Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4)

by Plutarch

XIV. The army was chiefly troubled by want of water; for only a very little bad water ran or rather dripped out of a spring near the sea. Aemilius perceiving that Olympus, immediately above him, was a large and well-wooded mountain, and guessing from the greenness of the foliage that it must contain some springs which had their courses underground, dug many pits and wells along the skirts of the mountain, which immediately were filled with pure water, which by the pressure above was driven into these vacant spaces. Yet some say that there are no hidden fountains of water, lying ready in such places as these, and say that it is not because they are dug out or broken into that they flow, but that they have their origin and cause in the saturation of the surrounding earth which becomes saturated by its close texture and coldness, acting upon the moist vapours, which when pressed together low down turn into water. For just as women's breasts are not receptacles full of milk ready to flow, but change the nutriment which is in them into milk, and so supply it, so also the cold places which are full of springs have no water concealed in them, nor any such reservoirs as would be needed to send out deep rivers from any fixed point, but by their pressure they convert the air and vapour which is in them into water. At any rate, those places which are dug over break more into springs and run more with water, in answer to this treatment of their surface, just as women's breasts respond to sucking, for it moistens and softens the vapour; whereas land which is not worked is incapable of producing water, not having the motion by which moisture is obtained. Those who argue thus have given sceptics the opportunity of saying, that if it be true, there can be no blood in animals, but that it gathers about wounds, and that the flow of blood is produced by the air, or some change which takes place in the flesh. They are proved to be wrong by those who sink shafts for mines, and meet with rivers in the depths of the earth, which have not collected themselves by degrees, as would be the case if they derived their origin from the sudden movements of the earth, but flow with a full stream. Also, when mountains and rocks are fissured by a blow, there springs out a gush of water, which afterwards ceases. But enough of this.

XV. Aemilius remained quiet for some days, and it is said two such great hosts never were so near together and so quiet. After exploring and trying every place he discovered that there was still one pass unguarded, that, namely, through Perrhaebae by Pythium and Petra. He called a council of war to consider this, being himself more hopeful of success that way, as the place was not watched, than alarmed at the precipices on account of which the enemy neglected it. First of those present, Scipio, surnamed Nasica, son-in-law to Scipio Africanus, afterwards a leading man in the Senate, volunteered to lead the party which was to make this circuitous attack. And next Fabius Maximus, the eldest of the sons of Aemilius, though still only a youth, rose and spiritedly offered his services. Aemilius, delighted, placed under their command not so many troops as Polybius says in his history, but so many as Nasica himself tells us that he had, in a letter which he wrote to one of the princes of that region about this affair. He had three thousand Italians, besides his main body, and five thousand who composed the left wing. Besides these, Nasica took a hundred and twenty horse, and two hundred of Harpalus's light troops, Thracians and Cretans mixed. He began his march along the road towards the sea, and encamped near the temple of Herakles, as though he intended to sail round to the other side of the enemy's camp, and so surround him: but when the soldiers had supped, and it was dark, he explained his real plan to his officers, marched all night away from the sea, and halted his men for rest near the temple of Apollo. At this place Olympus is more than ten furlongs high: and this is proved by the epigram which the measurer wrote as follows:

"The height of Olympus' crest at the temple of Pythian Apollo consists of (measured by the plumb line) ten stades, and besides a hundred feet all but four. It was Xenagoras, the son of Eumelus, who discovered its height. King Apollo, hail to thee; be thou propitious to us."

And yet geometricians say that neither the height of any mountain nor the depth of any sea is above ten stades (furlongs). However, Xenophanes did not take its altitude conjecturally, but by a proper method with instruments.

