupiter, and the Veliterni the temples of Apollo and Sangus, had been struck, and that in the temple of Hercules hair had grown. And from Bruttium the propraetor Quintus Minucius wrote that a colt had been born with five feet, and three cockerels with three feet apiece. From the proconsul Publius Sulpicius a letter was brought from Macedonia, in which among other things it was written that a laurel had sprung up on the stern of a warship. For the earlier prodigies the Senate had decreed that the consuls should sacrifice with full-grown victims to whatever gods seemed good; on account of this one prodigy the soothsayers were called into the Senate, and by their answer a supplication for a single day was proclaimed to the people, and the sacred rites were performed at all the couches of the gods.

The Carthaginians that year first brought to Rome the silver imposed upon them as tribute. Because the quaestors reported that it was not pure, and on the testing of it a fourth part had been lost in the refining, they made good the deficiency of the silver with money borrowed at Rome. Then, upon their asking that, if the Senate now saw fit, the hostages be given back to them, a hundred hostages were restored; and concerning the rest, if they remained in their faith, hope was held out. On the same men asking that the hostages who were not being restored should be moved elsewhere from Norba, where they were ill lodged, it was granted that they should pass over to Signia and Ferentinum. To the Gaditani too, at their request, it was conceded that no prefect should be sent to Gades, contrary to what had been agreed with Lucius Marcius Septimus when they came into the faith of the Roman people. And the envoys of Narnia complaining that the colonists were not up to their full number, and that certain men not of their own stock had mingled among them and bore themselves as colonists, the consul Lucius Cornelius was ordered to appoint three commissioners for these matters. There were appointed Publius and Sextus Aelius—both had the surname Paetus—and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus. What was granted to the people of Narnia, that the number of colonists be increased, the people of Cosa, asking the same, did not obtain.

When the matters that had to be transacted at Rome were finished, the consuls set out for their provinces. When Publius Villius had come into Macedonia, a fierce mutiny of the soldiers, already stirred up before and not quelled enough at the outset, met him. There were two thousand of those soldiers who, after the defeat of Hannibal, had been carried from Africa into Sicily, and thence about a year later into Macedonia as volunteers. They denied that this had been done by their own will: that, refusing, they had been put aboard the ships by the tribunes. But however it might be—whether the service had been enjoined or undertaken of free will—both that it was now used up, and that some end of soldiering should be made, was fair. For many years they had not seen Italy; they had grown old under arms in Sicily, in Africa, in Macedonia; they were now worn out with toil and the labor of works, and drained of blood by so many wounds received. The consul said that the cause for demanding discharge seemed a reasonable one, if it were asked with moderation; but that neither this nor any other cause was just enough for mutiny. And so, if they were willing to remain by the standards and obey orders, he would write to the Senate about their discharge; by moderation they would more easily obtain what they wished than by stubbornness.

At that time Philip was besieging Thaumaci with the utmost force, with ramps and sheds, and was now about to bring up the ram to the walls; but the sudden arrival of the Aetolians forced him to desist from the attempt. These, under the leadership of Archidamus, having made their way within the walls between the watches of the Macedonians, made no end, by night or by day, of sallying now upon the outposts, now upon the works of the Macedonians. And the nature of the place itself aided them. For Thaumaci, as one goes from Pylae and the Malian gulf by way of Lamia, is set on high ground in the very jaws of the pass, overhanging what they call Hollow Thessaly; and when one has crossed the broken country and the roads entangled with the windings of the valleys, on coming to this city the whole level of a sudden is spread out as if it were a vast sea, so that one can scarce mark with the eyes the bounds of the fields below. From that marvel they are called Thaumaci. Nor is the city safe by its height alone, but because it is set upon crags, the rock being cut sheer away on every side. These difficulties, and that the prize was hardly worth so great a labor and danger, brought it about that Philip desisted from his attempt. Winter too was now pressing on, when he withdrew thence and led his forces back into Macedonia into winter quarters. There the rest, indeed, in whatever space of rest was granted them, relaxed at once their minds and their bodies; but Philip, the more he had unbent his mind from the unceasing toils of marches and of battles, by so much the more do cares vex him, intent upon the whole issue of the war—fearing not the enemy only, who pressed him by land and by sea, but now the minds of his allies, now even of his own people, lest the one should fall away to the hope of Roman friendship, and a longing for change of affairs should seize the Macedonians themselves. And so he sent envoys into Achaia, at once to exact the oath—for so they had covenanted, that every year they would swear to the words of Philip—and at the same time to restore to the Achaeans Orchomenus and Heraea, and Triphylia taken from the Eleans, and to the Megalopolitans Aliphera, they contending that this city had never been part of Triphylia, but ought to be restored to them, because it was one of those which had been assigned, by the council of the Arcadians, to the founding of Megalopolis. And with the Achaeans, indeed, by these means he was making the alliance firm; but as for the minds of the Macedonians, since he perceived that Heraclides, his friend, was the chief cause of ill-will against him, he cast him, loaded with many charges, into chains, to the immense joy of his people. He made ready for war, if ever before any other time, then with great care, and exercised in arms both the Macedonians and the mercenary soldiers; and at the beginning of spring he sent Athenagoras with all the foreign auxiliaries and what there was of light-armed troops into Chaonia through Epirus, to seize the narrows that are at Antigonea—the Greeks call them Stena. He himself, following a few days later with a heavier column, when he had surveyed the whole lie of the region, judged the place by the river Aous to be the most suitable for fortifying. This river flows between two mountains—the inhabitants call the one Meropus, the other Asnaus—in a narrow valley, affording a scant path along the bank. He bids Athenagoras hold and fortify Asnaus with the light-armed; he himself pitched his camp upon Meropus. Where the rocks were sheer, a post of a few armed men held the place; where they were less secure, he fortified the one part with ditches, another with a rampart, another with towers. A great force of artillery too was disposed in fit places, to keep off the enemy at a distance with missiles. The royal tent was set before the rampart upon a mound in fullest view, that he might strike terror into the enemy and give hope to his own men by his show of confidence.

The consul, informed through Charops the Epirote which passes the king had beset with his army, and having himself wintered at Corcyra, in early spring crossed over to the mainland and pressed on to lead against the enemy. When he was about five miles distant from the royal camp, leaving the legions in a fortified position, he himself went forward with light-armed troops to reconnoiter the ground, and on the next day held a council: whether he should attempt the passage through the defile beset by the enemy—though immense toil and danger were set before him—or should lead his forces round by the same route by which Sulpicius the year before had entered Macedonia. As he turned this plan over for many days, word came to him that Titus Quinctius had been made consul, had been allotted the province of Macedonia, and, hastening his journey, had already crossed over to Corcyra.

Valerius Antias records that Villius entered the defile—because by the direct route he could not, all being beset by the king—and, following the valley through the middle of which the river Aous is borne, with a bridge hastily thrown up crossed over to the bank on which the royal camp stood and joined battle in line; that the king was routed and put to flight and stripped of his camp; that twelve thousand of the enemy were slain in that battle, two thousand two hundred taken, and a hundred and thirty-two military standards and two hundred and thirty horses; and that a temple too was vowed to Jupiter in that battle, should the affair be brought to a prosperous issue. The rest of the authors, Greek and Latin—those whose annals at least I have read—record that nothing memorable was done by Villius, and that his successor, the consul Titus Quinctius, took over the war entire.

While these things were being done in Macedonia, the other consul, Lucius Lentulus, who had stayed behind at Rome, held the elections for the creation of censors. Many distinguished men standing for it, the censors elected were Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Publius Aelius Paetus. These two, in great harmony with one another, both chose the Senate without a mark of censure against any man, and let out for collection the harbor-dues on the slave-market at Capua and Puteoli, and likewise the harbor-due at Castrum, where now there is a town, and enrolled three hundred colonists there—for that was the number fixed by the Senate—and sold the land below Tifata at Capua.

About the same time Lucius Manlius Acidinus, departing from Spain, though he had obtained an ovation from the Senate, was forbidden by Publius Porcius Laeca, tribune of the plebs, to return in ovation; and entering the city as a private citizen he brought into the treasury a thousand two hundred pounds of silver and about thirty pounds of gold.

In the same year Gnaeus Baebius Tamphilus, who had received the province of Gaul from Gaius Aurelius, consul of the year before, having rashly advanced into the territory of the Insubrian Gauls, was all but surrounded with his whole army: he lost above six thousand seven hundred soldiers; so great a disaster was suffered from a war that had now ceased to be feared. This affair called the consul Lucius Lentulus away from the city. When he came into the province, which was full of confusion, and had taken over the panicked army, he ordered the praetor—rebuked with many reproaches—to quit the province and go off to Rome. Nor did the consul himself do anything memorable, being recalled to Rome for the elections; which elections themselves were being obstructed by Marcus Fulvius and Manius Curius, tribunes of the plebs, because they would not suffer Titus Quinctius Flamininus to stand for the consulship straight from the quaestorship: now, they urged, the aedileship and the praetorship were being held in contempt, and noble men, instead of pressing toward the consulship through the grades of office, each man giving proof of himself, were vaulting over the middle ranks to join the highest to the lowest. The matter passed from the contest in the Campus into the Senate. The Fathers decreed that it was fair, in the case of a man seeking an office which it was lawful for him by the laws to take up, that the people should have the power of electing whom it would. The tribunes deferred to the authority of the Fathers. The consuls elected were Sextus Aelius Paetus and Titus Quinctius Flamininus. Then the elections of praetors were held. There were elected Lucius Cornelius Merula, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Marcus Porcius Cato, and Gaius Helvius, who had been plebeian aediles. By these the Plebeian Games were held over again; and there was a banquet of Jupiter on account of the games. And by the curule aediles, Gaius Valerius Flaccus, the flamen of Jupiter, and Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, the Roman Games were held with great splendor. Servius and Gaius Sulpicius Galba, pontiffs, died that year; in their place Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio were chosen pontiffs in succession.

