by Plutarch
8. The next day dawned. It had been a mild, damp night, and the clouds turned to mist: the whole plain was filled with a thick dark fog, with the dense air coming down from the heights to fill the space between the two armies. Thus day began with all the ground invisible. Both sides had sent out parties to cover and observe the enemy, and very soon these stumbled on one another. Then the battle began, at the region called Cynoscephalae or ‘Dog’s Heads’, so-called because many ridges lie close and in parallel, and their gently rising summits resemble that shape.50 As one would expect of such hard terrain, there were many shifts of fortune, with flights here and pursuits there, and each side sending reinforcements from the camp to support those divisions which were in trouble and retreating. Then the air began to clear, they could see what was happening and they joined battle in full force.
Philip’s right wing was successful; he was coming from higher sloping ground, and he threw the whole of his phalanx against the Romans. Even the best of the legionaries could not withstand the momentum of the Macedonian linked shields and the ferocity of their couched spears. But the Macedonian left wing was strung out across the ridges and skewed out of position, and Titus, deciding to write off the wing that was in difficulties, came up sharply to support this other wing. As he launched his attack, the unevenness and roughness of the land prevented the Macedonians from making ranks as a phalanx and strengthening their formation in depth; yet that is the strong point of their force, and their weaponry is too heavy and cumbersome to suit them for hand-to-hand combat. The phalanx is like a living creature of irresistible strength as long as it remains as one body and keeps its linked shields in a single order; immediately it breaks up, the individual soldier loses his effectiveness, both because of the nature of his weaponry and because his strength lies in the combination of the interlocking parts of the whole rather than in his individual power.51 Once the first Macedonians turned to flight, some pursued the fugitives, others outflanked those who were still fighting and cut them down; before long even the victorious wing of the Macedonians was drawn off and forced to flee, throwing down its arms. The dead numbered no fewer than 8,000, and about 5,000 were captured.52 Philip escaped safely and people blamed the Aetolians,53 who turned to plundering and destroying the enemy camp while the Romans were still in pursuit, so that on their return they found nothing left.
9. At first it was a question of mutual recriminations and disagreements, then the Aetolians began to cause more and more irritation to Titus54 himself. They were claiming the victory for themselves,55 and the versions they spread were prejudicing the Greeks to give them the credit; poets and even ordinary people were singing and writing of them, and putting them in the first place as they celebrated the achievement. Most popular of all was this epigram:
Unwept and unburied,56 here, traveller, we lie, on this ridge of
Thessaly,
We who were 30,000 men.
We fell to Aetolia’s sword, and to those Latins
Whom Titus brought from broad Italy,
A great pain to Emathia.57 And that brash spirit of Philip?
It is gone, swifter than the swift deer.58
That was Alcaeus’ work,59 a deliberate insult to Philip, and an exaggeration of the numbers who fell. But it was to be heard in many places and on many lips, and it caused more pain to Titus than to Philip. As for Philip, he simply responded in Alcaeus’ own mocking vein, with an elegiac couplet:
Unbarked and unleafy, here, traveller, it stands,
On this ridge: a sheer bare stake of wood – for Alcaeus.60
But Titus, full of ambition before the Greeks, was immoderately sensitive to all this. For this reason he began to conduct affairs wholly on his own, with no attention whatever to the Aetolians.61 They were annoyed by this, and when Titus received proposals and an embassy from the Macedonians about peace terms, they went round the other cities full of complaint. The same thing was happening again, they cried: he was selling peace to Philip, when there was a chance to finish the war once and for all, and to destroy the source of power from which the slavery of Greece was born.
