It appears that on his entering upon his office, Flamininus was detained some time at Rome, in order to superintend a fast and expiatory sacrifice on account of certain alleged prodigies of evil import; but it is certain that he had understood the consequences of the dilatory operations of his predecessors, and was resolute not to fall into the like error. He sailed from Brundusium for the island of Corcyra, now Corfu, which he occupied with eight thousand foot, and eight hundred horse, much earlier in the season than the preceding consuls had been wont to take the field: and, instantly passing over to the main, in a single line-of-battle ship, hurried onward by forced journeys to the camp, and superseded Villius, in the face of the enemy.
A few days afterward, his reinforcements coming up, he called a council of war to determine whether a direct attack, or a flank movement through Dassaretia, was to be preferred. The council, of course, determined any thing rather than direct action: but Flamininus, perceiving the facilities afforded by the geography of that broken, mountainous, forest-clad region, intersected by deep ravines and impracticable torrents, to the protracting of the war, resolved to take the bolder and more prudent course of trying conclusions, at once, with an enemy whose object it evidently was to act purely on the defensive, and to avoid delivering battle.
Yet, determined as he was, the difficulties of the ground were so great, and so skillfully had Philip availed himself of every defensible point, or coigne of vantage, that many days elapsed before he could decide on the mode of assault.
The river Aöus, now Vioza, an extremely large and powerful river, augmented at every half-mile by fierce mountain torrents, along the valley of which is the most direct pass into Macedonia proper, at this point breaks its way through a chain of exceedingly abrupt and precipitous, though not very lofty mountains, and forms a gorge of six miles in length, closely resembling that picturesque defile of the Delaware, with which many of my readers are doubtless familiar, known as the Water-Gap.
Forced into a space, two-thirds less than its ordinary breadth, the Aöus has here cut its way through the solid rock, between the mounts Asnaus and Aëropus, now Nemertzika and Trebusin, respectively to the left and right of the defile, which here runs nearly south-eastward. The right-hand mountain, Aëropus or Trebusin, is the loftier of the two, descending in a sheer wall of perpendicular and treeless rock to the brink of the only road, scarped out of the living limestone like a cornice above the torrent, which bathes the base of the opposite hill, leaving no level space between.
“The mountain on the opposite or left bank of the river,” says Colonel Leake, whose topography of the Grecian battles founded on minute personal inspection, is no less valuable than interesting, “is the northern extremity of the great ridge of Nemertzika, Asnaus, much lower than that summit, but nearly equal to Trebusin in height. At the top, it is a bare, perpendicular precipice, but the steep lower slope, unlike that of its opposite neighbor, is clothed with trees quite to the river. Through the opening between them is seen a magnificent variety of naked precipices and hanging woods, inclosing the broad and rapid stream of the insinuating river.”[[10]]
The road,[[11]] difficult in any event to an army, if defended, is impracticable.
In this prodigiously strong pass Philip had taken post, occupying the narrow road with the phalanx, and having his main body hutted comfortably among the loose crags of Aëropus, on a conspicuous summit of which was pitched his own royal pavilion, with the banner of Alexander waving over it. The slopes of the opposite hill, Asnaus, was held by Athenagoras his lieutenant, with the light troops, and all the flanking crags and salient angles of the precipitous hills were mounted with the tremendous military engines, which, though of common use in the defense and attack of fortresses, had never been brought into field service until now.
Immediately in front of this stern mountain gateway extended a small plain, midway between the Roman camp and the Macedonian lines, and here, after a fruitless parley and attempt at accommodation, from which both parties retired so much exasperated at their mutual pertinacity, that the river, which divided them, alone prevented their personal conflict, the light troops met in action from both armies.
It is scarce to be conceived how, with such obstacles against them, the Romans could have escaped destruction; but it is almost ever the case in mountain warfare that the attacking party is successful.