XVI. Here then Nasica halted. Perseus in the morning saw Aemilius's army quiet in its place, and would have had no idea of what was going on had not a Cretan deserter come and told him of the flank march of the Romans. Then he became alarmed, but still did not disturb his camp, but, placing ten thousand foreign mercenaries and two thousand Macedonians under the command of Milo, ordered him to march swiftly and occupy the passes. Now Polybius says that the Romans fell upon these men when they were in their beds, but Nasica tells us that a sharp and dangerous conflict took place upon the heights. He himself was assailed by a Thracian, but struck him through the breast with his spear. However, the enemy were forced back; Milo most shamefully fled in his shirt, without his arms, and Scipio was able to follow, and at the same time lead his forces on to level ground. Perseus, terrified and despairing when he saw them, at once broke up his camp and retreated. But still he was obliged either to give battle before Pydna, or else to disperse his army among the various cities of the kingdom, and so to await the Romans, who, being once entered into his country, could not be driven out without much slaughter and bloodshed. It was urged by his friends that he had a great numerical superiority, and that the troops would fight desperately in defence of their wives and families, especially if their king took the command and shared their danger. He pitched his camp and prepared for battle, viewed the ground, and arranged the commands, intending to set upon the Romans as soon as they appeared. Now the position both possessed a flat plain for the manoeuvres of the phalanx, which requires level ground, and also hills rising one above another offered refuges and means for outflanking the enemy to his light troops. Also two rivers, the Aeson and Leukus, which ran across as it, though not very deep at that season (late autumn), were expected to give some trouble to the Romans.

XVII. Aemilius, on effecting a junction with Nasica, marched in battle array against the enemy. When, however, he saw their position and their numbers, he halted in surprise, considering within himself what he should do. His young officers, eager for battle, rode up to him and begged him not to delay. Conspicuous among these was Nasica, excited by his successful flank march round Olympus. Aemilius smiled at them and answered, "I would do so if I were of your age, but many victories have shown me the mistakes of the vanquished, and prevent my attacking a body of men drawn up in a chosen position with troops on the march and undeployed." He gave orders that those troops who were in front should gather together and appear to be forming in battle array, while those who were behind pitched their palisades and fortified a camp. Then by wheeling off men by degrees from the front line, he gradually broke up his line of battle, and quietly drew all his forces within the ramparts of his camp. When night fell, and after supper the army had betaken itself to sleep and rest, suddenly the moon, which was full and high in the heavens, became obscured, changed colour, and became totally eclipsed. The Romans, after their custom, called for her to shine again by clattering with brass vessels, and uplifting blazing faggots and torches. The Macedonians did nothing of the sort, but dismay spread over their camp, and they muttered under their breath that this portended the eclipse of their king. Now Aemilius was not unacquainted with the phenomena of eclipses, which result from the moon being at fixed periods brought into the shadow of the earth and darkened, until it passes the obscured tract and is again enlightened by the sun, yet being very devout and learned in divination, he offered to her a sacrifice of eleven calves. At daybreak he sacrificed twenty oxen to Herakles without obtaining a favourable response; but with the one-and-twentieth favourable signs appeared and portents of victory for them, provided they did not attack. He then vowed a hecatomb and sacred games in honour of the god, and ordered his officers to arrange the men in line of battle. But he waited till the sun declined and drew towards the west, that his troops might not fight with the morning sun in their eyes. He passed away the day sitting in his tent, which was pitched looking towards the flat country and the camp of the enemy.

XVIII. Some writers tell us, that about evening, by a device of Aemilius, the battle was begun by the enemy, the Romans having driven a horse without a bridle out of their camp and then tried to catch it, from which pursuit the battle began; but others say that Roman soldiers who were carrying fodder for the cattle were set upon by the Thracians under Alexander, and that to repel them a vigorous sortie was made with seven hundred Ligurians; that many on both sides came up to help their comrades, and so the battle began. Aemilius, like a pilot, seeing by the motion and disturbance of his camp that a storm was at hand, came out of his tent, and going along the lines of the infantry spoke encouraging words to them, while Nasica, riding up to the skirmishers, saw the whole army of the enemy just on the point of attacking. First marched the Thracians, whose aspect they saw was most terrible, as they were tall men, dressed in dark tunics, with large oblong shields and greaves of glittering white, brandishing aloft long heavy swords over their right shoulders. Next to the Thracians were the mercenaries, variously armed, and mixed with Paeonians. After these came a third corps, of Macedonians, picked men of proved courage, and in the flower of their age, glittering with gilded arms and new purple dresses. Behind them again came the phalanxes from the camp with their brazen shields, filling all the plain with the glittering of their armour, and making the hills ring with their shouts. So swiftly and boldly did they advance that those who were first slain fell two furlongs only from the Roman camp.