That was what the Aetolians said, and it stirred up the allies; but the suspicions were dispelled by Philip himself, when he came to settle terms62 and surrendered unconditionally to Titus and the Romans. Thus Titus ended the war. He restored to Philip the kingdom of Macedon, but ordered him to withdraw from Greece, fined him 1,000 talents, took away all his ships except ten and sent one of his sons, Demetrius, to be a hostage in Rome.63
This was a remarkably shrewd reading of events and feeling for what was to come. For Hannibal the African – Rome’s greatest enemy and now in exile – was already at King Antiochus’ court64 and was urging him forward, now that fortune was smiling so much on his advancing power; and as for Antiochus himself, all those magnificent achievements which had earned him the name of ‘the Great’ were encouraging him to think of universal empire, and his particular target was Rome.65 What would have happened if Titus had not foreseen this and wisely agreed to make peace? The war with Antiochus would have supervened in Greece on the war with Philip; their communion of concerns would have united the two greatest and mightiest kings of the day against Rome; there would have been new contests and dangers to match those of the war against Hannibal. As it was, Titus grasped the opportunity to interpose peace between the two wars, cutting short the last before the next could begin, and robbing one king of his last hope, the other of his first.
10. Then, however, the ten commissioners dispatched by the senate advised Titus66 to give the other Greeks their freedom, but to keep garrisons at Corinth, Chalcis and Demetrias67 to protect against Antiochus. There was no mistaking the torrent of recriminations which this produced from the Aetolians, nor the effect these had on the other cities in breaking out their resentment. Titus should loose the fetters of Greece, said the Aetolians (that was Philip’s phrase68 for the three cities I have mentioned); the Greeks had exchanged their old collar for a new one, smoother but heavier than before;69 were they now content? Did they admire Titus as their benefactor, for loosing Greece’s feet and binding her by the neck instead? Titus was pained and annoyed by this, and eventually his entreaties persuaded the commission to free these cities too from their garrisons,70 so that his gift to the Greeks should be complete and unimpaired.
It was the time of the Isthmian Games.71 The stadium was full of spectators watching the athletics: that was natural, now Greece was free of wars at last. They hoped for freedom, but they already had peace, and that was what they were celebrating at the festival.72 Then the trumpeter signalled everyone to be silent. A herald came forward to the middle of the stadium and made the proclamation: the Roman senate and the consul73 and general Titus Quinctius, having defeated Philip and the Macedonians, were now liberating Corinth, Phocis, Locris, Euboea, Phthiotic Achaea, Magnesia, Thessaly and Perrhaebia,74 free of all garrisons and tribute, in possession of their ancestral constitutions. At first not everyone had heard, or at least heard clearly; there was a confused, disturbed movement in the stadium, with the astonished spectators asking each other what had been said: could the proclamation be repeated? Then silence fell again, the herald raised his voice and cried more vigorously so that all could hear, and the decree reached everyone: the delighted shout which greeted it was unbelievably loud, so loud that it even reached the sea. The theatre audience leapt to its feet. No one paid any attention to the athletes, for now all the spectators were eager to jump up and hail and shake by the hand the saviour and champion of Greece.
There were even some ravens flying overhead who fell down into the stadium:75 people often say that by way of exaggerating the loudness of a sound, but on this occasion it actually happened. The reason for this is the fragmenting of the air. A vast and loud sound breaks up the air, which consequently is unable to support the creatures flying through it; that makes them slip down as if they were poised over a void. An alternative explanation might, I suppose, be that they are transfixed by a shock a
s if by a missile, and therefore fall dying. Perhaps it is also a whirling of the air, with the turbulence being great enough to bring on an effect of eddying and suction, just as on the sea.76
11. As for Titus himself, it was as well that he swiftly moved away now that the spectacle was ended, fearing the vigour and press of the crowd. There were vast numbers mobbing him on every side, and his very life was in danger.77 Nightfall came before they finally tired of shouting around his tent, and as they left they were still greeting and embracing all the friends and fellow-citizens they saw, and then they turned to eating and drinking together.