When Sextus Aelius Paetus and Titus Quinctius Flamininus, having entered upon their magistracy, had held the Senate on the Capitol, the Fathers decreed that the consuls should arrange between themselves, or settle by lot, the provinces of Macedonia and Italy; that whichever of them Macedonia fell to should enroll, as reinforcement for the legions, three thousand Roman soldiers and three hundred horse, and likewise of the allies of the Latin name five thousand foot and five hundred horse. To the other consul a wholly new army was decreed. To Lucius Lentulus, consul of the year before, the command was prorogued, and he was forbidden either to quit the province himself or to lead away the old army before the consul should arrive with the new legions. The consuls drew lots for the provinces; to Aelius fell Italy, to Quinctius Macedonia. Of the praetors, Lucius Cornelius Merula drew the city jurisdiction, Marcus Claudius Sicily, Marcus Porcius Sardinia, Gaius Helvius Gaul. Then the levy began to be held; for besides the consular armies the praetors too had been ordered to enroll soldiers—Marcellus for Sicily four thousand allied foot of the Latin name and three hundred horse, Cato for Sardinia two thousand foot of the same kind of soldiers and two hundred horse—so that both these praetors, when they had come into their provinces, should discharge the old foot and horse.

The consuls next brought the envoys of King Attalus into the Senate. When these had set forth that the king was aiding the Roman cause by land and sea with his own fleet and all his forces, and had done, briskly and obediently down to that very day, whatever the Roman consuls commanded, they said they feared that it might no longer be permitted him to render this service, on account of King Antiochus; for Antiochus had invaded the kingdom of Attalus while it was emptied of its naval and land garrisons. Therefore Attalus begged the conscript fathers: if they wished to use his fleet and his service for the Macedonian war, that they themselves send a garrison to protect his kingdom; if they would not, that they suffer him to return with his fleet and the rest of his forces to defend his own. The Senate ordered the envoys to be answered thus: that as for King Attalus’s having aided the Roman commanders with his fleet and his other forces, this was pleasing to the Senate; that they would neither send help themselves to Attalus against Antiochus, an ally and friend of the Roman people, nor detain Attalus’s auxiliaries longer than was convenient to the king; that the Roman people had always used the resources of others at the discretion of those others; that both the beginning and the end lay in the power of those who wished the Romans to be aided by their support; that they would send envoys to Antiochus to announce that the Roman people was employing the service of Attalus and of his ships and soldiers against Philip, their common enemy; that he would do the Senate a kindness if he kept off from the kingdom of Attalus and desisted from war; and that it was fair that kings who were allies and friends of the Roman people should keep peace also among themselves.

As for the consul Titus Quinctius—when he had held the levy so as to choose chiefly those who had served in Spain or Africa, soldiers of proven valor, and was hastening into his province—prodigies announced, and the expiation of them, held him at Rome. On the public road at Veii things had been struck from heaven, and at Lanuvium the forum and the temple of Jupiter, at Ardea the temple of Hercules, at Capua the wall and towers and the temple which is called the White; at Arretium the sky had seemed to be on fire; at Velitrae the earth had subsided into a huge cavern over a space of three iugera; at Suessa Aurunca they reported that a lamb had been born with two heads, and at Sinuessa a pig with a human head. On account of these prodigies a supplication was held for one day, and the consuls gave their care to the divine rites; and when the gods had been appeased they set out for their provinces, Aelius with the praetor Helvius into Gaul. The army taken over from Lucius Lentulus, which he was bound to discharge, he handed over to the praetor, meaning himself to wage war with the new legions which he had brought with him. Nor did he do anything memorable.

Titus Quinctius, the other consul, having crossed over from Brundisium earlier than former consuls had been wont, made for Corcyra with eight thousand foot and eight hundred horse. From Corcyra he crossed in a quinquereme to the nearest part of Epirus and pressed on by forced marches to the Roman camp. There, having dismissed Villius, he tarried a few days while the troops came up to him from Corcyra, and held a council: whether he should attempt to force a way by the direct route through the enemy’s camp, or, without even attempting that, should rather enter Macedonia by a safe circuit through the Dassaretii and Lyncus. And the latter view would have prevailed, had he not feared that, when he had withdrawn farther from the sea—the enemy let slip from his hands—if the king should choose, as he had done before, to protect himself by wastes and woods, the summer might be drawn out without any result. So however it might be, it was resolved to attack the enemy in that very position, unfavorable as it was. But they were better agreed that it should be done than clear how it should be done; and they had spent forty days sitting in sight of the enemy without any attempt. Hence hope was given to Philip of trying for peace through the Epirote people; and a council being held, Pausanias the praetor and Alexander the master of horse, chosen to manage the matter, brought the consul and the king into conference where the river Aous is squeezed between its narrowest banks. The sum of the consul’s demands was this: that the king withdraw his garrisons from the cities; that to those whose fields and towns he had laid waste he restore such property as could be found; and that for the rest an estimate be made by fair arbitration. Philip answered that the case of different cities was different: those which he himself had captured, he would set free; but from those which had been handed down to him by his ancestors he would not depart, their possession being hereditary and lawful. If those cities with which the war had been waged complained of the calamities of war, he would abide by an arbiter—any people, of those with whom both sides had been at peace, that they might choose. The consul said that for this indeed there was no need of arbiter or judge; for to whom was it not plain that the wrong had arisen from him who had first brought arms to bear, and that Philip, provoked to war by none, had been the first to do violence to all? Then, when the question came to which cities should be set free, the consul named the Thessalians first of all. At this the king was so kindled with indignation that he cried out: "What heavier thing could you lay upon a man defeated, Titus Quinctius?"—and so flung himself out of the conference; and it was with difficulty restrained that they did not join battle with missiles against one another, parted as they were by the river between them. On the next day, by sallies from the outposts, many light skirmishes were at first joined on a plain open enough for it; then, as the king’s men withdrew into close and broken ground, the Romans too, fired with eagerness for the contest, pressed in even there. In their favor were order and military discipline and a kind of arms fitted for covering the body; in the enemy’s favor the ground, and catapults and ballistae disposed, as if upon a wall, on almost all the crags. Many wounds being received on this side and that, and some even falling as in a regular battle, night made an end of the fighting.

While the matter stood thus, a certain shepherd, sent by Charops, the chief of the Epirotes, was brought down to the consul. He said that he was accustomed to graze his herd in that defile which was then held by the royal camp, and that he knew all the windings and tracks of those mountains; that, if the consul were willing to send some men with him, he would lead them out, by an approach neither steep nor over-difficult, above the head of the enemy. When the consul heard this, he sent to inquire of Charops whether he judged that so great a matter ought to be entrusted to a peasant. Charops bade the answer be returned that he should so trust it as to keep everything rather in his own power than in the other’s. Wishing to trust more than daring to, and bearing a mind mixed of joy and fear, moved by the authority of Charops, he resolved to make trial of the hope offered; and, to turn the king away from suspicion, he did not cease, for the two following days, to harass the enemy, his troops disposed on every side and fresh men coming up into the place of the weary. He then handed over to a military tribune four thousand picked foot and three hundred horse. He ordered the horsemen to be led as far as the ground allowed; where the way became impassable for cavalry, the horse were to be posted on some level, and the foot to go where the guide should point out the path; and when, as he promised, they had reached the head of the enemy, to give the signal with smoke and not to raise the war-cry before they could judge, from the signal received from him, that the battle had begun. He ordered the marches to be made by night—and it chanced that the moon shone all night long—and that by day they take time for food and rest. The guide, loaded with vast promises if his good faith should hold, he nonetheless handed over to the tribune in chains. These troops thus sent off, the Roman pressed the harder on every side and picked at the outposts. Meanwhile on the third day, when the Romans signaled by smoke that they had seized and held the summit they had aimed at, then indeed the consul, his forces divided into three, advanced up the middle of the valley with the flower of his soldiers and brought his right and left wings up against the camp; nor less briskly did the enemy come to meet him. And while, carried forward by eagerness for the contest, they fought outside their fortifications, the Roman soldier was by no little superior in valor, in skill, and in kind of arms; but after, with many wounded and slain, the king’s men had drawn back into places secure either by fortification or by nature, the danger had turned upon the Romans, who had rashly advanced into unfavorable ground and into narrows from which retreat was not easy. Nor would they have withdrawn thence with their rashness unpunished, had not a shout, first heard from the rear, and then the very onset of battle, made the king’s men frantic with sudden terror. Part were scattered in flight; part—more because room for flight was wanting than because there was spirit enough for fighting—when they had halted, were surrounded by the enemy pressing both in front and in the rear. The whole army could have been destroyed, had the victors pursued the fleeing; but the narrows and the roughness of the ground hindered the horse, and the weight of their arms the foot. The king at first fled in disorder and without looking back; then, having advanced a space of five miles, when he suspected—as was the case—that from the unevenness of the ground the enemy could not follow, he halted upon a certain hill and sent his men through all the ridges and valleys to gather the scattered into one. He lost not more than two thousand men; all the rest of the multitude, as though they had followed some standard, when they had come together into one, made for Thessaly in a crowded column. The Romans, pursuing as far as was safe, cutting down and stripping the slain, plundered the royal camp—of difficult approach even without defenders—and that night remained in their own camp. On the next day the consul followed the enemy through the very narrows where the river winds its way amid the valley.

