Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
their legs armed with greaves, and they brandished, as they moved,
straight and heavily-ironed spears over their right shoulders. Next the
Thracians marched the mercenary soldiers, armed after different fashions;
with these the Paeonians were mingled. These were succeeded by a third
division, of picked men, native Macedonians, the choicest for courage and
strength, in the prime of life, gleaming with gilt armor and scarlet
coats. As these were taking their places they were followed from the
camp by the troops in phalanx called the Brazen Shields, so that the
whole plain seemed alive with the flashing of steel and the glistening of
brass; and the hills also with their shouts, as they cheered each other
on. In this order they marched, and with such boldness and speed, that
those that were first slain died at but two furlongs distance from the
Roman camp.
The battle being begun, Aemilius came in and found that the foremost of
the Macedonians had already fixed the ends of their spears into the
shields of his Romans, so that it was impossible to come near them with
their swords. When he saw this, and observed that the rest of the
Macedonians took the targets that hung on their left shoulders, and
brought them round before them, and all at once stooped their pikes
against their enemies' shields, and considered the great strength of this
wall of shields, and the formidable appearance of a front thus bristling
with arms, he was seized with amazement and alarm; nothing he had ever
seen before had been equal to it; and in after times he frequently used
to speak both of the sight and of his own sensations. These, however, he
dissembled, and rode through his army without either breast-plate or
helmet, with a serene and cheerful countenance.
On the contrary, as Polybius relates, no sooner was the battle begun, but
the Macedonian king basely withdrew to the city Pydna, under a pretence
of sacrificing to Hercules: a God that is not wont to regard the faint
offerings of cowards, or to fulfill unsanctioned vows. For truly it can
hardly be a thing that heaven would sanction, that he that never shoots
should carry away the prize; he triumph that slinks from the battle; he
that takes no pains meet with success, or the wicked man prosper. But to
Aemilius's petitions the god listened; he prayed for victory with his
sword in his hand, and fought while entreating divine assistance.
A certain Posidonius, who has at some length written a history of
Perseus, and professes to have lived at the time, and to have been
himself engaged in these events, denies that Perseus left the field
either through fear or pretence of sacrificing, but that, the very day
before the fight, he received a kick from a horse on his thigh; that
though very much disabled, and dissuaded by all his friends, he commanded
one of his riding-horses to be brought, and entered the field unarmed;
that amongst an infinite number of darts that flew about on all sides,
one of iron lighted on him, and though not with the point, yet by a
glance struck him with such force on his left side, that it tore his
clothes and so bruised his flesh that the mark remained a long time
after. This is what Posidonius says in defense of Perseus.
The Romans not being able to make a breach in the phalanx, one Salius, a
commander of the Pelignians, snatched the ensign of his company and
threw it amongst the enemies; on seeing which, the Pelignians (as amongst
the Italians it is always thought the greatest breach of honor to abandon
a standard) rushed with great violence towards the place, where the
conflict grew very fierce, and the slaughter terrible on both sides. For
these endeavored to cut the spears asunder with their swords, or to beat
them back with their shields, or put them by with their hands; and, on
the other side, the Macedonians held their long sarissas in both hands,
and pierced those that came in their way quite through their armor, no
shield or corslet being able to resist the force of that weapon. The
Pelignians and Marrucinians were thrown headlong to the ground, having
without consideration, with mere animal fury, rushed upon a certain
death. Their first ranks being slain, those that were behind were forced
to give back; it cannot be said they fled, but they retreated towards
Mount Olocrus. When Aemilius saw this, Posidonius relates, he rent his
clothes, some of his men being ready to fly, and the rest not willing to
engage with a phalanx into which they could not hope to make any
entrance, a sort of palisade, as it were, impregnable and unapproachable,
with its close array of long spears everywhere meeting the assailant.
Nevertheless, the unequalness of the ground would not permit a widely
extended front to be so exactly drawn up as to have their shields
everywhere joined; and Aemilius perceived that there were a great many
interstices and breaches in the Macedonian phalanx; as it usually happens
in all great armies, according to the different efforts of the
combatants, who in one part press forward with eagerness, and in another
are forced to fall back. Taking, therefore, this occasion, with all
speed he broke up his men into their cohorts, and gave them order to fall
into the intervals and openings of the enemy's body, and not to make one
general attack upon them all, but to engage, as they were divided, in
several partial battles. These commands Aemilius gave to his captains,
and they to their soldiers; and no sooner had they entered the spaces and
separated their enemies, but they charged them, some on their side where
they were naked and exposed, and others, making a circuit, behind; and
thus destroyed the force of the phalanx, which consisted in common action
and close union. And now, come to fight man to man, or in small parties,
the Macedonians smote in vain upon firm and long shields with their
little swords, whilst their slight bucklers were not able to sustain the
weight and force of the Roman swords, which pierced through all their
armor to their bodies; they turned, in fine, and fled.