At this moment of celebration, it was all the more natural that they should talk and reflect on the fate of Greece.78 They thought of all the wars she had fought for freedom; but freedom had never come more firmly or delightfully than now, and it had come almost without blood and without grief, championed by another people, this finest and most enviable of prizes. Bravery and wisdom were rare possessions among mortals, but the man of justice was the rarest good of all. People like Agesilaus, Lysander, Nicias and Alcibiades79 had known how to fight their wars well, and how to lead their men to victories over land and sea; but they had not known how to use their victories for glorious ends or to bestow noble favours. If one discounted Marathon, Salamis, Plataea and Thermopylae, and Cimon’s victories at the Eurymedon and in Cyprus,80 all Greece’s wars had been fought internally for slavery, every one of her trophies had also been a disaster and reproach for Greece, which had generally been overthrown by its leaders’ evil ways and contentiousness. Now these foreigners had come, people who seemed to have only slight sparks and insignificant traces of an ancient shared ancestry;81 it was remarkable that they should even have any helpful words or thoughts to spare for Greece. Yet it was their perils and their labours that had now taken Greece away from its harsh masters and tyrants, and set her free.
12. Those were the reflections of the Greeks; and the Romans’ behaviour lived up to the terms of the decrees. For Titus dispatched a number of men on simultaneous missions,82 Lentulus to Asia to free Bargylia,83 Stertinius84 to Thrace to release the cities and islands there from Philip’s garrisons, while Publius Villius85 sailed to confer with Antiochus about the freedom of the Greeks under his control. Titus himself made his way to Chalcis, then sailed from there to Magnesia, removing the garrisons and restoring their ancestral constitutions to the peoples.86 In Argos he was made president of the Nemean Games, and celebrated the festival in the best possible way; there too he had a herald repeat the proclamation of freedom to the Greeks.87 As he went from city to city he created a state of lawfulness and great justice and mutual harmony and affection,88 putting an end to internal strife, restoring the exiles and basking as much in reconciling the Greeks by the arts of persuasion as he had in his victory over Macedon: indeed, by now freedom seemed only a minute part of the benefits they owed to him.
There is a story told of the philosopher Xenocrates.89 The tax-collectors were hauling him off for failing to pay the metic tax, but he was rescued by the orator Lycurgus,90 who not merely released him but also fined the tax-collectors for their presumption. Then they say that Xenocrates met Lycurgus’ children. ‘I am repaying your father very generously,’ he said: ‘all the world is praising him for what he did.’ In the same way, Titus and the Romans were repaid with gratitude for their benefits to the Greeks, but in their case the gratitude generated not merely praise, but also a deserved confidence and authority among all mankind. People did not only receive Roman commanders into their towns, they even sent and called for them and put themselves in their hands; and it was not merely peoples and cities which did this, but even kings who were wronged by other kings and fled to the Romans’ arms. The result was that in a short time, perhaps with God’s assistance,91 everything was within their power.
But Titus himself took most pride of all in the freeing of Greece: that can be seen from the silver bucklers and his own body shield which he dedicated at Delphi, with the inscription:
Hail you Sons of Zeus,92 who revel in your swift horsemanship; hail you Tyndarids, kings of Sparta; Titus, descendant of Aeneas, has given you the highest gift of all, freedom for the children of the Greeks.
He also dedicated a gold crown to Apollo with the inscription:
This golden, radiant crown is to lie on the ambrosial locks of the son of Leto: it is the gift of the great captain of the Aeneadae.93 Far-darting one, give the glory of might to the god-like Titus.
Corinth, it has so turned out, has now twice been the scene of the same experience for Greece: for it was in Corinth that first Titus, then again Nero94 in our own lifetime, set the Greeks free and independent, and in each case similarly at the Isthmian Games. Titus used a herald, as I have said;95 Nero made the speech himself, climbing on a rostrum in the central square to address the crowd. But that was later.