The king on the first day came to the Camp of Pyrrhus; the place, so called, is in Triphylia, in the land of Molottis. Thence on the next day—a huge march for the column, but fear pressed him on—he pushed on into the mountains of Lyncus. These belong to Epirus, set between Macedonia and Thessaly; the side which slopes toward Thessaly faces east, the north is turned toward Macedonia. They are clothed with thick woods; the highest ridges have open plains and perennial waters. There the king, keeping a standing camp for some days, wavered in mind whether he should withdraw straight into his kingdom or could first turn aside into Thessaly. His judgment inclined to bringing his column down into Thessaly, and he made for Tricca by the nearest tracks; thence he ranged rapidly over the towns that lay in his way. The men who could follow he called forth from their dwellings; the towns he burned. The owners were given the right of carrying off with them such of their goods as they could; the rest was the soldier’s plunder. Nor was there anything left which they could suffer more cruelly from an enemy than what they suffered from their allies. These things were bitter to Philip even in the doing, but he wished at least to snatch the persons of his allies from a land that would soon be the enemy’s. So the towns of Phacium, Iresiae, Euhydrium, Eretria, and Palaepharsalus were laid waste. When he made for Pherae and was shut out—because the matter needed delay if he wished to storm it, and there was no time—he gave up the attempt and crossed over into Macedonia; for there was also a report that the Aetolians were drawing near. These, on hearing of the battle that had been fought about the river Aous, having first laid waste the nearest places about Sperchiae and what they call Macra Come, crossed thence into Thessaly and at the first onset took Cymene and Angeiae. At Metropolis, while they laid waste the fields, they were repulsed by a rush of the townsmen made to defend the walls. Then attacking Callithera, they more stubbornly withstood a like onset of the townsmen; and having driven back within the walls those who had sallied out, content with that victory—because there was no hope at all of storming it—they withdrew. Next they stormed and plundered the villages of Teumas and Celathara; Acharrae they received by surrender. Xyniae was deserted by its inhabitants in like fear. This column, driven from its own seats, fell in with a garrison which was being led to Thaumaci, that the foraging might be safer; the disordered and unarmed multitude, mingled with a crowd unfit for war, was cut down by the armed men. Deserted Xyniae was plundered. Then the Aetolians took Cyphaera, a fort conveniently overhanging Dolopia. These things were done in haste by the Aetolians within a few days. Nor did Amynander and the Athamanians rest after the report of the Romans’ prosperous battle. But Amynander, because he trusted his own soldiery too little, having asked a modest garrison of the consul, when he made for Gomphi, straightway took by storm a town named Phaeca, situated between Gomphi and the narrow pass which divides Thessaly from Athamania. Thence he attacked Gomphi, and after some days, while they defended the city with the utmost force, when he had already set ladders against the walls, by that fear at last he forced them to surrender. This surrender of Gomphi struck immense terror into the Thessalians. Thereupon those who held Argenta and Pherinium and Timarum and Ligynae and Strymon and Lampsus, and other lowly forts nearby, surrendered themselves one after another.

While the Athamanians and Aetolians, the fear of the Macedonians removed, made their own plunder out of another’s victory, and Thessaly—uncertain which it should reckon enemy and which ally—was being laid waste by three armies at once, the consul, having crossed through the pass which the enemy’s flight had opened into the region of Epirus, although he well knew which side the Epirotes—save their chief Charops—had favored, yet, because he saw that out of concern to make amends as well they did his commands strenuously, judged them rather by their present bearing than by their past, and by that very readiness of pardon won their minds for the time to come. Then, having sent messengers to Corcyra that the cargo ships should come into the Ambracian gulf, he himself advanced by moderate marches and on the fourth day pitched his camp on Mount Cercetium, summoning Amynander to the same place with his auxiliaries—not so much for need of his strength as that he might have guides into Thessaly. From the same motive too very many of the Epirotes were received as volunteers among the auxiliaries. The first city of Thessaly, Phaloria, he attacked. It had two thousand Macedonians in garrison, who at first resisted with the utmost force, as far as arms, as far as walls could protect them. But the siege, continuous, relaxed neither by night nor by day—since the consul believed that on this turned the minds of the rest of the Thessalians, if the first should not withstand the Roman force—overcame the stubbornness of the Macedonians. Phaloria taken, envoys came from Metropolis and from Cierium surrendering their cities. Pardon was given to them at their request; Phaloria was burned and plundered. Thence he made for Aeginium; but when he saw that place safe even with a modest garrison, and well-nigh impregnable, he hurled a few missiles into the nearest post and turned his column toward the region of Gomphi. And having come down into the plains of Thessaly, when now all things were lacking to the army—because he had spared the fields of the Epirotes—he sent cohorts in turn to forage at Ambracia, having first ascertained whether the cargo ships had made Leucas or the Ambracian gulf; and the road from Gomphi to Ambracia, though obstructed and difficult, is yet very short in distance. So within a few days, the supplies carried across from the sea, the camp was filled with every abundance. Thence he set out for Atrax. It is about ten miles from Larisa; its people are sprung from Perrhaebia; the city is set above the river Peneus. The Thessalians showed no alarm at the first coming of the Romans; and Philip, just as he himself did not dare to advance into Thessaly, so, keeping a standing camp within Tempe, sent up garrisons as occasion served, according as each place was assailed by the enemy.

About the same time at which the consul first pitched his camp against Philip in the gorges of Epirus, Lucius Quinctius too, the consul’s brother—to whom the care of the fleet and command of the sea-coast had been entrusted by the Senate—having crossed over to Corcyra with two quinqueremes, after he heard that the fleet had set out from there, thought there must be no delay, and when he had overtaken it at the island of Same, dismissed Gaius Livius, whom he was succeeding, and reached Maleum slowly thence, the ships that followed with the supplies being for the most part dragged by tow-rope. From Maleum, having ordered the rest to follow with all the speed they could, he himself with three light quinqueremes went ahead to the Piraeus and took over the ships left there by the legate Lucius Apustius for the protection of Athens. At the same time two fleets had set out from Asia, one with King Attalus—these were four-and-twenty quinqueremes—the other a Rhodian fleet of twenty decked ships, with Agesimbrotus in command. These fleets, joining off the island of Andros, crossed thence to Euboea, which is parted from it by a narrow strait. First they laid waste the fields of the Carystians; then, when Carystus appeared secure with a garrison hastily sent from Chalcis, they approached Eretria. To the same place came also Lucius Quinctius, with the ships that had been at the Piraeus, on hearing of King Attalus’s arrival, having ordered that, as each of the ships from his own fleet came up, they should make for Euboea. Eretria was assailed with the utmost force; for the ships of the three joined fleets carried with them engines and machines of every kind for the destruction of cities, and the country furnished material in plenty for constructing new works. The townsmen at first defended the walls with no lack of energy; then, weary and some of them wounded, when they saw too a part of the wall thrown down by the enemy’s works, they inclined to surrender. But there was a Macedonian garrison, whom they feared no less than the Romans, and Philocles, the king’s prefect, kept sending messengers from Chalcis that he would be at hand in time, if they held out the siege. This hope, mixed with fear, compelled them to drag out the time longer than they wished or were able; then, after they learned that Philocles had been repulsed and had fled in alarm back to Chalcis, they at once sent spokesmen to Attalus to seek his pardon and protection. While, intent upon the hope of peace, they performed the offices of war more sluggishly and set armed posts only at the part where the wall was broken down, neglecting the rest, Quinctius by night, making an attack from the side which was least suspected, took the city with ladders. The whole multitude of the townsmen, with their wives and children, fled into the citadel, and then came into surrender. Of money and of gold and silver there was in truth not much; but statues and paintings of ancient art, and ornaments of that kind, were found in greater number than was in proportion to the size of the city or its other wealth. Carystus was then sought again, where, before the troops were landed from the ships, the whole multitude, deserting the city, fled into the citadel. Thence they sent spokesmen to seek protection from the Roman. To the townsmen life and liberty were at once granted; for the Macedonians a price of three hundred sesterces a head was set, and that they should depart with their arms surrendered. Ransomed at this sum, they were carried over unarmed into Boeotia. The naval forces, two famous cities of Euboea taken within a few days, sailed round to Sunium, the promontory of the Attic land, and made for Cenchreae, the trading-port of the Corinthians.