The conflict was obstinate. And here Marcus, the son of Cato, and son-
in-law of Aemilius, whilst he showed all possible courage, let fall his
sword. Being a young man, carefully brought up and disciplined, and, as
son of so renowned a father, bound to give proof of more than ordinary
virtue, he thought his life but a burden, should he live and permit his
enemies to enjoy this spoil. He hurried hither and thither, and wherever
he espied a friend or companion, declared his misfortune, and begged
their assistance; a considerable number of brave men being thus
collected, with one accord they made their way through their fellows
after their leader, and fell upon the enemy; whom, after a sharp
conflict, many wounds, and much slaughter, they repulsed, possessed the
place that was now deserted and free, and set themselves to search for
the sword, which at last they found covered with a great heap of arms and
dead bodies. Overjoyed with this success, they raised the song of
triumph, and with more eagerness than ever, charged the foes that yet
remained firm and unbroken. In the end, three thousand of the chosen
men, who kept their ground and fought valiantly to the last, were all cut
in pieces, while the slaughter of such as fled was also very great. The
plain and the lower part of the hills were filled with dead bodies, and
the water of the river Leucus, which the Romans did not pass till the
next day after the battle, was then mingled with blood. For it is said
there fell more than twenty-five thousand of the enemy; of the Romans, as
Posidonius relates, a hundred; as Nasica, only fourscore. This battle,
though so great, was very quickly decided, it being three in the
afternoon when they first engaged, and not four when the enemy was
vanquished; the rest of the day was spent in the pursuit of the
fugitives, whom they followed about thirteen or fourteen miles, so that
it was far in the night when they returned.
All the others were met by their servants with torches, and brought back
with joy and great triumph to their tents, which were set out with
lights, and decked with wreaths of ivy and laurel. But the general
himself was in great grief. Of the two sons that served under him in the
war, the youngest was missing, whom he held most dear, and whose courage
and good qualities he perceived much to excel those of his brothers.
Bold and eager for distinction, and still a mere child in age, he
concluded that he had perished, whilst for want of experience he had
engaged himself too far amongst his enemies. His sorrow and fears became
known to the army; the soldiers, quitting their suppers, ran about with
lights, some to Aemilius's tent, some out of the trenches, to seek him
amongst such as were slain in the first onset. There was nothing but
grief in the camp, and the plain was filled with the cries of men calling
out for Scipio; for, from his very youth, he was an object of admiration;
endowed above any of his equals with the good qualities requisite either
for command or counsel. At length, when it was late, and they almost
despaired, he returned from the pursuit with only two or three of his
companions, all covered with the fresh blood of his enemies, having been,
like some dog of noble breed, carried away by the pleasure, greater than
he could control, of his first victory. This was that Scipio
that afterwards destroyed Carthage and Numantia, and was, without
dispute, the first of the Romans in merit, and had the greatest authority
amongst them. Thus Fortune, deferring her displeasure and jealousy of
such great success to some other time, let Aemilius at present enjoy this
victory, without any detraction or diminution.
As for Perseus, from Pydna he fled to Pella with his cavalry, which was
as yet almost entire. But when the foot came up with them, and,
upbraiding them as cowards and traitors, tried to pull them off their
horses, and fell to blows, Perseus, fearing the tumult, forsook the
common road, and, lest he should be known, pulled off his purple, and
carried it before him, and took his crown in his hand, and, that he might
the better converse with his friends, alighted from his horse and led
him. Of those that were about him, one stopped, pretending to tie his
shoe that was loose, another to water his horse, a third to drink
himself; and thus lagging behind, by degrees left him, they having not so
much reason to fear their enemies, as his cruelty; for he, disordered by
his misfortune, sought to clear himself by laying the cause of the
overthrow upon everybody else. He arrived at Pella in the night, where
Euctus and Eudaeus, two of his treasurers, came to him, and, what with
their reflecting on his former faults, and their free and ill-timed
admonitions and counsels, so exasperated him, that he killed them both,
stabbing them with his own dagger. After this, nobody stuck to him but
Evander the Cretan, Archedemus the Aetolian, and Neon the Boeotian. Of
the common soldiers there followed him only those from Crete, not out of
any good-will, but because they were as constant to his riches as the
bees to their hive. For he carried a great treasure with him, out of
which he had suffered them to take cups, bowls, and other vessels of
silver and gold, to the value of fifty talents. But when he was come to
Amphipolis, and afterwards to Galepsus, and his fears were a little
abated, he relapsed into his old and constitutional disease of
covetousness, and lamented to his friends that he had, through
inadvertency, allowed some gold plate which had belonged to Alexander the
Great to go into the hands of the Cretans, and besought those that had
it, with tears in his eyes, to exchange with him again for money. Those