Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
not much fewer than forty thousand full-armed foot of the phalanx; and
planting himself along the seaside, at the foot of Mount Olympus, in
ground with no access on any side, and on all sides fortified with fences
and bulwarks of wood, remained in great security, thinking by delay and
expense to weary out Aemilius. But he, in the meantime, busy in
thought, weighed all counsels and all means of attack, and perceiving his
soldiers, from their former want of discipline, to be impatient of delay,
and ready on all occasions to teach their general his duty, rebuked them,
and bade them not meddle with what was not their concern, but only take
care that they and their arms were in readiness, and to use their swords
like Romans when their commander should think fit to employ them.
Further he ordered, that the sentinels by night should watch without
javelins, that thus they might be more careful and surer to resist sleep,
having no arms to defend themselves against any attacks of an enemy.
What most annoyed the army was the want of water; for only a little, and
that foul, flowed out, or rather came by drops from a spring adjoining
the sea; but Aemilius, considering that he was at the foot of the high
and woody mountain Olympus, and conjecturing by the flourishing growth of
the trees that there were springs that had their course under ground, dug
a great many holes and wells along the foot of the mountain, which were
presently filled with pure water escaping from its confinement into the
vacuum they afforded. Although there are some, indeed, who deny that
there are reservoirs of water lying ready provided out of sight, in the
places from whence springs flow, and that when they appear, they merely
issue and run out; on the contrary, they say, they are then formed and
come into existence for the first time, by the liquefaction of the
surrounding matter; and that this change is caused by density and cold,
when the moist vapor, by being closely pressed together, becomes fluid.
As women's breasts are not like vessels full of milk always prepared and
ready to flow from them; but their nourishment being changed in their
breasts, is there made milk, and from thence is pressed out. In like
manner, places of the earth that are cold and full of springs, do not
contain any hidden waters or receptacles which are capable, as from a
source always ready and furnished, of supplying all the brooks and deep
rivers; but, by compressing and condensing the vapors and air, they turn
them into that substance. And thus places that are dug open flow by that
pressure, and afford the more water (as the breasts of women do milk by
their being sucked), the vapor thus moistening and becoming fluid;
whereas ground that remains idle and undug is not capable of producing
any water, whilst it wants that motion which is the cause of
liquefaction. But those that assert this opinion, give occasion to the
doubtful to argue, that on the same ground there should be no blood in
living creatures, but that it must be formed by the wound, some sort of
spirit or flesh being changed into a liquid and flowing matter.
Moreover, they are refuted by the fact that men who dig mines, either in
sieges or for metals, meet with rivers, which are not collected by little
and little (as must necessarily be, if they had their being at the very
instant the earth was opened), but break out at once with violence; and
upon the cutting through a rock, there often gush out great quantities of
water, which then as suddenly cease. But of this enough.
Aemilius lay still for some days, and it is said, that there were never
two great armies so nigh, that enjoyed so much quiet. When he had tried
and considered all things, he was informed that there was yet one passage
left unguarded, through Perrhaebia by the temple of Apollo and the Rock.
Gathering, therefore, more hope from the place being left defenseless
than fear from the roughness and difficulty of the passage, he proposed
it for consultation. Amongst those that were present at the council,
Scipio, surnamed Nasica, son-in-law to Scipio Africanus, who afterwards
was so powerful in the senate-house, was the first that offered himself
to command those that should be sent to encompass the enemy. Next to
him, Fabius Maximus, eldest son of Aemilius, although yet very young,
offered himself with great zeal. Aemilius, rejoicing, gave them, not so
many as Polybius states, but, as Nasica himself tells us in a brief
letter which he wrote to one of the kings with an account of the
expedition, three thousand Italians that were not Romans, and his left
wing consisting of five thousand. Taking with him, besides these, one
hundred and twenty horsemen, and two hundred Thracians and Cretans
intermixed that Harpalus had sent, he began his journey towards the sea,
and encamped near the temple of Hercules, as if he designed to embark,
and so to sail round and environ the enemy. But when the soldiers had
supped and it was dark, he made the captains acquainted with his real
intentions, and marching all night in the opposite direction, away from
the sea, till he came under the temple of Apollo, there rested his army.
At this place Mount Olympus rises in height more than ten furlongs, as
appears by the epigram made by the man that measured it:
The summit of Olympus, at the site
Where stands Apollo's temple, has a height
Of full ten furlongs by the line, and more,
Ten furlongs, and one hundred feet, less four.
Eumelus' son Xenagoras, reached the place.
Adieu, O king, and do thy pilgrim grace.
It is allowed, say the geometricians, that no mountain in height or sea
in depth exceeds ten furlongs, and yet it seems probable that Xenagoras
did not take his admeasurement carelessly, but according to the rules of
art, and with instruments for the purpose. Here it was that Nasica
passed the night.