The consul meanwhile found the siege of Atrax longer and more savage than all had hoped, and the enemy resisted in the very point where he had least believed it. For he had supposed that all the labor would lie in breaking down the wall; that if he opened an entrance for armed men into the city, there would follow a flight and slaughter of the enemy, such as is wont to happen in captured cities. But after a part of the wall had been knocked down by the rams and the armed men had climbed over the very ruins into the city, that proved to be the beginning, as it were, of a new and fresh labor. For the Macedonians who were in garrison—many and chosen men—deeming it even a signal glory if they protected the city by arms and valor rather than by walls, packed close, their line strengthened by more ranks within, when they perceived the Romans climbing over the ruins, drove them out through ground obstructed and difficult for retreat. The consul, taking this ill, and reckoning that the disgrace bore not merely upon the delay of storming a single town but upon the sum of the whole war—which often hangs upon the turns of small things—cleared the place that had been heaped with the wreck of the half-ruined wall, brought up a tower of vast height carrying a great force of armed men upon its many stories, and sent out cohorts in turn under their standards to break by force, if they could, the wedge of the Macedonians—they themselves call it the phalanx. But, given the narrowness of the place, the interval of the broken wall not opening wide, the enemy’s kind of arms and manner of fighting was the more suitable. When the Macedonians, packed close, held out before them their spears of immense length, the Romans, having hurled their javelins in vain as against a tortoise built up by the density of the shields, then drew their swords, yet could neither come to closer grips nor cut through the spears; and if they did cut off or break any, the spear-shaft, with the broken end itself sharp, filled out, as it were, a palisade among the points of the unbroken spears. Besides this, the part of the wall still entire on either side kept both flanks safe, and there was no charging or retreating over a long space—the thing that is wont to throw ranks into disorder. There was added too a chance occurrence to strengthen their spirits; for when the tower was being moved along over a mound of insufficiently packed soil, one wheel sank into a deeper rut and so tilted the tower that it presented to the enemy the appearance of falling, and to the armed men standing upon it an empty panic. Since nothing was succeeding, the consul, with very little equanimity, suffered the comparison to be made between the soldiers and their kinds of arms; and at the same time he discerned neither an early hope of storming the place nor any reasonable way of wintering far from the sea and in regions laid waste by the calamities of war. And so, abandoning the siege—because there was no harbor on the whole coast of Acarnania and Aetolia that could at once both receive all the cargo ships which carried the army’s supplies and furnish shelter for the legions to winter in—he judged Anticyra in Phocis, turned toward the Corinthian gulf, to be most conveniently situated for the purpose, because it was not far from Thessaly and the enemy’s positions, and had over against it the Peloponnese, divided by a small space of sea, behind it Aetolia and Acarnania, and on its flanks Locris and Boeotia. Phanotea in Phocis he took at the first onset without a contest. Anticyra furnished not much delay in the storming. Then Ambrysus and Hyampolis were recovered. Daulis, because it is set on a lofty hill, could be taken neither by ladders nor by works. By harassing with missiles those who were in garrison, when they had drawn them out to sallies, by fleeing in turn and pursuing, and by light contests without effect, they brought them to such a pitch of carelessness and contempt that the Romans, mingled with the fugitives, made a rush into the gate. And other lowly forts of Phocis came into his power by terror rather than by arms. Elatia shut its gates, and seemed unlikely, unless forced by violence, to receive either the Roman general or the army within its walls.

As the consul besieged Elatia, the hope of a greater matter shone upon him—of turning the nation of the Achaeans away from the royal alliance into Roman friendship. They had expelled Cycliadas, the leading man of the faction that drew affairs toward Philip; Aristaenus, who wished the nation to be joined to the Romans, was praetor. The Roman fleet, with Attalus and the Rhodians, lay at Cenchreae, and they were all preparing, by common counsel, to assail Corinth. He therefore thought it best, before they undertook that matter, to send envoys to the Achaean nation, promising that, if they revolted from the king to the Romans, they would attach Corinth to the ancient council of the nation. On the consul’s prompting, envoys were sent to the Achaeans by his brother Lucius Quinctius, and by Attalus, and the Rhodians, and the Athenians. A council was granted them at Sicyon. But the temper of feeling among the Achaeans was by no means simple: Nabis the Lacedaemonian, a grievous and unremitting enemy, terrified them; they shuddered at Roman arms; they were bound by Macedonian benefactions both old and recent; but they held the king himself suspect for his cruelty and treachery, and, not judging him by the things he was then doing to suit the moment, discerned that he would be a heavier master after the war. And not only was it unknown what each man would say for his opinion in the senate of his own city or in the common councils of the nation, but it was not even sufficiently settled among themselves, as they pondered, what they wished or what they desired. To men thus uncertain the envoys were introduced and the power of speaking was given. First the Roman envoy, Lucius Calpurnius, then the envoys of King Attalus, after them the Rhodians, discoursed; then the power of speaking was given to Philip’s envoys; last the Athenians were heard, that they might refute the Macedonians’ words. These inveighed most savagely of all against the king, because none had suffered more or so bitter things. And that assembly, the day spent with the continuous orations of so many envoys, was dismissed toward sunset. On the next day the council was summoned; and when, through the herald—as is the custom of the Greeks—the power of urging a measure, if any wished, had been given by the magistrates, and no one came forward, there was for a long time a silence of men gazing one upon another. Nor was it any wonder if those whose spirits, as they revolved of their own accord matters at war among themselves, had grown somehow torpid, were further confounded by the speeches held throughout the whole day on both sides, bringing forward and recalling to mind the things that were difficult. At length Aristaenus, the praetor of the Achaeans, that he might not dismiss the council in silence, said: "Where, Achaeans, are those contests of feeling with which, at banquets and in gatherings, when mention falls of Philip and the Romans, you scarce keep your hands off one another? Now, in a council proclaimed for this one matter, when you have heard the words of the envoys on both sides, when the magistrates lay it before you, when the herald calls you to advise, you have fallen dumb! If not care for the common safety, can not even the partisanships that have inclined your minds to this side or that wring a word from any one of you?—especially when no man is so dull that he can fail to know that now is the occasion for saying and urging what each man either wishes or thinks best, before we decree anything; once it has been decreed, all—even those to whom it was displeasing before—must defend it as good and useful." This exhortation of the praetor not only elicited no single man to advise, but did not even stir a murmur or muttering from so great an assembly gathered out of so many peoples. Then Aristaenus the praetor again: "No more does counsel fail you, leading men of the Achaeans, than tongue; but each is unwilling, at his own peril, to advise for the common good. Perhaps I too would be silent, were I a private man; now I see that, as praetor, either a council ought not to have been given to the envoys, or that they ought not to be dismissed without an answer; but how can I answer except by your decree? And since none of you who have been summoned to this council will or dares to say anything for an opinion, let us go over the speeches of the envoys of yesterday as though delivered for opinions—just as if they had not demanded what was to their own advantage, but had urged what they judged useful to us. The Romans and the Rhodians and Attalus seek our alliance and friendship, and judge it fair to be aided by us in the war which they are waging against Philip. Philip reminds us of his alliance and of our oath, and now demands that we stand with him, now says he is content that we take no part in arms. Does it occur to none why those who are not yet allies ask more than an ally? This comes about, Achaeans, not from the moderation of Philip nor from the shamelessness of the Romans: fortune both gives confidence to those who demand and takes it away. Of Philip we see nothing but an envoy; the Roman fleet lies at Cenchreae, displaying before it the spoils of the cities of Euboea; we see the consul and his legions, parted from us by a small space of sea, ranging over Phocis and Locris: do you wonder why, just now, Cleomedon, Philip’s envoy, urged so diffidently that we should take up arms for the king against the Romans? He who, if from that same treaty and oath whose religious force he was laying upon us we should ask him that Philip defend us both from Nabis and the Lacedaemonians and from the Romans, would find not only no garrison wherewith to protect us, but not even anything to answer us—no, by Hercules, no more than Philip himself last year, who, promising that he would wage war against Nabis, when he had tried to draw our youth hence into Euboea, after he saw that we neither decreed him that garrison nor wished to be entangled in a Roman war, forgetting that alliance which he now flaunts, left us to be laid waste and pillaged by Nabis and the Lacedaemonians. And to me, indeed, the speech of Cleomedon seemed by no means consistent with itself. He made light of the Roman war, and said its outcome would be the same as that of the former war which they waged with Philip. Why then does he, absent, seek our aid, rather than himself, present, protect us, his old allies, both from Nabis and from the Romans? Us, do I say? Why did he suffer Eretria and Carystus to be taken? Why so many cities of Thessaly? Why Locris and Phocis? Why does he now suffer Elatia to be besieged? Why did he withdraw from the gorges of Epirus and those impregnable barriers above the river Aous, and, leaving the pass he was holding, go off deep into his kingdom? Either by force, or by fear, or by his own will. If by his own will he left so many allies to be plundered by the enemy, who can refuse the allies leave to take thought for themselves? If by fear, let him pardon us too for fearing; if, conquered in arms, he gave way—shall we Achaeans, Cleomedon, withstand the Roman arms which you Macedonians did not withstand? Or shall we sooner believe you, that the Romans wage war now with no greater forces or strength than they waged it before, than look at the facts themselves? Then they aided the Aetolians with a fleet; they waged the war with no consular general and no army; the maritime cities of Philip’s allies were then in terror and tumult; the inland regions were so safe from Roman arms that Philip ravaged the Aetolians while they implored Roman aid in vain; but now the Romans, having discharged the Punic war which for sixteen years they endured as it were within the bowels of Italy, have not sent a garrison to the Aetolians at war, but, themselves the leaders of the war, have brought their arms by land and by sea at once against Macedonia. A third consul now wages the war with the utmost force. Sulpicius, meeting the king in Macedonia itself, routed him and put him to flight, and ravaged the most opulent part of his kingdom; now Quinctius has stripped of his camp the king who held the barriers of Epirus, relying on the nature of the ground, on his fortifications, on his army, and, pursuing him as he fled into Thessaly, has stormed the royal garrisons and his allied cities almost in sight of the king himself.

