42.63
The
news of the battle spread through Greece, and in the way it was received the
hopes and sympathies of men were disclosed. Not only the open supporters
of Macedonia, but most of those who were under the greatest obligations to
Rome, some having experienced the violence and tyranny of Perseus, were
delighted at hearing it for no other reason than that morbid eagerness which
a mob watching gymnastic contests displays in favour of the weaker and
more disreputable competitor. In Boeotia meanwhile Lucretius was pressing
the siege of Haliartus with the utmost vigour. Although the besieged neither
had nor hoped for any outside help beyond the troops from Coronea who
had entered the walls at the beginning of the siege, they kept up their
resistance more by courage and resolution than by actual strength. They
frequently made sorties against the siege works and when a battering-ram
was brought up they at one time . . . at another they forced it to the ground
by lowering a mass of lead upon it. If they were unable to divert the blows
they replaced the old wall by a new one which they hastily built up with the
stones of the fallen wall. As the progress of the siege works was too slow,
the praetor ordered the scaling-ladders to be distributed among the maniples
as he intended to deliver a simultaneous assault all round the walls. His
numbers, he considered, would suffice for this, as there would be no
advantage in attacking that side of the city which was surrounded by a
swamp, nor would it be possible to do so. At a point where two towers and
the wall between them had been battered down he brought up a picked force
of 2000 men in order that while he was forcing his way through the breach,
and the defenders were massing together to oppose him, some portion of the
walls might be left unmanned and so successfully scaled. The townsmen
were not slow in preparing to meet him. On the ground covered by the ruins
of the wall they heaped up faggots of brushwood, and standing on these with
burning torches in their hands they were preparing to set the mass on fire in
order that, shut off from the enemy by the conflagration, they might have
time to throw up another wall inside. They were accidentally prevented from
executing this plan. Such a heavy shower of rain suddenly fell that it was
hardly possible to kindle the brushwood, and when it was alight the fire was
extinguished. A passage was effected by dragging the smoking faggots out
of the way, and as all had turned their attention to defending this one spot,
the walls were scaled in many places. In the first confusion of the captured
city the old men and boys whom they chanced to meet were killed. The
combatants took shelter in the citadel, and as all hope was now lost they
surrendered, and were sold as slaves. There were about 2500 of them. The
adornments of the city, the statues and paintings and all the valuable plunder
were placed on shipboard and the place was razed to its foundations. From
there the army marched to Thebes, which was captured without any fighting,
and the consul handed the city over to the refugees and the Roman party.
The households and property of the other party, who had worked in the
interests of the king and were Macedonian sympathisers, were sold.
