His light troops, advanced on both flanks, pressed forward along the difficult hill-sides, dashing the heavy dew in showers from the dripping underwood, and threatening the camps of Philip and Athenagoras both at once, with loud shouts and a storm of missiles.
Then were renewed the splendor, the obstinacy, and the carnage of the first encounter. Again the Roman voltigeurs drove in the enemy’s outposts; and beat back the targeteers, who sallied from their works eager for the fray, from post to post, till they came within the range of the artillery, when in their turn they began to suffer heavily.
But at this instant the sun arose; the mists melted gradually away from the bare peaks, which now stood forth glittering in the hazy sunshine. With indescribable anxiety the eyes of Flamininus were riveted upon the distant crag, indicated as the decisive point. There was a vapor floating round it dull and indistinct, and browner than the blue mist wreaths—but was it, could it be, the smoke-signal?
For a time all was an agony of doubt and suspense. His officers gathered about the consul; the legionaries, seeing their commanders’ eyes all turned in one direction, gazed that way also, anxious if ignorant.
Browner the vapor grew and browner; now it soared upward, black as a thunder-cloud, darkening the azure skies, a manifest smoke-signal.
Jove! what a shout arose from the now triumphant cohorts!—what a thrilling shriek of the shrill trumpets, answered faintly and remotely, as if from the skies, by another Roman blast, but liker to the scream of the mountain-vulture than to the clangor of the pealing brass!—what a clang as of ten thousand stithies, when the Spanish blades smote home upon the Macedonian targes!
Yet still the men fell fast on both sides, although the Romans won their way, in spite of artillery and pike and sling-shot, at the sword’s point; for the Greeks still fought stubbornly, and plied their dreadful engines with deliberate aim at point blank range, unconscious that they were surrounded.
Then came the Latin cheers, and the clang of arms, out of the clouds, rolling down the mountain side, on their flank, in their rear; the rush of charging horse!—In an instant they broke, disbanded, scattered, deserted their defenses—all was over.
In the first instance the panic and route of the Macedonians were absolute; and so utterly disheartened and terror-stricken were the men, that, had it been possible to pursue them effectually, the whole army must have laid down its arms or have been cut to pieces.
The ground,[[13]] however, was for the most part impracticable to cavalry, and their heavy armature rendered the legions as inefficient in pursuit as formidable in close combat. About two thousand only of the Macedonians fell, more in the battle than in the route; but the whole of the formidable defenses, on which they had expended so much time and toil, were carried at a blow, all their superb artillery, their camp, their baggage, rich with the barbaric pomp of the Macedonian royalty, all their camp followers and slaves, remained the prizes of the victors.