"Grant that the things are not true which the Athenian envoy just now set forth concerning the cruelty, the avarice, the lust of the king; that nothing concerns us of the crimes committed in the land of Attica against the gods above and below, much less what the Cianians and Abydenes, who are far from us, have suffered; let us ourselves, if you will, forget our own wounds—the slaughters and the plunderings of property done at Messene in the midst of the Peloponnese, and his host of Cyparissia, Chariteles, slain against all right and divine law almost amid the very banquet, and the two Arati of Sicyon, father and son, put to death—when he had even been wont to call the unhappy old man his parent—and the son’s wife too carried off into Macedonia for lust’s sake; let the other defilements of maidens and matrons be given over to oblivion; grant that our dealing is not with Philip, for fear of whose cruelty you have all fallen dumb—for what other cause is there of silence in men summoned to a council?—let us suppose our debate to be with Antigonus, that gentlest and most just of kings, who deserved best of us all: would even he demand that we do what cannot be done? The Peloponnese is well-nigh an island, clinging to the mainland by the narrow gorges of the Isthmus, open and exposed to nothing so much as to a war by sea. If a hundred decked ships, and fifty lighter open ones, and thirty Issaean lemboi, begin to lay waste the sea-coast and to assail the cities lying exposed almost on the very shores, shall we, forsooth, withdraw into the inland cities—as though we were not burned by a war intestine and clinging within our very vitals? When Nabis and the Lacedaemonians press us by land, and the Roman fleet by sea, whence shall I implore the royal alliance and the garrisons of the Macedonians? Or shall we ourselves, with our own arms, protect from the Roman enemy the cities that shall be besieged? Splendidly indeed did we protect Dyme in the former war! The disasters of others furnish us examples enough; let us not seek how we ourselves may be made an example to the rest."

"Do not, because the Romans of their own accord seek your friendship—the very thing you ought to have wished for and sought with all your might—despise it. Driven by fear, forsooth, and caught in a foreign land, because they wish to lie hidden under the shadow of your aid, they take refuge in your alliance, that they may be received into your harbors, that they may use your supplies! They hold the sea in their power; whatever lands they approach, they make at once subject to their sway. What they ask, they can compel; because they wish to have spared you, they do not suffer you to commit the act for which you would perish. For as to what Cleomedon just now showed you as a middle and safest path of counsel—that you should keep quiet and abstain from arms—that is no middle path, but no path at all. For, besides that the Roman alliance must either be accepted or spurned by you, what else shall we be, with our favor nowhere settled, like men who have waited upon the event to attach our counsels to fortune, than the prey of the victor? Do not, if what ought to have been sought with all prayers is freely offered, despise it. It will not always be permitted, as today it is permitted you, to do either; nor will the same occasion come either often or for long. You have this long while wished, more than you have dared, to free yourselves from Philip. Without your labor and peril, men have crossed the sea with great fleets and armies to set you at liberty. If you spurn these as allies, you are scarce of sound mind; but have them you must, either as allies or as enemies."

After the praetor’s speech a murmur arose, of some assenting, of others harshly rebuking those who assented; and now not single men only but whole peoples wrangled among themselves. Then among the magistrates of the nation—they call them damiurgi; ten in number are created—a contest arose no less keen than among the multitude. Five declared that they would put the question of the Roman alliance to the vote and would give their suffrage; five protested that it was provided by law that it should be lawful neither for the magistrates to bring forward, nor for the council to decree, anything that was against the alliance with Philip. This day too was consumed in quarrels.

One day of the lawful council remained, for the law commanded that the decree be made on the third; and to such a pitch did partisan zeal blaze up against that day that parents scarcely kept their hands from their children. There was one Pisias of Pellene; he had a son, a damiurgus by name Memnon, of that faction which forbade the decree to be read out and the votes to be taken. He, having long besought his son to suffer the Achaeans to take counsel for the common safety, and not by his stubbornness to go about ruining the whole nation, when his entreaties availed too little, by swearing that he would slay him with his own hand and would hold him not as a son but as an enemy, prevailed by threats so that on the next day he joined himself to those who were bringing forward the motion. When these, now grown the majority, brought it forward, and well-nigh all the peoples were beyond doubt approving the proposal and showing openly what they meant to decree, the men of Dyme and of Megalopolis and certain of the Argives, before the decree was made, rose up and left the council, no one wondering at it or finding fault. For the Megalopolitans, driven out by the Lacedaemonians within their grandfathers’ memory, Antigonus had restored to their fatherland; and to the men of Dyme, lately taken and sacked by a Roman army, Philip, when he had ordered them ransomed wherever they were in slavery, had given back not only their liberty but their fatherland too; the Argives, again, besides that they believe the kings of Macedon to be sprung from themselves, were also for the most part bound to Philip by private ties of hospitality and intimate friendship. For these reasons they withdrew from the council, which had inclined toward decreeing the Roman alliance; and pardon was granted them for this secession, bound as they were by benefactions great and recent. The rest of the peoples of the Achaeans, when the votes were taken, confirmed by present decree the alliance with Attalus and the Rhodians; the alliance with the Romans, because without the people’s command it could not be ratified, was put off to such time as envoys could be sent to Rome; for the present it was resolved that three envoys be sent to Lucius Quinctius and that the whole army of the Achaeans be moved up to Corinth—Cenchreae now being taken and Quinctius already assailing the city itself.

And these indeed pitched their camp over against the gate that leads to Sicyon; the Romans assailed the part of the city turned toward Cenchreae, Attalus—his army led across the Isthmus—from Lechaeum, the harbor of the other sea, at first the more slackly, hoping that there would be a mutiny within between the townsfolk and the royal garrison. But after all were of one mind—the Macedonians defending it as a common fatherland, and the Corinthians suffering Androsthenes, the commander of the garrison, no otherwise than a fellow-citizen created by their own vote, to use his authority over them—from that point all hope for the besiegers lay in force and arms and works. From every side mounds were brought up to the walls over no easy approach. The ram, on the side which the Romans were assailing, had broken down a considerable stretch of wall; and when the Macedonians ran together to that place to protect with arms what was stripped of its defense, a fierce battle arose between them and the Romans. At first the Romans were easily driven off by numbers; then, the auxiliaries of the Achaeans and of Attalus being added, they made the contest even, nor was there any doubt that they would easily have driven the Macedonians and Greeks from their ground. There was a great multitude of Italian deserters—part of them, from Hannibal’s army, having followed Philip from the Romans for fear of punishment, part of them naval allies who, lately abandoning the fleets, had gone over in hope of a more honorable service; these the despair of their safety, should the Romans win, kindled to frenzy rather than to courage. There is, over against Sicyon, a promontory of Juno—whom they call Acraea—running out into the deep; the crossing thence to Corinth is of about seven miles. Thither Philocles, himself too a royal commander, led one thousand five hundred soldiers through Boeotia. From Corinth lemboi were on hand to take aboard that reinforcement and carry it across to Lechaeum. Attalus was for firing the works and abandoning the siege at once; the Roman pressed on the more stubbornly in his undertaking. He too, when he saw the royal garrisons posted before all the gates and that the onsets of men sallying out could not easily be withstood, came over to Attalus’s opinion. So, the undertaking come to nothing, the Achaeans were dismissed and a return was made to the ships. Attalus made for the Piraeus, the Romans for Corcyra.

While these things were being done by the naval forces, the consul, his camp pitched in Phocis before Elatia, first tried the matter by parleys through the leading men of the Elatians; and after the answer came back that nothing lay in their own hands and that the king’s men were more numerous and stronger than the townsfolk, then he assailed the city at once on every side with works and arms. When the ram had been brought up and, with a vast crash and din, had laid bare the city by throwing down all the wall there was between two towers, at one and the same moment both a Roman cohort burst in by the way opened by the fresh ruin, and from every quarter of the town the men, each leaving his own post, ran together to the place that was being hard pressed by the enemy’s assault. At the same time the Romans both climbed over the ruins of the wall and set ladders against the walls that yet stood. And while the fighting had turned the eyes and minds of the enemy to one quarter, the wall was taken by ladders in several places, and armed men climbed over into the city. At the sound of this uproar the enemy, terrified, abandoning the place they had been defending in close array, all fled together to the citadel, the unarmed crowd following too. So the consul made himself master of the city. When it had been sacked, he sent men to the citadel to promise the king’s men their lives, if they were willing to depart unarmed, and the Elatians their freedom; and on a pledge given to this effect, after a few days he received the surrender of the citadel.

