32.17
Carystus was the next place to be
attacked. Here before the troops were landed the entire population
abandoned the city and took refuge in the citadel. Then they sent envoys to
make terms with the Roman general. The townsmen were at once granted
life and liberty; the Macedonians were allowed to depart after giving up their
arms and paying a sum equivalent to 300 drachmae per man. After
ransoming themselves at this sum they departed for Boeotia. After thus,
within a few days, capturing two important cities in Euboea, the fleets
rounded Sunium, a promontory in Attica, and brought up at Cenchreae, the
commercial port of Corinth. Meanwhile the consul had on his hands a siege
which proved to be more tedious and costly than any one anticipated, and
the defence was conducted in a way he was quite unprepared for. He took it
for granted that all his efforts would be devoted to the demolition of the
walls and when once he had opened the way into the city the flight and
slaughter of the enemy would follow as they usually do when cities are taken
by assault. But after a portion of the wall had been battered down by the
rams and the soldiers began to march over the debris into the city they found
themselves at the beginning of a fresh task. The Macedonian garrison, a
large body of picked men, considered it a special distinction to defend the
city by their arms and courage rather than by walls, and they formed in close
order, their front resting on a column of unusual depth. As soon as they saw
the Romans clambering over the ruins of the wall they drove them back over
ground covered with obstacles and ill-adapted for retirement.
The consul was intensely mortified, for he looked upon this
humiliating repulse as not only helping to prolong the siege of one solitary
city, but also as likely to influence the future course of the war which, in his
opinion, depended to a great extent upon unimportant incidents. After
clearing the ground where the shattered wall lay in heaps he brought up a
movable tower of immense height carrying a large number of men on its
numerous stages, and sent on cohort after cohort to break through, if
possible, the massed body of Macedonians, which they call the phalanx. But
in the narrow space -for the breach in the wall was by no means a wide one
-the kind of weapon he used and his style of fighting gave the enemy an
advantage. When the serried Macedonian ranks presented their enormously
long spears it was like a shield-wall, and when the Romans after fruitlessly
hurling their javelins, drew their swords they could not get to close quarters,
nor could they hack off the spear-heads; if they did succeed in cutting or
breaking any off, the splintered shafts kept their places amongst the points of
the uninjured ones and the palisade remained unbroken. Another thing which
helped the enemy was the protection of their flanks by that part of the wall
which was sound; they had not to attack or retire over a wide stretch of
ground, which generally disorders the ranks. An accident which happened to
the tower gave them still greater confidence. As it was being moved over
ground not thoroughly beaten down, one of the wheels sank in and gave the
tower such a list that it seemed to the enemy to be falling over.