XIX. When the battle began, Aemilius came up, and found the front ranks of the Macedonians had struck their spear-heads into the Roman shields, so that they could not reach them with their swords. When also the other Macedonians took their shields off their shoulders and placed them in front, and then at the word of command all brought down their pikes, he, viewing the great strength of that serried mass of shields, and the menacing look of the spears that bristled before them, was amazed and terrified, having never seen a more imposing spectacle—and often afterwards he used to speak of that sight, and of his own feelings at it. At the time, however, he put on a cheerful and hopeful look, and rode along the ranks showing himself to the men without helmet or cuirass. But the Macedonian king, according to Polybius, having joined battle, was seized with a fit of cowardice, and rode off to the city on the pretext that he was going to sacrifice to Herakles, a god unlikely to receive the base offerings of cowards or to fulfil their unreasonable prayers; for it is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper. But the god heard the prayers of Aemilius, for he prayed for victory whilst fighting, sword in hand, and invited the god into the battle to aid him. Not but what one Poseidonius, who says that he took part in these transactions, and wrote a history of Perseus in many volumes, says that it was not from cowardice, or on the pretext of offering sacrifice that he left the field, but that on the day before the battle he was kicked on the leg by a horse; that in the battle, though in great pain, and entreated by his friends to desist, he ordered a horse to be brought, and without armour rode up to the phalanx. Here as many missiles were flying about from both sides, an iron javelin struck him, not fairly with its point, but it ran obliquely down his left side, tearing his tunic, and causing a dark bruise on his flesh, the scar of which was long visible. This is what Poseidonius urges in defence of Perseus.

XX. Now as the Romans when they met the phalanx could make no impression upon it, Salovius, the leader of the Pelignians, seized the standard of his regiment and threw it among the enemy. The Pelignians, as the loss of a standard is thought to be a crime and an impiety by all Italians, rushed to the place, and a fierce conflict began there with terrible slaughter. The one party tried to dash aside the long spears with their swords, and to push them with their shields, and to seize them away with their very hands, while the Macedonians, wielding their spears with both hands, drove them through their opponents, armour and all: for no shield or corslet could resist their thrust. They then cast over their own heads the bodies of these Pelignians and Marrucini, who pressed madly like wild creatures up to the line of spears and certain death. When the first rank fell in this manner, those behind gave way: it cannot be said that they fled, but they retreated to a mountain called Olokrus. Poseidonius tells us that Aemilius tore his clothes in despair at seeing these men give ground, while the other Romans were confounded at the phalanx, which could not be assailed, but with its close line of spears, like a palisade, offered no point for attack. But when he saw that, from the inequalities of the ground, and the length of their line, the Macedonian phalanx did not preserve its alignment, and was breaking into gaps and breaches, as is natural should happen in a great army, according to the different attacks of the combatants, who made it bulge inwards in one place, and outward in another, then he came swiftly up, and dividing his men into companies, ordered them to force their way into the spaces and intervals of the enemy's line, and to make their attack, not in any one place all together, but in several, as they were broken up into several bodies. As soon as Aemilius had given these instructions to the officers, who communicated them to the men, they charged into the spaces, and at once some attacked the now helpless Macedonians in flank, while others got into their rear and cut them off. The phalanx dissolved immediately, and with it was lost all the power and mutual assistance which it gave. Fighting in single combats or small groups, the Macedonians struck in vain with their little daggers at the strong shields reaching to their feet carried by the Romans. Their light targets could ill ward off the blows of the Roman sword, which cut right through all their defensive armour. After a useless resistance they turned and fled.

XXI. But the fight was a sharp one. Here Marcus, the son of Cato, Aemilius's son-in-law, whilst fighting with great valour let fall his sword. Educated as he had been in the strictest principles of honour, and owing it to such a father to give extraordinary proofs of courage, he thought that life would be intolerable for him if he allowed an enemy to carry off such a trophy from him, and ran about calling upon every friend or acquaintance whom he saw to help him to recover it. Many brave men thus assembled, and with one accord left the rest of the army and followed him. After a sharp conflict and much slaughter, they succeeded in driving the enemy from the ground, and having thus chased it, they betook themselves to searching for the sword. When at last after much trouble it was found among the heaps of arms and corpses, they were overjoyed, and with a shout assailed those of the enemy who still resisted. At length the three thousand picked men were all slain fighting in their ranks. A great slaughter took place among the others as they fled, so that the plain and the skirts of the hills were covered with corpses, and the stream of the river Leukus ran red with blood even on the day after the battle; for, indeed, it is said that more than twenty-five thousand men perished. Of the Romans there fell a hundred, according to Poseidonius, but Nasica says only eighty.