But by the coming of Philocles, the royal commander, into Achaia, not only was Corinth freed from the siege, but the state of the Argives too was betrayed to Philocles by certain of its leading men, the temper of the commons having first been sounded. It was the custom, on the first day of the elections, that the praetors, as it were for an omen’s sake, should proclaim Jupiter and Apollo and Hercules; and it had been added by law that to these King Philip should be joined. Because the herald, after the alliance had been struck with the Romans, did not add his name, first a murmuring of the multitude arose, then a shout of men supplying Philip’s name and bidding the lawful honor be observed, until with vast assent the name was read out. Trusting in this show of favor, Philocles, sent for, by night seized a hill overhanging the city—they call that citadel Larisa—and, having placed a garrison there, when at first light he was advancing with hostile standards to the forum that lies below the citadel, a battle-line drawn up came against him from the other side. It was a garrison of the Achaeans, lately placed there, about five hundred chosen young men from all the states; Aenesidemus of Dyme was in command. To these a spokesman was sent by the royal commander to bid them quit the city—for they were no match even for the townsfolk alone, who were of the same mind as the Macedonians, much less with the Macedonians joined to them, whom not even the Romans had withstood at Corinth: at first it moved neither the commander nor the men themselves at all; a little later, when they saw the Argives too coming armed from the other side in a great column, though they perceived sure destruction, they seemed nonetheless ready to undergo every hazard, had their commander been more stubborn. Aenesidemus, that the flower of the Achaean youth might not be lost together with the city, having bargained from Philocles that they be allowed to depart, did not himself withdraw from the spot where he had stood under arms, with a few of his dependents. A man was sent by Philocles to ask what he meant. Without stirring from his posture, as he stood with his shield thrust out before him, he answered that he would die under arms in the garrison of the city entrusted to him. Then by the commander’s order weapons were hurled by the Thracians, and all were slain. And so, after the alliance struck between the Achaeans and the Romans, two most renowned cities, Argos and Corinth, were in the king’s power. These were the things done by the Romans in Greece by land and sea that summer.

In Gaul nothing at all worth recording was done by the consul Sextus Aelius. Though he had two armies in the province—one kept on which ought to have been disbanded, over which the proconsul Lucius Cornelius had commanded (he himself set the praetor Gaius Helvius over it), the other which he had brought into the province—he spent almost the whole year in forcing the people of Cremona and Placentia to return to their colonies, from which they had been scattered by the chances of war.

Even as Gaul was beyond hope quiet that year, so about the city a well-nigh servile tumult was stirred up. The hostages of the Carthaginians were being kept under guard at Setia. With them, as being the children of leading men, there was a great host of slaves; and their number was swelled—as one might expect after the recent African war—by several captives of that same nation whom the Setians themselves had bought as slaves out of the spoils. These, having formed a conspiracy, sent men out of their number—first to stir up the slaves in the territory of Setia, then about Norba and Cerceii—and, all being now sufficiently made ready, had resolved to attack the people while they were intent on the spectacle at the games that were shortly to be held at Setia; Setia once taken by slaughter and a sudden uproar, the slaves were to seize Norba and Cerceii. Information of this so foul a business was brought to Rome to Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, the city praetor. Two slaves came to him before daylight and set forth in order all that had been done and was to be done. When he had ordered these kept at his house, the praetor, the Senate having been summoned and informed of what the informers reported, was bidden to set out to investigate and crush that conspiracy; and setting out with five deputies he compelled those he met in the fields, having put them to the oath, to take up arms and follow. With this hurried levy, about two thousand men under arms, he came to Setia, all being ignorant whither he was making. There, the ringleaders of the conspiracy being swiftly seized, a flight of the slaves was made out of the town. Then men were sent out through the fields to track them down. Outstanding was the service of two slave-informers and of one free man. To him the senators ordered a hundred thousand of heavy bronze to be given, to the slaves twenty-five thousand of bronze apiece and their freedom; their price was paid to their masters out of the treasury. Not long after, from the remnants of the same conspiracy, it was reported that the slaves were about to seize Praeneste. Thither the praetor Lucius Cornelius set out and exacted punishment of about five hundred men who were guilty in that offense. The state was in fear that the hostages and captives of the Carthaginians were contriving these things. And so both at Rome watches were kept through the wards, and the minor magistrates were bidden to go their rounds of them, and the triumvirs of the quarry-prison were ordered to keep a more attentive guard, and letters were sent by the praetor around the Latin name, that the hostages should be kept in private custody and no leave be given them of coming abroad in public, and that the captives, bound with fetters of not less than ten pounds, should be kept in no other keeping than that of the public prison.

In the same year envoys from King Attalus set up on the Capitol a golden crown of two hundred and forty-six pounds, and gave thanks to the Senate because Antiochus, moved by the authority of the Roman envoys, had led his army out of the territory of Attalus.

That same summer two hundred horsemen, ten elephants, and two hundred thousand pecks of wheat came from King Masinissa to the army that was in Greece. Likewise from Sicily and Sardinia great convoys of supplies and clothing were sent to the army. Sicily was held by Marcus Marcellus, Sardinia by Marcus Porcius Cato, a man upright and incorruptible, yet reckoned the harsher in his curbing of usury; and the moneylenders were driven from the island, and the outlays which the allies had been wont to make for the establishment of the praetors were cut back or done away with.

The consul Sextus Aelius, when he had returned to Rome from Gaul for the elections, made Gaius Cornelius Cethegus and Quintus Minucius Rufus consuls. Two days later the elections of praetors were held. Six praetors were that year for the first time created, the provinces now growing and the empire opening wider; and these were created: Lucius Manlius Volso, Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus, Marcus Sergius Silus, Marcus Helvius, Marcus Minucius Rufus, Lucius Atilius—of these Sempronius and Helvius were plebeian aediles; the curule aediles were Quintus Minucius Thermus and Tiberius Sempronius Longus. The Roman Games that year were four times repeated.

In the consulship of Gaius Cornelius and Quintus Minucius, first of all the matter of the provinces of the consuls and praetors was taken up. First the business of the praetors was settled, so far as it could be settled by lot. The city jurisdiction fell to Sergius, the foreign to Minucius; Sardinia to Atilius, Sicily to Manlius; of the Spains Sempronius drew the nearer, Helvius the farther. As the consuls were preparing to draw lots for Italy and Macedonia, Lucius Oppius and Quintus Fulvius, tribunes of the plebs, stood in the way, on the ground that Macedonia was a far-off province, and that nothing else had been a greater hindrance to the war down to that day than that, with matters scarcely begun, the earlier consul was recalled in the very effort of waging it. It was now the fourth year since the Macedonian war had been decreed. Sulpicius had used up the greater part of his year in seeking the king and his army; Villius, as he was closing with the enemy, had been recalled with nothing done; Quinctius, kept at Rome by the rites for the greater part of his year, had nonetheless so conducted affairs that, had he either come into his province earlier or had the winter been later, he could have finished the war; now, though he had set out almost into winter quarters, he was said to be so preparing the war that, unless a successor hindered, he seemed likely to finish it the next summer. By these speeches they so far prevailed that the consuls declared they would abide by the Senate’s authority, if the tribunes of the plebs did the same. Both sides allowing free deliberation, the senators decreed Italy as the province for both consuls, and prorogued the command to Titus Quinctius until a successor should come by decree of the Senate. To the consuls two legions apiece were decreed, and that they should wage war with the Cisalpine Gauls who had revolted from the Roman people. To Quinctius a reinforcement was decreed for Macedonia—six thousand foot, three hundred horse, three thousand naval allies. Lucius Quinctius Flamininus was ordered to command the fleet that he was already commanding. To the praetors going to the Spains were given eight thousand foot apiece of the allies and the Latin name, and four hundred horse apiece, that they might discharge the old soldiery from the Spains; and they were ordered to fix the boundary by which the farther or the nearer province should be held. To Macedonia they added as deputies Publius Sulpicius and Publius Villius, who had been consuls in that province.

Before the consuls and praetors set out for their provinces, it was resolved that the prodigies be expiated—because the temples of Vulcan and of Summanus at Rome, and because at Fregenae the wall and a gate, had been struck from heaven; and at Frusino a light had arisen in the night; and at Aefula a lamb had been born with two heads and five feet; and at Formiae two wolves, entering the town, had torn several persons they met; while at Rome a wolf had made its way not into the city only but onto the Capitol.

Gaius Atinius, tribune of the plebs, brought it before the people that five colonies be planted on the sea-coast—two at the mouths of the rivers Vulturnus and Liternus, one at Puteoli, one at Castrum by Salernum; to these Buxentum was added. Three hundred households were ordered to be sent to each colony. As triumvirs to plant them—men to hold the office for three years—were created Marcus Servilius Geminus, Quintus Minucius Thermus, and Tiberius Sempronius Longus.

