33.8
This
affair was reported to the king as a more important success than the facts
warranted. Messenger after messenger ran back from the field shouting that
the Romans were in flight, and though the king, reluctant and hesitating,
declared that the action had been begun rashly and that neither the time nor
the place suited him, he was at last driven into bringing the whole of his
forces into the field. The Roman commander did the same, more because no
other course was open to him than because he wished to seize the
opportunity of a battle. He posted the elephants in front of his right wing,
which he kept in reserve; the left, with the whole of the light infantry, he led
in person against the enemy. As they advanced he reminded them that they
were going to fight with the same Macedonians as those whom in spite of
the difficult ground they had driven out of the pass leading into Epirus,
protected though they were by the mountains and the river, and had
thoroughly defeated; the same as those whom they had vanquished under P.
Sulpicius when they tried to stop their march on Eordaea. The kingdom of
Macedonia, he declared, stood by its prestige, not by its strength, and even
its prestige had at last disappeared. By this time he had come up to his
detachments who were standing at the bottom of the valley. They at once
renewed the fight and by a fierce attack compelled the enemy to give
ground. Philip with his caetrati and the infantry of his right wing, the finest
body in his army, which they call "the phalanx," went at the enemy almost at
a run; Nicanor, one of his courtiers, was ordered to follow at once with the
rest of his force. As soon as he reached the top of the hill and saw a few of
the enemy's bodies and weapons lying about, he concluded that there had
been a battle there and that the Romans had been repulsed, and when he
further saw that fighting was going on near the enemy's camp he was in a
state of great exultation. Soon, however, when his men came back in flight
and it was his turn to be alarmed, he was for a few moments anxiously
debating whether he ought not to recall his troops to camp. Then, as the
enemy were approaching, and especially as his own men were being cut
down as they fled and could not be saved unless they were defended by fresh
troops, and also as retreat was no longer safe, he found himself compelled to
take the supreme risk, though half his force had not yet come up. The
cavalry and light infantry who had been in action he stationed on his right;
the caetrati and the men of the phalanx were ordered to lay aside their
spears, the length of which only embarrassed them, and make use of their
swords. To prevent his line from being quickly broken he halved the front
and gave twice the depth to the files, so that the depth might be greater than
the width. He also ordered the ranks to close up so that man might be in
touch with man and arms with arms.
