37.43
The
camp was in charge of a military tribune, M. Aemilius, son of the M. Lepidus
who a few years later was made Pontifex Maximus. When he saw the
fugitives coming towards the camp he met them with the whole of the camp
guard and ordered them to stop, then, reproving them sharply for their
cowardly and disgraceful flight, he insisted on their returning to the battle
and warned them that if they did not obey him they would rush blindly on to
their ruin. Finally he gave his own men the order to cut down those who first
came up and drive the crowd which followed them back against the enemy
with their swords. The greater fear overcame the less. The danger which
threatened them on either hand brought them to a halt, then they went back
to the fighting. Aemilius with his camp guard -there were 2000 of them,
brave soldiers -offered a firm resistance to the king who was in eager
pursuit, and Attalus, who was on the Roman right where the enemy had been
put to flight at the first onset, seeing the plight of his men and the tumult
round the camp, came up at the moment with 200 cavalry. When Antiochus
found that the men whose backs he had seen just before were now resuming
the struggle, and that another mass of soldiery was collecting from the camp
and from the field, he turned his horse's head and fled. Thus the Romans
were victorious on both wings. Making their way through the heaps of dead
which were lying most thickly in the centre, where the courage of the
enemy's finest troops and the weight of their armour alike prevented flight,
they went on to plunder the camp. The cavalry of Eumenes led the way,
followed by the rest of the mounted troops, in pursuing the enemy over the
whole plain and killing the hindmost as they came up to them. Still more
havoc was wrought among the fugitives by the chariots and elephants and
camels which were mixed up with them; they were not only trampled to
death by the animals, but having lost all formation they stumbled like blind
men over one another. There was a frightful carnage in the camp, almost
more than in the battle. The first fugitives fled mostly in this direction and
the camp guard, trusting to their support, fought all the more determinedly in
front of their lines. The Romans, who expected to take the gates and the
rampart, were held up here for some time, and when at last they did break
through the defence they inflicted in their rage all the heavier slaughter.