The levy and the other matters, divine and human, that had to be done by themselves being finished, both consuls set out for Gaul: Cornelius by the direct road against the Insubres, who were then in arms with the Cenomani joined to them; Quintus Minucius turned his march to the left of Italy toward the lower sea, and, having led his army to Genua, began the war from the Ligurians. The towns of Clastidium and Litubium, both of the Ligurians, and two states of the same nation, the Celeiates and the Cerdiciates, surrendered themselves. And now all on this side of the Po, save the Boii among the Gauls and the Ilvates among the Ligurians, was under his sway; fifteen towns and twenty thousand men were said to be those that had surrendered. Thence he led his legions into the territory of the Boii. The army of the Boii had not long before crossed the Po and joined itself to the Insubres and Cenomani, because they had heard that the consuls would carry on the campaign with their legions combined—so that they too might strengthen their forces by bringing them together into one. But after the report came that one of the consuls was burning the fields of the Boii, a dissension straightway arose: the Boii demanded that all together bring aid to them in their straits; the Insubres refused to desert their own. So the forces were divided, and, the Boii having set out to protect their own land, the Insubres with the Cenomani took post above the bank of the river Mincius. Two miles below that spot the consul Cornelius too set his camp by the same river. Thence, by sending into the villages of the Cenomani and to Brixia, which was the head of the nation, when he had learned for certain that the young men were in arms not by the authority of the elders and that the Cenomani had not joined the revolt of the Insubres by public counsel, he summoned their leading men to him and began to work and contrive this—that the Cenomani should break away from the Insubres and, taking up their standards, either return home or come over to the Romans. And that indeed could not be obtained; but this much pledge was given to the consul, that in the battle they would either stand idle or, if any occasion offered, would aid the Romans. That this had been so agreed the Insubres did not know; yet there lurked in their minds a certain suspicion that the faith of their allies was wavering. And so, when they had led out to battle, not daring to entrust either wing to them—lest, if they gave way by treachery, they should overturn the whole affair—they placed them behind the standards among the reserves. At the beginning of the fight the consul vowed a temple to Juno the Savior, if on that day the enemy were routed and put to flight; a shout was raised by the soldiers that they would make the consul possessor of his vow, and a charge was made upon the enemy. The Insubres did not withstand the first shock. Some authorities relate that by the Cenomani too, suddenly falling upon their rear in the very thick of the battle, a twofold panic was thrown upon them; and that thirty-five thousand of the enemy were cut down in the midst, five thousand two hundred taken alive—among them Hamilcar, the Carthaginian general who had been the cause of the war—and a hundred and thirty military standards and above two hundred wagons taken. Many towns of the Gauls which had followed the revolt of the Insubres surrendered themselves to the Romans.

The consul Minucius had first, with ravaging poured out far and wide, ranged over the borders of the Boii; then, when they—abandoning the Insubres—had withdrawn to protect their own, he kept himself in camp, reckoning that he must fight it out with the enemy in pitched battle. Nor would the Boii have declined battle, had not the report brought of the Insubres’ defeat broken their spirits. And so, abandoning their leader and their camp, scattered through the villages, each to defend his own, they changed for the enemy the manner of waging the war. For, the hope of deciding the matter by a single battle being given up, he began again to lay waste the fields, burn the dwellings, and storm the villages. In those same days Clastidium was burned. Thence the legions were led against the Ligurian Ilvates, who alone were not submitting. That nation too, when it heard that the Insubres had been conquered in the field and the Boii so terrified that they dared not even try the hope of a contest, came into submission. Letters from both consuls about the affairs prosperously done in Gaul were brought to Rome about the same time. Marcus Sergius, the city praetor, read them out in the Senate, then, by the authority of the senators, before the people. A thanksgiving of four days was decreed.

It was now winter at that season, and, while Titus Quinctius, Elatia taken, had his winter quarters disposed through Phocis and Locris, a sedition arose at Opus. One faction was for calling in the Aetolians, who were nearer, the other the Romans. The Aetolians came first; but the wealthier faction, the Aetolians shut out and a messenger sent to the Roman commander, held the city until his coming. A royal garrison held the citadel, nor could they be driven to withdraw thence either by the threats of the Opuntians or by the authority of the Roman commander. The reason for the delay—why they were not at once assailed—was this, that a herald had come from the king asking a place and time for a conference. This was granted to the king grudgingly—not but that Quinctius desired the war to be seen as finished by his own hand, partly by arms, partly by terms; for he did not yet know whether one of the new consuls would be sent as his successor, or whether—since he had charged his friends and kinsmen to strive for it with all their might—his command would be prorogued; and he believed a conference would serve, so that it might be free to him to incline the matter either to war, if he stayed, or to peace, if he departed. They chose a shore in the Maliac gulf near Nicaea. Thither the king came from Demetrias with five lemboi and one beaked warship. With him were the leading men of the Macedonians and an exile of the Achaeans, a notable man, Cycliadas. With the Roman commander were King Amynander, and Dionysodorus, the envoy of Attalus, and Agesimbrotus, the commander of the Rhodian fleet, and Phaeneas, a leading man of the Aetolians, and two Achaeans, Aristaenus and Xenophon. Amid these the Roman, having advanced to the water’s edge, when the king had come forward to the prow of his ship as it rode at anchor, said: "It would be more convenient, if you would come out onto the land, that we should speak and hear one another at close quarters." When the king refused to do it, "Whom, pray," said Quinctius, "do you fear?" To this he, with a proud and kingly spirit: "I fear no man, indeed, save the immortal gods; but I do not trust the faith of all whom I see about you, and of all least of all the Aetolians." "That danger," said the Roman, "is equal for all who come together with an enemy to a parley, if there be no good faith." "Yet not equal, Titus Quinctius," he said, "is the prize of treachery, should fraud be at work—Philip and Phaeneas; for the Aetolians could not as easily set another praetor in my place as the Macedonians a king." After this there was silence, the Roman holding it fair that he should speak first who had sought the conference, the king that the first speech belonged to him who gave the terms of peace, not to him who received them; then the Roman: his own speech was plain; for he would say those things which, unless they were done, there would be no terms of peace. The king must withdraw his garrisons from all the states of Greece; the captives and deserters must be given back to the allies of the Roman people; he must restore to the Romans those places of Illyricum which he had seized after the peace made in Epirus; he must give back to Ptolemy, king of Egypt, the cities which he had seized after the death of Ptolemy Philopator. These were his own terms and the Roman people’s; but it was right that the demands of the allies too be heard. The envoy of King Attalus required that the ships and captives taken in the sea-fight at Chios, and the Nicephorium and the temple of Venus, which he had spoiled and laid waste, be restored uninjured; the Rhodians demanded back the Peraea—a region of the mainland over against the island, of their ancient dominion—and required that the garrisons be withdrawn from Iasus and Bargylia and the city of the Euromenses, and on the Hellespont from Sestus and Abydus, and that Perinthus be restored to the Byzantines according to the formula of the old right, and that all the marts and harbors of Asia be set free; the Achaeans demanded back Corinth and Argos. When Phaeneas, the praetor of the Aetolians, had demanded much the same as the Romans—that Greece be quitted, and that the cities once of their right and dominion be given back to the Aetolians—Alexander, a leading man of the Aetolians, a man eloquent as Aetolians go, took up his speech. He said he had long kept silent, not because he thought anything was being accomplished by that conference, but lest he interrupt any of the allies as he spoke. Philip, he said, neither dealt about peace in good faith nor had ever waged his wars with true valor: in conferences he lay in wait and angled for advantage; in war he did not meet on a fair field nor fight with standards joined, but, fleeing, would burn and plunder cities and, beaten, corrupt the prizes of the victors. But not so the ancient kings of Macedon: they were wont to make war in the field, to spare cities so far as they could, that they might hold the wealthier empire. For what counsel was it to destroy the very things for whose possession the war was fought, and to leave oneself nothing but the war? Philip had laid waste more allied cities in Thessaly the year before than all who had ever been enemies of Thessaly. From the Aetolians themselves too he had taken more as an ally than as an enemy: Lysimachia, the Aetolian praetor and garrison driven out, he had seized; Cius, likewise a city of their dominion, he had utterly overturned and blotted out; by the same fraud he held Phthian Thebes, Echinus, Larisa, and Pharsalus. Stirred by Alexander’s speech, Philip brought his ship nearer the land, that he might be heard. As he began to speak, chiefly against the Aetolians, Phaeneas violently broke in, saying the matter turned not on words: he must either be conquered in war or obey his betters. "That indeed is plain," said Philip, "even to a blind man"—jesting at the weakness of Phaeneas’s eyes; for he was by nature more given to mockery than becomes a king, and not restraining his laughter sufficiently even amid serious matters. Then he began to take it ill that the Aetolians, like the Romans, bade him quit Greece, who could not even say within what bounds Greece lay; for of Aetolia itself the Agraei, the Apodoti, and the Amphilochians—which is a very great part of them—were not Greece. "Or have they a just complaint that I have not kept my hands from their allies, when they themselves keep this custom from of old as a law—that against their very own allies they let their young men serve, only the public sanction withheld, and opposing battle-lines very often have Aetolian auxiliaries on either side? And I did not storm Cius, but aided Prusias, an ally and friend, as he assailed it; and Lysimachia I rescued from the Thracians, but, because necessity turned me from its keeping to this war, the Thracians hold it. So much to the Aetolians; but to Attalus and the Rhodians I owe nothing by right, for the beginning of the war arose not from me but from them; yet for the Romans’ honor’s sake I will restore the Peraea to the Rhodians, and to Attalus his ships, with such captives as shall be found. As for the restoration of the Nicephorium and the temple of Venus, what shall I answer to those who demand them restored, except that, in the one way in which felled woods and groves can be restored, I will furnish the care and the cost of replanting—since it pleases that kings demand and answer such things between themselves?" The last part of his speech was against the Achaeans, in which—beginning first from Antigonus’s services, then from his own toward that nation—he ordered their decrees to be read out, decrees embracing every honor divine and human, and threw in their teeth the recent decree by which they had revolted from him; and, having inveighed heavily against their treachery, he said he would nonetheless give Argos back to them; as for Corinth, he would deliberate with the Roman commander, and would at the same time ask of him whether he thought it fair that he should quit those cities only which he himself had taken and held by right of war, or those too which he had received from his forefathers. As the Achaeans and Aetolians were preparing to answer these things, the sun being near setting, the conference was put off to the next day, and Philip returned to the anchorage from which he had set out, the Romans and the allies to their camp. On the next day Quinctius came to Nicaea—for that was the place agreed on—at the appointed time; of Philip there was no sign anywhere, nor for several hours did any messenger come from him, and when they were now despairing of his coming, the ships suddenly appeared. He himself indeed said that, since such heavy and unworthy demands were laid upon him, being at a loss for counsel he had spent the day in deliberating; but the common belief was that the matter had been drawn out late on purpose, that no time might be given the Achaeans and Aetolians to answer—an opinion he himself confirmed by asking that, the others being removed, lest the time be worn away in wrangling and some end be put to the business, it might be allowed him to confer with the Roman commander himself. This at first was not accepted, lest the allies should seem shut out from the conference; then, when he did not cease to ask, by the counsel of all the Roman commander, with Appius Claudius, a military tribune, the rest being removed, advanced to the water’s edge; the king came out onto the land with the two whom he had brought the day before. There, when they had talked privately for some while, what Philip reported to his own people is less certainly known; Quinctius reported these things to the allies: that he would yield to the Romans the whole coast of Illyricum, send back the deserters and any captives there might be; would restore to Attalus his ships and the naval allies taken with them, to the Rhodians the region they call the Peraea, but would not give up Iasus and Bargylia; to the Aetolians he would give back Pharsalus and Larisa, but not Thebes; to the Achaeans he would yield not Argos only but Corinth too. To none of them all was this apportionment pleasing—of what he would yield and what he would not—for more was lost in it than gained, nor ever, unless he withdrew his garrisons from all Greece, would the causes of contention be wanting. As all from the whole council clamored these things in rivalry, the cry was carried to Philip too, standing at a distance. And so he asked of Quinctius that he put off the whole matter to the next day: assuredly he would either persuade them or suffer himself to be persuaded. A shore at Thronium was appointed for the conference. Thither they came together early. There Philip first besought both Quinctius and all who were present not to wish to upset the hope of peace, and at last asked for time in which he might send envoys to Rome to the Senate: either he would obtain peace on those terms, or he would accept whatever terms of peace the Senate granted. This by no means pleased the rest: for nothing else was sought, they said, than delay and postponement to gather his strength; Quinctius said this would have been true, were it summer and the season for action; but now, with winter at hand, nothing was lost by granting the interval for sending envoys; for neither would anything they themselves had bargained with the king be ratified without the Senate’s authority, and the Senate’s authority could be sought out while the winter itself gave the respite the war required. To this opinion the other leading men of the allies too came over; and, a truce being granted for two months, it was resolved that they too should each send a single envoy to inform the Senate, lest it be caught by the king’s fraud. It was added to the compact of the truce that the royal garrisons should at once be withdrawn from Phocis and Locris. And Quinctius himself, along with the envoys of the allies, sent Amynander, king of the Athamanians, to add dignity to the embassy, and Quintus Fabius—he was the son of his wife’s sister—and Quintus Fulvius and Appius Claudius. When they had come to Rome, the envoys of the allies were heard before the king’s. The rest of their speech was spent in railings against the king; but they most of all moved the Senate by setting forth the lie of the seas and lands of that region, so that it was plain to all that, if the king held Demetrias in Thessaly, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth in Achaia, Greece could not be free, and that Philip himself called these the fetters of Greece not more insultingly than truly. Then the king’s envoys were brought in; and as they began a longer speech, a brief question—whether he would yield those three cities—cut their discourse short, since they denied that anything about them by name had been entrusted to them. So, the peace unconcluded, the king’s men were dismissed; and to Quinctius free decision of peace and war was committed. When it was plain enough to him that the Senate was not weary of the war, he too, more eager for victory than for peace, neither afterward granted Philip a conference nor said he would admit any embassy save one that should announce a withdrawal from all Greece.