13. To return to Titus: at that time he had entered upon the fairest and most righteous of wars, that against Nabis,96 the most pernicious and lawless tyrant of Sparta; but at the end Titus cheated Greece of her hopes, deciding not to conquer him when he had the opportunity to do so. Instead he came to terms, thereby abandoning Sparta to an undeserved slavery.97 Perhaps he was afraid that the war might drag on, and another commander might come from Rome and take the glory; perhaps it was more a question of contentiousness and jealousy of the honours of Philopoemen. For that man was the most accomplished Greek of the day in every respect, and in particular he had performed remarkable feats of audacity and skill in this present war. The Achaeans responded by paying him honour and respect in the theatres; just as much, indeed, as they had paid to Titus, and this annoyed Titus intensely. Here he was, a Roman consul, fighting as Greece’s champion: it could not be right for this Arcadian fellow,98 a commander in these minor frontier wars, to win from them the same admiration. Still, Titus himself gave a different defence of his actions, saying that he had abandoned the war because he saw that the destruction of the tyrant would involve the other Spartiates in great suffering.99
The Achaeans passed many votes in his honour, but none seemed to match the benefits they had received, with one exception, which he valued more than all the others. This was the following. There were many Romans who had fallen on hard times in the Hannibalic War. Sold into slavery, they were now scattered all over the world: in Greece there were 1,200 of them.100 Their change of fortune had been pitiful enough before, but now it was especially so: some were meeting their sons, others their brothers or their friends, slaves meeting free men and prisoners meeting conquerors. Titus was not prepared simply to deprive their masters of their property, despite all the pain which he felt on their behalf. But the Achaeans ransomed these men, paying 5 minas for each, and gathered them all together to give to Titus just as he was about to set sail. So he departed in the most delighted of spirits, given that his noble deeds had been nobly repaid, in a way which was fitting for a great man and a lover of his countrymen. It would appear that this was the most brilliant aspect of all in the triumph which he celebrated.101 It is customary for slaves to shave their heads and wear the cap of freedom when they are manumitted, and now these men did the same, and that was how they escorted Titus in his triumphal procession.
14. The spoils carried in the procession also contributed to the glorious sight.102 There were Greek helmets and Macedonian shields and pikes, and also a very considerable amount of money: Tuditanus103 reports that the parade included 3,713 pounds of melted gold, 43,270 pounds of silver and 14,514 gold Philippics.104 On top of that Philip owed his 1,000 talents,105 though in this case the Romans were later persuaded to remit payment,106 largely thanks to Titus’ intervention; they also voted to make Philip an ally, and released his son107 from being a hostage.
15. Then came Antiochus’ arrival in Greece.108 He crossed with a large fleet and army, and set about stirring up the cities to rebellion and to internal faction. His partners in this were the Aetolians, with their long-standing bitterness and hostility towards the Roman
people.109 Now the Aetolians gave Antiochus the programme and excuse for war of freeing the Greeks. Not that the Greeks wanted this; they were free already – but for want of a more plausible pretext the Aetolians suggested to Antiochus the use of this fairest of names.
The extent and reputation of Antiochus’ power made the Romans very apprehensive. They sent Manius Acilius as consul and commander in the war, but added Titus as his legate.110 This was for the sake of the Greeks, and indeed, for some of them the simple sight of the man was enough to strengthen their loyalty. Others were beginning to be in a less healthy state, but their personal goodwill for Titus was like some timely medicine, and these too he rallied and led away from error. Only a few escaped his heartening influence, people who had already been treated in advance and totally corrupted by the Aetolians; and even these, despite all his anger and irritation, he kept safe after the battle.
For Antiochus was defeated at Thermopylae,111 and immediately sailed away in flight to Asia:112 then the consul Manius divided up the Aetolians, attacking and besieging some himself and allowing King Philip to destroy others.113 That was how it came about that Dolopians and Magnesians were being plundered by the Macedonians, and Athamanians and Aperantians114 too; Manius himself had destroyed Heraclea and was besieging Naupactus,115 which was still in Aetolian possession. At this point Titus took pity on the Greeks, and sailed from the Peloponnese to intercede with the consul.116
At first he rebuked him: Manius had won the war, so why let Philip take its spoils? Here he was wasting his time with a single city, while the Macedonians were taking over many entire races and kingdoms. Then the besieged people of Naupactus caught sight of him, called to him from the walls and stretched out their hands to him imploringly. For the moment he said nothing, but turned around and went away in tears; but later he talked again with Manius and soothed his anger.117 The result was that the Aetolians were granted a truce for a specified period, in which they could send an embassy to Rome and make their claim for moderate treatment.118