A Cretan deserter, who fled to the enemy during the march, discovered to
Perseus the design which the Romans had to encompass him: for he, seeing
that Aemilius lay still, had not suspected any such attempt. He was
startled at the news, yet did not put his army in motion, but sent ten
thousand mercenary soldiers and two thousand Macedonians, under command
of Milo, with order to hasten and possess themselves of the passes.
Polybius relates that the Romans found these men asleep when they
attacked them; but Nasica says there was a sharp and severe conflict on
the top of the mountain, that he himself encountered a mercenary
Thracian, pierced him through with his javelin, and slew him; and that
the enemy being forced to retreat, Milo stripped to his coat and fled
shamefully without his armor, while he followed without danger, and
conveyed the whole army down into the country.
After this event, Perseus, now grown fearful, and fallen from his hopes,
removed his camp in all haste; he was under the necessity either to stop
before Pydna, and there run the hazard of a battle, or disperse his army
into cities, and there expect the event of the war, which, having once
made its way into his country, could not be driven out without great
slaughter and bloodshed. But Perseus, being told by his friends that he
was much superior in number, and that men fighting in the defense of
their wives and children must needs feel all the more courage, especially
when all was done in the sight of their king, who himself was engaged in
equal danger, was thus again encouraged; and, pitching his camp, prepared
himself to fight, viewed the country, and gave out the commands, as if he
designed to set upon the Romans as soon as they approached. The place
was a field fit for the action of a phalanx, which requires smooth
standing and even ground, and also had divers little hills, one joining
another, fit for the motions whether in retreat or advance of light
troops and skirmishers. Through the middle ran the rivers Aeson and
Leucus, which, though not very deep, it being the latter end of summer,
yet were likely enough to give the Romans some trouble.
As soon as Aemilius had rejoined Nasica, he advanced in battle array
against the enemy; but when he found how they were drawn up, and the
number of their forces, he regarded them with admiration and surprise,
and halted, considering within himself. The young commanders, eager to
fight, riding along, by his side, pressed him not to delay, and most of
all Nasica, flushed with his late success on Olympus. To whom Aemilius
answered with a smile: "So would I do, were I of your age; but many
victories have taught me the ways in which men are defeated, and forbid
me to engage soldiers weary with a long march, against an army drawn up
and prepared for battle."
Then he gave command that the front of his army, and such as were in
sight of the enemy, should form as if ready to engage, and those in the
rear should cast up the trenches and fortify the camp; so that the
hindmost in succession wheeling off by degrees and withdrawing, their
whole order was insensibly broken up, and the army encamped without noise
or trouble.
When it was night, and, supper being over, all were turning to sleep and
rest, on a sudden the moon, which was then at full and high in the
heavens, grew dark, and by degrees losing her light, passed through
various colors, and at length was totally eclipsed. The Romans,
according to their custom, clattering brass pans and lifting up
firebrands and torches into the air, invoked the return of her light; the
Macedonians behaved far otherwise: terror and amazement seized their
whole army, and a rumor crept by degrees into their camp that this
eclipse portended even that of their king. Aemilius was no novice in
these things, nor was ignorant of the nature of the seeming
irregularities of eclipses, that in a certain revolution of time, the
moon in her course enters the shadow of the earth and is there obscured,
till, passing the region of darkness, she is again enlightened by the
Sun. Yet being a devout man, a religious observer of sacrifices and the
art of divination, as soon as he perceived the moon beginning to regain
her former lustre, he offered up to her eleven heifers. At the break of
day he sacrificed as many as twenty in succession to Hercules, without
any token that his offering was accepted; but at the one and twentieth,
the signs promised victory to defenders. He then vowed a hecatomb and
solemn sports to Hercules, and commanded his captains to make ready for
battle, staying only till the sun should decline and come round to the
west, lest, being in their faces in the morning, it should dazzle the
eyes of his soldiers. Thus he whiled away the time in his tent, which
was open towards the plain where his enemies were encamped.
When it grew towards evening, some tell us, Aemilius himself used a
stratagem to induce the enemy to begin the fight; that he turned loose a
horse without a bridle, and sent some of the Romans to catch him, upon
whose following the beast, the battle began. Others relate that the
Thracians, under the command of one Alexander, set upon the Roman beasts
of burden that were bringing forage to the camp; that to oppose these, a
party of seven hundred Ligurians were immediately detached; and that,
relief coming still from both armies, the main bodies at last engaged.
Aemilius, like a wise pilot, foreseeing by the present waves and motion
of the armies, the greatness of the following storm, came out of his
tent, went through the legions, and encouraged his soldiers. Nasica, in
the mean time, who had ridden out to the skirmishers, saw the whole force
of the enemy on the point of engaging. First marched the Thracians, who,
he himself tells us, inspired him with most terror; they were of great
stature, with bright and glittering shields and black frocks under them,