Philip, seeing that the matter must be decided in the field and that his forces must be drawn together to him from every side, and being most anxious about the cities of Achaia, a region cut off from him—and more about Argos, even so, than about Corinth—judged it best to give it to Nabis, the tyrant of the Lacedaemonians, as it were in trust, that he might restore it to himself should he win, or keep it himself should any reverse befall; and he wrote to Philocles, who commanded at Corinth and Argos, to meet the tyrant himself. Philocles, besides that he came already with a gift, added that, as a pledge of the friendship to come between the king and the tyrant, the king wished to join his daughters in marriage to the sons of Nabis. The tyrant at first refused to receive that city otherwise than if he were summoned to the help of the city by a decree of the Argives themselves; then, when he heard that in a crowded assembly they had not only spurned but even cursed the name of tyrant, reckoning he had got a pretext for despoiling them, he bade Philocles hand over the city when he would. By night, all unawares, the tyrant was received into the city; at first light all the higher places were seized and the gates closed. A few of the leading men having slipped away amid the first uproar, the fortunes of these absent men were plundered; from those present gold and silver were taken away, and huge sums of money exacted. Those who paid without hesitation were let go without insult or mangling of their bodies; those whom there was suspicion of concealing or holding back anything were, in the manner of slaves, mangled and racked. Then, an assembly being called, he promulgated bills—one for the cancellation of debts, another for the division of land man by man—two torches for revolutionaries to inflame the commons against the aristocrats. Once the state of the Argives was in his power, the tyrant, mindful of nothing—neither from whom he had received that state, nor on what condition—sent envoys to Quinctius at Elatia and to Attalus wintering at Aegina, to announce that Argos was in his power: if Quinctius would come there to a conference, he did not doubt that all would be agreed between them. Quinctius, to strip Philip of this support too, when he had assented that he would come, sent to Attalus to meet him from Aegina at Sicyon; he himself crossed from Anticyra to Sicyon with ten quinqueremes which his brother Lucius Quinctius had by chance in those very days brought from the winter quarters at Corcyra. Attalus was already there; and as he urged that the tyrant should go to the Roman commander, not the Roman to the tyrant, he brought Quinctius over to his opinion, that he should not go into the city of Argos itself. Not far from the city there is a place called Mycenica; it was agreed that they should meet there. Quinctius came with his brother and a few military tribunes, Attalus with his royal retinue, Nicostratus, the praetor of the Achaeans, with a few auxiliaries. They found the tyrant there awaiting them with all his forces. He advanced armed, with armed guards, to about the middle of the plain that lay between; unarmed Quinctius with his brother and two military tribunes, and the king likewise unarmed, had at his side the praetor of the Achaeans and one of his courtiers. The opening of the talk arose from the tyrant’s excuse, that he had come to the conference armed himself and hedged about with armed men, when he saw the Roman commander and the king unarmed: for he said he did not fear them, but the Argive exiles. Then, when the terms of friendship began to be dealt with, the Roman demanded two things: one, that he end the war with the Achaeans; the other, that he send auxiliaries with him against Philip. These he said he would send; in place of peace with the Achaeans a truce was obtained, until the war with Philip should be ended. About Argos too a dispute was raised by King Attalus, when he charged that the city, betrayed by the fraud of Philocles, was held by him by force, while the other defended himself as having been summoned by the Argives themselves. The king demanded an assembly of the Argives, that this might be known; nor did the tyrant refuse; but the king said that, the garrisons withdrawn from the city, a free assembly with no Lacedaemonians mingled in it ought to be allowed, which would declare what the Argives wished; the tyrant said he would not withdraw them. This dispute was without issue. They parted from the conference, six hundred Cretans being given by the tyrant to the Roman, and a truce of four months made between Nicostratus, the praetor of the Achaeans, and the tyrant of the Lacedaemonians.

Thence Quinctius set out for Corinth and came up to the gate with the cohort of Cretans, that it might be plain to Philocles, the commander of the city, that the tyrant had revolted from Philip. Philocles too came himself to a conference with the Roman commander, and to him, urging that he come over at once and hand over the city, he answered in such a way that he seemed to have put the matter off rather than refused it. From Corinth Quinctius crossed to Anticyra; thence he sent his brother to sound out the nation of the Acarnanians.

Attalus set out from Argos to Sicyon. There both the state increased the king’s old honors with new ones, and the king—besides that he had once redeemed for them at great cost the sacred land of Apollo—then too, that he might not pass by an allied and friendly state without some munificence, gave as a gift ten talents of silver and ten thousand medimni of grain; and so returned to Cenchreae to his ships.

And Nabis, having strengthened the garrison at Argos and returned to Lacedaemon, when he himself had despoiled the men, sent his wife back to Argos to despoil the women. She, by summoning now single women of distinction, now several at once who were joined to one another by kinship, and by coaxing and threatening, took from them not gold only but at last their clothing too and all their women’s adornment.