55.
The Roman consul, being on his way to Thessaly with his army during these same days, first made a rapid march through Epirus;
[2]
then, after he crossed into Athamania, a land of rough and almost pathless terrain, with great difficulty by small roads he barely got through to Gomphi;
[3]
while his men and horses were in trouble, and since he commanded a novice army, if the king had opposed him with a force advantageously arrayed as to time and place, even the Romans do not deny that they would have fought with great loss to themselves.
[4]
After their arrival at Gomphi without opposition, besides the joy of having negotiated a dangerous pass, scorn of enemies who were so ignorant of their own advantages also came to them.1
[5]
After sacrifice duly performed and a distribution of grain to the soldiers, the consul, delaying a few days to rest beasts and men, on hearing that the Macedonians were wandering scattered through Thessaly and that the territory of the allies was being plundered, led his now sufficiently refreshed soldiery to Larisa.
[6]
When about three miles distant [p. 463]from there, at Tripolis —they call it Scaea —above the2 Peneüs river he pitched camp.
[7]
During this same time Eumenes arrived at Chalcis with a fleet, accompanied by his brothers Attalus and Athenaeus, his brother Philetaerus having been left at Pergamum for the protection of the kingdom. From Chalcis he came with Attalus and four thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry to the consul; at Chalcis two thousand infantry were left under the command of Athenaeus.
[8]
Also the other auxiliaries of the Romans assembled at Tripolis from all the peoples of Greece everywhere, many of whom — so small were they —have come to oblivion. The people of Apollonia sent three hundred cavalry and one hundred infantry.
[9]
From the Aetolians there came the equivalent of one squadron,3 the total force of cavalry of the whole league, and of the Thessalians, whose entire cavalry force had been hoped for, not more than three hundred horsemen4 were in the Roman camp.
[10]
The Achaeans contributed of their young men, mostly with Cretan armament,5 about fifteen hundred.
1 This criticism ignores the difficulties which Perseus would have suffered had he tried to oppose the Romans in Athamania; in the mountains his strongest arm, the phalanx, was useless, and his cavalry might well have been hobbled; the problem of supplies and communications would have been complicated by the mountains between him and Macedonia; and his strategic flank would have been wide open to hostile Thessaly. His actual march left him with direct communication with Macedonia, the flanking passes to the west guarded, and ground before him level enough for his type of fighting.
2 B.C. 171
3 About 500 men.
4 Below lviii. 14, there are 400 present.
5 I.e. as slingers and other light troops.
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
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